Fine-dining book goes behind scenes

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, July 17, 2002 | 8:26 a.m.

Even in the rarified aesthetic that is fine dining in Japan, the restaurant profession is regarded as "mizu shobai," literally, the water trade, which refers obliquely to such demi-monde activities as prostitution, the drug trade, extortion and loan sharking.

These activities go on behind the scenes in some of our restaurants as well, but it is a reality that most of us, generally, avoid.

In this country, a successful member of the profession, be it a chef, waiter or bartender, can live a solidly middle class lifestyle, gain the respect ofhis peers, own a suburban home, and gain a share of the American dream. Many of our top restaurants are run by college graduates, staffed by a team that treats the craft with honor, and with seriousness.

The fine-dining world according to restaurant journeyman and "Dry, Up, With a Twist," author John Galloway Jr., a transplanted Hoosier now living in Southern Nevada, is a darker place. It is almost pure depravity, a repository of social misfits, barbaric Third World expats, drug users, egomaniacs and sociopaths. In short, it is a world where the average employee has no regard for himself, or for society in general.

This is a world where there is rampant cocaine use in the backroom, where women are treated purely as commodities, where no unconsumed portion of alcohol, be it Grand Marnier Cent Centenaire, or the cheapest house hooch, goes unswigged by a passing employee.

Galloway, of course, has been over the edge and back, or so he would have us believe. Not exactly above the fray, he casts a cold eye on the world of fine dining, by relating some of the juicier anecdotes in his experience.

Galloway retraces his steps through restaurants in south Florida and Washington, D.C, using fictional names for his co-workers and even for the restaurants where he worked. He also manages to weave a little personal tragedy into the story, framed by his disappointment at never having made the grade as a naval aviator.

The main body of text takes place in a restaurant that he refers to as King Lear, where the Washington elite sup, and where most of the depravity takes place. Here we meet valets, the gamut of waiters, managers, maitre d's, generals, senators, barflies and call girls.

Galloway tells us early on in his narrative that he is just a passenger through this world, not a lifer, illustrating vividly how the seductive lifestyle (fast money, abundant vehicles for pleasure from loose women to loose powder) and the slow descent into alcoholism can trap a person permanently. His gift for writing has granted him a release from his personal purgatory, but in so doing it has left him with a myopic world view, one that doesn't ring entirely true.

The subhead on the cover reads "The humor, irony and chaos behind fine dining." This is an ambitious, but not completely accurate, assessment.

There is plenty of irony and chaos in this book, but not a lot of humor. Galloway is a skilled wordsmith and a funny writer, but all too often there is more than a hint of bitterness in his prose, and the words do not always leave one laughing.

An illustration: "Do you really believe that fresh Norwegian salmon you ate in Phoenix on Tuesday was flopping on the floor of a Sandefjord dory on Monday? Think about it. No way. That unlucky salmon has been dead for a month, and it owes its bright orange color to reactor leakage from an unrescued Russian submarine."

Or how about Galloway's views on tipping, a subject that merits an entire chapter: "Gratuity ground zero is twenty percent of the entire cost of the meal. One fifth give, one fifth taken. Either you're a part of the antidote or the poison itself." Or, "Not tipping on wine ordered is another act of treason. To those who do this, the waiters worldwide wish you a jagged edged gallstone the size of Vermont."

As a former waiter, I feel obliged to respond to these global generalities. I worked, among other places, on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and in the legendary Ma Maison in Los Angeles. In these restaurants, I served a range of people from Romany (better known as Gypsy in our argot) to Brazilian, and a demographic that ranged from lower-middle class to upper-crust celebrity.

And what I can say through my experience is that Galloway, while a keen (albeit cynical) observer of human nature, is being somewhat unfair when he continually goes for the "cute" or for the shock value in these stories. As boring and rote as the food was on Fisherman's Wharf, the salmon was so fresh that a team of Chinese chefs were literally slicing filets off a freshly killed fish in the basement while I was taking orders.

As to tipping, it is a privilege, not a right, in spite of the fact that the IRS assumes that an employee is tipped a minimum of 8-percent of the gross sales, and will audit someone's income accordingly. The act of opening and pouring a $600 Bordeaux is no more taxing than doing so with a $20 wine.

And while any server would be thrilled to receive $100 for opening a single bottle, the amount seems exorbitant for the work done. It is not the customers' fault that the IRS resorted to the 8-percent rule, but rather the fault of generations of waiters who under-reported their tips, and continue to do so to this day.

I under-reported a little myself, in my day, but Galloway, to his enduring credit, insists repeatedly in the text that he did not. To that I say bravo, and so what?

At the end of the book, Galloway also takes the moral high ground with regard to eating meat. He's sort of a waiter's Siddhartha, who, at the end of his personal journey, has sworn off meat altogether. That's admirable, and perhaps it explains why virtually any mention of food in this book is met with disdain.

Unlike Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential," which no doubt had a hand in inspiring readers to become excited about this book, there is hardly any description of food or cooking in Galloway's book, which still remains the main reason people go out to dine.

Bourdain, who describes the chaos and self-destructiveness of many a restaurant employee in his own book, never loses his reverence for fine food, which makes reading him the more compelling. Reading "Kitchen Confidential" is a learning experience, punctuated by the personal torment of the writer.

"Dry, Up, With A Twist" on the other hand, is more like a descent into hell, with little redemption for the reader, a Dostoyevsky-like "Notes From the Underground" version of the restaurant world. This is a book you'll want to read only if you have a morbid interest in that world. It is not a book for anyone who romanticizes restaurants, or who is feeling even remotely hungry.

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