One night at an overwhelmingly of-the-moment restaurant, I saw a guy I recognized from cooking school. I noticed him outside the window, checking out the menu, deciding whether or not to come in. I was just grabbing a bite before heading off to something, so I admit that I put my head down, hoping that he wouldn't notice me and commit us both to dancing the small-talk tango. So of course he came in, and of course he sat down directly across from me. I couldn't hide among my prawns forever, so I looked up and said hello. His name was Aaron London. We didn't know each other at school really, but I did remember that he did a stage at Daniel, where he spent whole weekends in a room cleaning mushrooms next to a woman who sculpted carrots into footballs with a sort of militaristic zen.
"When I start with the carrots, I don't stop, so you're going to carry the finished ones away and bring me more," she told him.
He stuck with that sort of indignity for months-worth of weekends just to get into that kitchen for a formal internship. But I was suspicious, wondering if he wasn't just another climber, someone who'll do anything for the right resumé, someone who just wants to be called "Chef." I met lot of those guys (and they were all guys) in cooking school, as opposed to people who were genuinely interested in learning about food. So I got curious about what he was up to these days.
"Oh man, I cook at Stone Barns, dude. It's f*****g awesome," he blurted. I had forgotten how fast he talked. "I'm feeding the pigs, man, and then I'm cooking them. And the pigs, they go nuts when you feed 'em, man. They come up and start nipping at you."
Four hours later, we'd eaten six courses at three different places, and he'd blown probably half his paycheck. This was a normal Monday night for him. When Stone Barns lets him go free, he hops on a train with a fistful of cash, eats his way around the City, runs out of money, and goes back to work, feeding and cooking pigs. I loved talking with him, though I barely said a thing. He talked about the chickens that lay the eggs for the restaurant. He talked about the eggs. He talked about searing watermelon. He talked about how he likes to angle his pans over the flame, what size spoon he likes to work his pans with. He talked too fast, mumbled a lot, used his hands while talking in a way that I've only ever seen line cooks do—not for punctuation, but to mime every verb in stylized motions sometimes graceful, sometimes spastic. He pecked at the air when he talked about seasoning, flipped his palm when talking about searing something on both sides. He talked with pride about his work. A woman next to him overheard our conversation. I saw her look at him with a certain excited interest, like she'd bumped into a celebrity she couldn't quite place.
"Are you a chef?" she asked coyly.
"No," he said, "I'm a cook."
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