Proof of Life

The past two and a half years have been very weird for me.  As most know, after closing Night Market, I went to Bangkok to try to worm my way into a job and a work visa.  When covid made all of that go south, I was cut adrift without a goal or a purpose.  

There was no more idea that it was possible to open and run a successful small restaurant, especially not in America.  Rents were too high.  Labor was too sparse.  In order to do the volume to be successful in a meaningful way, you needed to cough up the rent and hire the people, both of which were overly daunting tasks.  Add in the bureaucracy and rules of America, and I don’t know how anyone wraps their minds around the whole picture without hiring and paying out other people to handle parts and parcels.

So for the past two and a half years, I have been a ghost, and I have said as much.  Whenever I walk into a new kitchen, 90% of the time, I have been hired as a patch.  I’m a mercenary.  I make no bones about it.  I’m not there for a full time or a long time, I’m there for a good time.  And by a good time, I mean, as the motto goes, “Fuck you, pay me.”  I’m not there for stability or to further my career.  I’m not there because you’re doing some super interesting cuisine that’s going to make their guests spontaneously produce their o-face. I’m there because like Liam Nelson, I don’t have money, but I do have a very particular set of skills.  

To be honest, I didn’t really care about the food I was producing wherever I had been in the last couple years.  It wasn’t my name, and I take no ownership or responsibility.  I’m not there to use my name to build your name.  It was garbage in, garbage out.  Whoever was hiring me and providing me the appropriate instructions, recipes, ratios, ingredients either did or they didn’t.  It didn’t matter to me.

Being a ghost, not only meant me not taking ownership of the food that was being produced, but also being a ghost as a person.  Since Night Market closed, with the exception of my time with my mentor at The Proprietors Bar & Table in Nantucket, I have presented myself as a ghost.  Sometimes servers would ask who I was, and my response was, “You don’t really need to know.  I don’t really work here.”  Some places tried to get me to go on company outings, of which I always declined.

Most people don’t really understand the extent to which disbanding the Night Market crew broke me on an emotional level.  These are people I still interact with reasonably frequently, at least the core, even though they have moved, had kids, or changed industries.  I have very little interested in being anyone’s new friend.  I just don’t have the energy for it.

All of that leads me to where I am today.

I’m currently back in Thailand, not to try to get hired somewhere, but to take a break from being a huckster before starting my first full time job in three and a half years.  It’s going to be an interesting one, and maybe I’ll write more about it as I work my way into it.  

I was inspired to apply to the job after my stint cooking for the Paddock Club at Miami’s inaugural F1 race this past May.  I met a ton of great people… and a fair amount of absolute fucking morons.  It was the biggest shit show that I have ever seen or have been a part of.  And it wasn’t like a duck on the pond where it’s still above the water, but a flurry of kicking under the surface.  This was full blown shit show that was remarked upon on the internet.  I have never been a part of a shit show that was internet famous.  Most of the shit shows I have been involved with have been relatively small and contained.  

What that gig did, besides increase my network by a good amount, was give me a solid look at what I knew and what I didn’t.  It also taught me how to best assess the talents and proficiencies of the people around me and how I would try to manipulate things to try to make things as efficient as possible.  I saw how some of the people above me were floundering and how the people with me were not feeling empowered to make things better.

The shit show of the Paddock Club has now become a sort of white whale for me.  My goal is to do it again, do it right, do it better, be proud of the product that was walking out the door.  Do things better and smarter.  Service the Paddock Club in a manner in which they are more accustomed to and that maybe even could make the super fans of the second most monied sport in the world, take their eyes off the track or the screen and maybe place them firmly on the plate of food in front of them, if only for a few seconds.

For the first time in years, I actually have a goal worth pursuing.  It’s something that I actually think that I have the power to achieve.  And this goal led me to this job, which will give me more weapons in my arsenal to chase after this white whale.  It’s going to make me more comfortable with cooking insane volume, both refined food and less refined food.  It’s going to make me comfortable stepping into any kitchen, being able to assess the situation and create volume menus based on needs.  It’s going to be a perpetual state of discomfort, which some say the best stuff in life is on the far end of.

I’ll be traveling a lot, which is nice.  

It’s funny.  A friend of mine posted a gif on the book of faces that basically said, “I may look really cool on social media, but in reality I have two friends and spend a lot of time at home alone.”  Not that I look really cool on social media, but I do feel like I have 2 friends, and I do spend a lot of time at home alone.  

With this job, I’ll probably think a lot less about sitting around my home alone.  Instead, I think I’ll try to think of myself as George Clooney in Up In The Air.  Constantly flying from place to place, chasing miles and elite status, maybe hooking up with a Vera Farmiga type, showing an Anna Kendrick the ropes of travel, letting my apartment collect dust.  Unfortunately, I’ll have to check baggage due to, you know, knives.  

When I return to Boston, contingent on a background check, I’ll be starting this job.  I’ll have to show up.  I’ll have to bring my A game.  I won’t be able to be a ghost.  I will have to be a tangible asset. I’ll have to prove that I have the skills I claim to have.  I’ll have to prove that I am the beast that I know I have been and that I can be.  So, when I show up on day one, there will be no more ghost.  There will be proof of life.