“Usual?” I ask him and he grunts, so I get to work on his lunch and keep talking. “One day it’ll be my own place,” I tell him. “Salt + Spice, Executive Chef, Wilder Amante.” My hands spread out with the words, along the roll I’m prepping, visualizing my name etched in glass on the front door, at the top of the leather-bound menu, and on my custom embroidered jacket.
But for now, I gotta take what I can get. The odd job, filling in for a line cook here or there. The nicest places don’t usually wanna hire a convict who comes from a past like mine. And I’ve done enough dishesfor the industry experienceat the tourist traps already, but they never bring me on for anything more.
“They’re sleeping on ya, Amante. Your time is coming, my man.”
“Working nights now at that new place in the Village,” I tell him.
“Which one?” he asks, and he’s got a point. There’s about a dozen a day.
I tell him, and he whistles. “Think I heard about that place from my girl. You the big dog there?”
My bark of a laugh makes the bottle of love sauce jiggle in my grip. “Junior chef, about seventeenth rung down. Your confidence in me is somethin’ else,amico.”
What I don’t tell him is how I barely got that job, but they were desperate. They’ll probably fire me the second they get someone with a clean record who applies.
Prison took away a lot of options for me, but it also changed my perspective, and it gave me a dream. Wouldn’t have found my love for cooking—or gotten straight—if it hadn’t been for that hellish time in my life.
Wrapping up his sandwich, I hand it over the high counter to Neil, and he slaps a fat tip in the jar.
“My guy!” I point at him, and he salutes me, heading off.
It might not be Salt + Spice, but this place is light-years ahead of where I’ve been.
I didn’t always have this sickeningly cheery outlook, compared to my fellow brethren of the Big Apple. Most of them wouldn’t look at this run-down bodega and call it paradise. When you grow up in a family like mine, with a life like mine, your outlook is dark. Shit, your whole life is dark.
But I found a new path seven years ago, when I walked out of the state penitentiary. Fresh air in my lungs, fresh passion for being in the kitchen thanks to my work assignments at the pen, I was ready for a fresh fucking start all around.
In my family’s line of work, that’s unheard of.
I did my time and got out. I’m on a new trail now. Even got a deal made, so it’s official, and that shit never happens.
But I’m Wilder Amante. I carve my own fucking path.
Getting started on the next customer’s order, I use my favorite knife, an 8.25” Moritaka AS Gyuto, to dice the roast chicken for the sandwich. The same knife peeks back at me in black and gray on the mirrored backsplash along my workstation, from among the sea of tattoos covering my arms.
They cover my whole body, really, but my entire forearm has a to-scale homage of the knife I can’t live without along the outside, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on in a weird way to see it as I’m chopping the meat for my next customer.
You know what they say, a chef’s best friend is a sharp knife, and I’m a little attached to mine.
With meticulous care I spread my roasted red pepper jam on the bottom half of the roll, making sure to coat it nice and thick, and toss the spreader back in the insert at my station with a juicy clatter.
The meat gets piled on next, followed by a few dollops of smoked crème fraiche and a dazzle of arugula, and she’s good to go. This isn’t some prepackaged slop you’d get anywhere else, and that’s why the line at my counter is full all day long. These handmade sauces, spreads, and garnishes speak for themselves.
“Order up!” I call, tapping the bell, and so the day goes on. Just like every other.
The midday lunch rush comes and goes, and I’ve had a chance in the couple of moments in between to restock my station, prepped and good to go for the late afternoon crowd that’ll be hitting on their way home from work. Gotta keep my workstation clean throughout the day so I can take off on time to get to my next shift.
It’s a life I’m sure plenty of people would find ways to complain about, but the shit I’ve seen? Hell, the shit I’vedone?I don’t forget where I came from that easily. Can’t let myself take for granted that shit could always be worse. A lot worse than making food I love that helps keep the people of this city running.
No risk of getting arrested for doingthisjob.
Probably not even a real risk of being killed while doing it.
Not like my pops.
The bell on the counter rings, but I didn’t press it to say an order is ready, so some impatient fucking New Yorker must need their sandwich and need itnow.
I turn around, ready to give them hell, becauseno onegives me shit once they see me. The 6’5” height on this Italian stallion probably has something to do with it. The giant sonofabitch who can bench press a couple of prison guards, and has the full body ink to prove it, he doesn’t get much opposition.
