Van Aken, Trotter, And Lagasse Cook For Julia Child

(This is the prologue, entitled "The Triangle," excerpted from No Experience Necessary: The Culinary Odyssey of Chef Norman Van Aken by Norman Van Aken, to be published on December 7 by Taylor Trade Publishing. Published with permission of Taylor Trade, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.)

Julia Child was waiting. Along with 350 other well-dressed, well-heeled folks in an opulent hotel ballroom in Aventura, Florida, she sat in her gold-and-black dress and waited beneath glittering chandeliers. She was waiting for her birthday cake, which would come much later. She was waiting for the first course of a seven-course celebration dinner in her honor at the exclusive and hyperexpensive Turnberry Resort. She was waiting for a dish that I had coproduced with my relatively new friend Emeril Lagasse, as well as another dish coproduced by my great friend/brother, Charlie Trotter.

Emeril and I were teamed up to do the first course of the gala. That is not the way things are typically done. Usually each chef does his or her own dish from start to finish. But "Em" and I were still getting to know each other and this was not only a very prestigious event in honor of the woman widely viewed as the grande dame of American cuisine, but it was also fun to plan, refine, and then execute a dish partnered up like this. Emeril was a party to cook with. He was, in fact, a one-man Mardi Gras!

Julia was waiting, but not because of us. She was sitting through a long dissertation on the wines being served that evening. This is one of the most challenging parts of doing the first course for one of these dinners. You don't make the food and simply hold it in a hot box. We didn't cook that way and never would. This had to be as à la minute as humanly possible. Emeril and I had been prepping all day on our collaborations: Grilled Key West Shrimp and Chorizo Sausage (my recipe) and Delta Crayfish with Red Beans and Rice Cake (Emeril's recipe).

 

We couldn't put the shrimp on the three grill stations we'd created around the huge kitchen until a minute or two before we began the plating operation. We kept running from station to station to be sure the support teams were keeping it honest and not grilling any of the shrimp and holding them (you had to watch some of these hotel dogs) until we gave the green light.

A dark-haired, very pale young man in a shiny black tux, evidently in charge of managing the waitstaff, had them lined up and waiting, too. He would provide our official eyes on the dining room. When he ordered, "Fire first plate!" we'd be off and there'd be no turning back.

Charlie Trotter's course followed ours and he was watching the clock and trying to gauge the precise moment he would be ready to begin laying out his Chilled Skate Wing Terrine with Blood Orange Emulsion and Toasted Pistachio Oil.

We waited, we worried, and we cursed under our breaths—still waiting—for this dandy maître d' with the "Werewolves of London" hairdo to give us the word. Emeril prowled around with his arms crossed tightly across his chest, his chin nearly lying on top of his arms. His eyebrows twitched back and forth like heavy telegraph wires conveying an imminent Cajun storm front. He came up to me, got very close to my face, and said, "[expletive] hate waitin', Noam." That's how he pronounced my name. I hated waiting, too. I hadn't had this much fun hating something in a long time.

Charlie came over with three espressos on a tray, one for each of us. Great. More energy to worry and hate with! It was a ritual, like slapping each other's faces to psyche ourselves up. Sometimes we'd drink like six of these babies, knowing we'd find plenty to wind down with after the dinner. The three of us had begun to hang out in the past year or so. It was Charlie who somehow orchestrated our getting close. I had known Charlie ever since he asked me for his first cooking job. He was a slim, impossibly intense busboy working in our dining room back in Lake Forest, Illinois, where I was chef. I had just returned to Illinois after almost ten years of cooking in Key West. I told him, "No. We don't need anyone." And I thought, Poor kid. So scrawny, someone should feed him. But our sous chef nagged me for a few days, "We could use him making salads." So it began. Years passed and Charlie showed first Chicago and then America what he could do. My scrawny "little brother" was tearing up the rule book. Charlie had gotten to know Emeril a year or two before I did. Em was the chef at Commander's Palace in New Orleans and Charlie had gone down to do an event with him.

I remember Charlie calling me on the phone in Miami Beach where I was chef of a Mano at the old Betsy Ross Hotel on Ocean Drive and telling me that we all needed to get together. He told me that I would "fall in love with Emeril." "So will Janet" (my wife). "You two are gonna be like brothers. This guy's great! He got this psycho-killer red Porsche straight out of a Hunter Thompson collection and he took me all around the Big Easy. He owns that town. He's gonna open up his own place like any minute."

 

And so that began, too. We got nicknamed "The Triangle" for our geographical locations on the grid of the American map. We were also connected by the same sense of passion that athletes and musicians feel. And now in this kitchen—with 350 folks, plus Julia Child, waiting for our food—was the part when it's still quiet and your adrenaline is flowing and you are ready to rock and roll!

And it was then that the well-dressed maître d' gave us the signal: "Fire first plates!"

We jumped into the river of no return. Over seven hundred shrimp that we had peeled that morning and marinated that afternoon hit three blazing hot grills. Emeril made some last-minute adjustments to his huge cauldron of rice. He raced over to Charlie and me and lifted up two tasting spoons brimming and steaming to our lips. Orgasmic. Lethal. Righteous. When he saw our faces he broke into a huge grin. He looked like the kid who hit the winning home run at the Little League World Series and was now rounding the bases, waving his cap to the crowd.

