Irreconcilable Regrets: How I Blew My Shot at a Michelin Star Kitchen
When ruminating over past missteps, this one takes the lead and still leaves me stupefied.
This one hurts.
I stop short of revisiting the entirety of my stupidity and shake my head. Literally. My wife catches me in these silent, reflective moments in passing and has said, “If you shake your head any harder, it’s going to fall off.” This most often occurs on days off when I’ve committed the entire day to my kitchen, baking, prepping, cooking, and seeing a culmination of my culinary talent.
This blunder of epic proportions happened 24 years ago, and time has not healed the wound.
As a young chef, there are times when you think you are very good, but you are not nearly as good as you think. Other times, when you aren’t thinking of yourself at all, you become very good — I never knew for certain where I ranked.
I would learn later that I was once, very good.
Before the Blunder.
I stood over the range, working pans over flames and calling orders down the line to my brigade, when Chef P walked up and, in his dry English accent and trademark acerbic tone, asked, “What’s your plan?”
