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This story was founded on a hunch, a feeling that surfaced the first time I laid eyes on Chef George Mavrothalassitis’ team of young chefs.
I saw a small crew of 20-somethings turning out beautiful and sophisticated food, and I thought: Aha! A contradiction! I love contradictions! I pictured the restaurant — Chef Mavro, one of the best fine-dining restaurants in the state — then I pictured the kitchen staff. And then I thought to myself: I bet that behind the serenity of the dining room, there’s a story of a crazy kitchen just waiting to be told.
Because wouldn’t it be great to know that your perfectly seared and beautifully plated Hudson Valley foie gras was made between jokes being told by a young chef doing air guitar solos along with a blasting radio? I loved the thought of something so refined as Chef
Mavro’s award-winning food coming from something so unsophisticated as a band of motley kids who happen to be great — and all well-trained — chefs.
I watch too much television.
An afternoon in the kitchen with team Mavro didn’t yield a tale of wild contradictions and unbelievable contrasts. As a matter of fact, for a bunch of young people confined to a tight space, the crew at Chef Mavro — chefs that, in 10 years, will surely be the stars of their own restaurants, lauded for their incredible skill and artistry — are very well-behaved.
Almost suspiciously so.
Perhaps the presence of a reporter in the room, watching them, taking notes, following them from stove to counter to sink was just too much pressure.
“Why is everyone being so bizarrely quiet?” asked Donna Jung, Chef Mavro’s wife and marketing director for the restaurant, while greeting the crew.
Good question. Not that I needed the answer. I found the quiet as fascinating as any kitchen chaos would have been. I can’t be in the car alone without making some kind of noise, so the fact that this quintet of chefs — all of them in their early 20s and 30s — could silently go about their duties was remarkable to me.
And in spite of the silence (or maybe because of it), there was no shortage of communication. Chef de cuisine Kevin Chong, the kitchen boss when Chef Mavro’s not there, was wherever he was needed without having to be summoned. It’s like there’s some kind of inter-chef telepathy that they don’t tell us about. They cook, create recipes, cut meat like shogun masters — AND, ladies and gentlemen, they can talk to each other without actually talking.
Patisserie chef Wai Kit Ho could measure and roll the bread dough for the evening’s dinner rolls all by himself, or he could say nothing and Chong will be right there, taking over the measuring so Ho can concentrate on forming perfect spheres of raw yeasty dough.
Chef Megan Haney, the only female on the crew, and the chef in charge of making and preparing the starters and garnishes, could ask sous chef Andrew Le if he thinks the mushrooms need more salt, but why should she? He’ll turn around at just right the moment, pop a sauteed mushroom into his mouth and tell her, “Yeah, more salt.”
I fumble the flow horribly when Le, holding a spoonful of something two inches from my lips, has to pause for a few seconds while I catch on that he wants me to taste what he’s holding.
I’d heard about quiet efficiency before, but I thought it was a myth invented by tired old people who want the rest of us to cut the chatter long enough to prove that we younguns can work as hard as they did last century.
Chong, who’s been Chef Mavro’s No. 2 guy for the past five years, and whose resume includes cooking at Le Cirque in New York City and serving as the chef de cuisine for Le Cirque in Mexico City, is the very embodiment of quiet efficiency. He runs his kitchen with confidence and grace, while his team responds in like. If Chong has any chef Gordon Ramsay tendencies, he kept them deeply suppressed.
After a while, the silence isn’t as unnerving as it is ... comforting. As much as I would like to be witness to some Mavro drama, I know that I wouldn’t respect the crew as much as I do if, say, chef Le had thrown a tantrum or if chef Chong had sung along loudly with Journey while poaching a special order of foie gras torchon.