Thirty chefs were lined up at two long plating tables. Emeril and I made one sample dish for each group to show the other chefs the way we wanted our food plated. The assembly line went into gear, steadily gaining momentum until we were ready to hand the servers two plates each—no fucking trays—to take to the grand dining room past the ice machines down a long hall with gathering speed and hell-bent-for-leather determination. The Delta Crayfish with Red Beans and Rice Cake was at the perfect temperature now. The shrimp with chorizo perched just so on top sent out its hot and smoky perfume. The plates were given a last-second swipe with a hot cloth by our wives at the far end of each line. Either they or we personally inspected the assembled chefs' efforts and then and only then allowed the plates to go out. We had about thirty dishes ready and moving out to the hall when the tuxedoed dandy came running from the dining room and screeched, "Stop! Stop! Stop! They are not ready! Another speech has begun!"

Emeril was on him first. "What are you saying? You said to fire the food and it is fired, man!"

Thirty chefs froze in horror. Everyone understood the gravity of the situation. Our shrimp would be overcooked. Our rice cakes would be cold. And Julia Child was out there in that dining room! [Expletive] Julia fucking Child, man!

The feeling was nauseating and I almost couldn't take it. The espresso churned in my guts and sloshed around my heart. Charlie dashed over to us and we huddled quickly. We were agreed.

Emeril and I marched back to the top of the plating lines. You could have heard a sprig of parsley fall.

Charlie bellowed, "SEND THE GODDAMN [EXPLETIVE] FOOD NOW!"

Jim Morrison in his "Whisky a Go Go" prime couldn't have screamed any louder or looked any more possessed than Charlie did at that moment. The maître d' was nearly knocked down by the servers rushing the hot plates past him, into the banquet hall, and on to Ms. Child's table first.

Over the next two and half hours we sent out the remaining six courses. Three hundred and fifty guests. That is a lot of china. The kitchen is often described as being a place that takes on a balletic grace, a place where a disparate group of human beings become a fluid dynamic of precision and perfect accord, and if the chef chooses to change a garnish at the last second each chef-de-partie would see that and immediately conform to the new way of doing things. That can be true of small kitchens catering to guests arriving over the course of ten half-hour intervals: we fill the tickets and fill the orders table by table. But an event where hundreds of people all sit down at once is not a ballet. It is a military exercise that is run with no room for mistakes or sudden gusts of whimsy. Stand at your position. Do what I ask of you. Keep the line moving. Clear. Reset. Next course!

Finally the desserts were sent out and the executive chef of the hotel invited Emeril, Charlie, and me into the Verandah Bar for whatever beverages we desired.

 

These were the halcyon days of grand events, and the after-hours carte blanche we enjoyed back then was truly remarkable. Emeril came over with two bottles of Jim Clendenen's luscious Au Bon Climat Chardonnay and we collapsed, stained and sweaty in our chef's whites, into chairs normally reserved for club members only.

The long day and night of work had ended and it was our time now. As usual the only thing we'd consumed that day since a pastry and a coffee that morning was more coffee. No lunch. No food of any sort was in our bellies. But you are fooled as a chef. Your sense is that you have eaten because you've tasted so many little spoonfuls of things and been around all the aromas of cooking. But you haven't eaten. And the wine can hit you. In fact, it does. And when it does, we get wacky. And things can happen. We start to tell tall tales, tease each other, flirt, drink more—and that is when things can get even wackier. We'd been drinking for a while now. The Verandah Bar was in a full uproar. All the chefs had managed to get in plus a few of the guests who wanted something stronger than dessert. Everyone was having the time of their lives. But then I saw something very, very strange. The maître d' was standing at the bar next to my wife and it looked like he had his arm around her shoulder. They were facing the bar and Emeril and I were sitting on a long banquette facing their backs. I turned to Em and said, "Hey, brother. Do you see what I see?"

Em scanned the room and then he saw it. His eyes locked in place like a bird dog's. Was this worm trying to paw my wife? She'd have none of it, of course, but she was just as dazed from the long day and night as we were and maybe she didn't realize the depraved nature of men. That's when the maître d' slid his arm from her shoulder (harmless) to her bottom (not).

The next moments were a blur. I stood up and Emeril must have, too. A Louis XIV–style chair was in my hands. I had it by two legs and there was an empty space just to the left of the maître d' leaning against the bar, his head close to Janet's ear, his face smiling an oily smile, his hand not moving, his eyes not seeing. Smitten, he was slipping that hand around the curves of my girl. I could see her face in the barroom mirror and saw that she was just realizing it was his hand on her and not the pressure of Emeril's wife's purse as she had thought. Too late. I smashed the chair next to him. Janet jumped six feet in the opposite direction. A space now opened up to the maître d's right. Emeril smashed another Louis XIV chair exactly there. Then he charged the guy, grabbed him by the back of his tux, got right up in his face, and said, "Do you want to die right now in this bar, [expletive]?"

Three guys grabbed me from behind, three guys grabbed Emeril, and Charlie grabbed Janet, pulling us out of the bar and out by the pool. We struggled but the battle was over. What had happened in the bar might not even have been what it looked like, but the certainty was that there were two very expensive and very splintered chairs lying on the oak floor of the Verandah Bar at Turnberry Resort.

The enormity of what had just transpired began to dawn on our wine-damaged minds and we hightailed it up to our rooms. We now needed more drinks and we called room service for several bottles of red.

When I woke up Emeril was sleeping next to me. I couldn't comprehend the image but it was irrefutably the case. Emeril's wife and mine probably retreated to the adjoining room to get away from our snoring and heaved our passed-out bodies there. Charlie appeared and hovered over the bed with a crazy-as-a-loon smile. I knew he'd been right about this guy Emeril, and I knew Charlie was going to enjoy retelling this saga for decades to come, adding a wrinkle or two each time, as he loves to do. He had brought toothbrushes, toothpaste, aspirin, bagels, cream cheese, and coffee. Emeril woke. The Triangle came to life.