Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson Page A

day, we were serving a broiled cod special. I was helping out at the fish station and doing some of the final seasoning adjustments with salt and pepper. After half a dozen orders went out onto the floor, I had my seasoning down pat. The next day, I helped out at the fish station again, and I performed the same final role of seasoning the daily special. All seemed to be going well until Jorgen passed by and saw me shaking salt onto the plate.
    He came over and took a taste of what I’d been working on.
    He spit it into a napkin. “What the hell is this?” he asked. Turns out I’d been salting gravlax, a salt-cured fish.
    He was furious—wasting good food was a no-no—and I thought I’d be fired. I felt sick. But he didn’t fire me. My mistake was one of judgment, not of laziness, and to him, the difference between those mattered.
    I redeemed myself by working harder and faster than I ever had before. That was the pace of Tidbloms all the time—guys cooking six things at once with a constant sense of urgency but never panic. If we had an unusually busy lunch service, Jorgen would ask me to stay on beyond my scheduled shift, and I always said yes. “Yes, chef” is such a common parlance in a professional kitchen. You don’t even have to think about it for your mouth to form the words. You get asked to do something and you say yes. “Yes, chef” were the first words out of my mouth each morning and the last words I uttered as I left the restaurant each night. “Good night, Marcus,” Jorgen would call out. I wouldn’t say, “Have a good night, too.” I’d say, “Yes, chef.” I didn’t want to miss any chance I got to see the world that was opening up before me.
    No matter how much I learned at Tidbloms, I never caught up with my classmate Martin back at Mosesson. The day we graduated, he won the school’s top honors. Martin was too nice a guy to resent, but there was another difference between us that kept me from feeling a twinge of envy. Since the age of twelve, Martin had worked in his family’s catering business. While we were at Mosesson, he continued to work for his dad in his off-school hours, and when a big job came in, he’d miss out on a few days of school. I envied Martin’s proficiency and talent, but I did not envy that his fate was sealed. He would eventually step into his father’s shoes, take over the family business, and never leave Göteborg. Maybe he could live with that, but the mere thought made me feel like the walls around me were closing in.
    I graduated second in our class and walked away with a handshake from the principal, a diploma, and my first full set of knives, carbon steel blades and riveted wood handles, the blade’s weight counterbalanced by the tang, a strip of metal that continued through to the end of the handle. I would cherish those knives for years. They were the one constant in my luggage, along with my journals, as I made my way from country to country, continent to continent.

NINE BELLE AVENUE
    I N THE WINTER OF 1989, WHEN I WALKED THROUGH B ELLE A VENUE’S doors as its newest
köksnisse
, or kitchen boy, it was probably one of the top five restaurants in Sweden. In the front of the house, three layers of white linen covered each of the room’s fifty tables. Leather banquettes ringed the room. Knowledgeable, seasoned waiters were never more than a few steps away. A sommelier with a sterling silver tastevin around his neck stood by the bar, ready to guide guests through the extensive French wine list. The room operated at a muffled murmur as if both servers and patrons had agreed to treat the chef, and the meals he created, with the same deference one might show a great opera singer.
    Attached to the main dining room was a kitchen that served more than just the restaurant. It fed all of the Park Avenue Hotel, including its bar and grill, a dinner theater with singing waiters, room service, and three banquet halls on the mezzanine floor. From sunrise to