Inside the California Food Revolution by Joyce Goldstein

Author:Joyce Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520276512
Publisher: University of California Press

In Southern California, Tony Gulisano left his job at Chinois on Main because he wanted to learn how to cook on a wood grill. He went to the “busiest wood grill in town,” which at the time was at Prego in Beverly Hills. “This is 1983 or 1984. Everything was wood-grilled. I was there as a line cook, and I felt like a construction worker. My hands were swollen, my hair was all frizzy, I was getting slaughtered night after night. But I still love wood grills and wood ovens, which are so intimidating to so many cooks. I love the unpredictability and live aspect of each thing.”

The grill became the most popular station in many California restaurants. Whoever worked it usually got slammed with orders, and coworkers had to be able to slide over and help plate or do whatever was needed to get the food out on time and looking good. At Stars and Square One there were only three people cooking entrées, and if you did four hundred covers, there’d be nights where the grill did well over two hundred of those dinners. Chef Bruce Hill worked the grill at Stars early on. “I had my training wheels taken off on that thing, and I had some very difficult days, and an overwhelming amount of food being ordered. I remember cutting swordfish for Saturday night—swordfish back then was very common—and I remember cutting like a hundred and fifty pieces. We sold it all, too. One time I was on vacation in New York, and I went down to the Bowery, where all the knife stores were. I was looking for a knife that was big enough to cut through these swordfish. I [found] this fourteen-inch straight fish knife—it needed to be that long just to get halfway through.”

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