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- I was 28 years old and I was just about to graduate from
the Culinary Institute of America.
And I was on a crazy high man.
I just had worked at two of the best restaurants
in New York, Le Bernardin and the Aureole at the time.
And I was doing really well at culinary school.
I'd never done well in school before.
I was graduating towards the top of my class,
I was cocky as shit.
I was full of like just complete confidence
and even just ordering people around out
of nowhere just like strangers telling you what to do.
And I got recruited for this job out in California,
and I had these dreams of just going back to Cali.
So I took the job.
I wasn't ready for this job.
It was a job to run a resort and be the chef.
But when I got offered the job I just thought
and I dreamed because out of my cockiness,
all I thought and dreamed about what was the white chef coat
and putting my name on my left chest
and writing executive chef underneath
and wearing the long crisp apron.
And so I took the job for $28,000 a year out in the desert
and it was in Borrego Springs, California.
And it was a resort called La Casa del Zorro,
is a beautiful resort, cabanas, five-star everything.
And I was there running the kitchen.
And I have this weird thing in my life
where I end up always becoming friends with people
that maybe I don't speak the same language
of or I didn't grow up in the same way.
And especially in the kitchen with a lot of Latino cooks
and dishwashers and waiters and bussers.
And there was this man Salvador,
he was our dishwasher at the time
and he had this body almost like Jack Black.
And this red beautiful face and always a grin on his face.
I mean, no matter how hard his job was every day,
he always seemed to be looking at us like,
yo, everything is good.
But we never really talked.
We always just exchanged whistles to be honest,
it was be like, (whistles).
Let's just go.
I got you, (indistinct) let's go, (whistles).
That was like our whole relationship.
But then he approached me one day,
but he would always look at me and then he approached me
one day and he asked me if I could help him
out with something.
His family couldn't help him the next day and he asked me
if I could help him and I didn't-there was no one that I was
with in the desert.
I went there all by myself so I said, yes.
And then I remember the next morning he came to my doorstep.
It was really early, it was 5:30 a.m.
And I don't know if any of you have been to the desert
or lived in the desert but it gets bright really really
early in the desert.
And where we lived in Borrego, it was in the middle
of the Anza-Borrego Desert, which is the Northeast end
of San Diego County.
And it's an amazing amazing place.
It's sand everywhere, beautiful ocotillo cactus.
It starts from the bottom and spreads outward
into these long rods, almost like 12 feet high
into a blooming cactus.
And then there was cholla cactus which are smaller cactus
that live more towards the ground,
but have these almost like they're like a spiky bunny tail,
cotton-candy looking kind of branches that blow in the wind
and they can knock you out.
They're crazy.
And it gets really bright in the morning.
He pulled up to my house that morning
and I still remember it.
I looked out the window and he rolled up
and there was this cloud of dust.
And he was standing there like the Tasmanian devil.
And he was holding two cups of Nescafe coffee.
And he was just there and it was just like,
he had this red pickup truck and I was like,
and he looked at me he's like (speaks in foreign language).
And I said, all right, yeah, (speaks in foreign language).
Let's go, (speaks in foreign language).
And then got in the truck and we headed east through
the desert through an area called Fonts Point which
is like a canyon that was, and a bunch of dry lakes.
And we headed towards the Salton Sea towards Coachella.
And we went around and under the South bend
of the Salton Sea and cut across to this town called Mecca,
which is on the Eastern end of the Salton Sea,
where a lot of farms are a lot of migrant workers,
a lot of immigrants that come directly from Tijuana
and Mexicali, and this is kind of their first stop
for many of them.
And it was really early.
It takes about an hour to get there
so by that time it was only about 7:00 a.m. in the morning.
There was workers everywhere passing
and we passed through a bunch of date trees
and again, more cactus, the Salton Sea which
is a very strange lake.
It's filled with salt and dead fish around
and there's motels with broken windows
and broken signs hanging.
And we followed this road down
and there was this crooked sign that said Chivo
and a bunch of goats were just kind of prancing
in the field.
There's a bunch of dudes there and Salvador got out
and the crazy thing about Latino culture sometimes
that I see is like, even if you don't know each other,
you seems like you know each other.
And I don't know, it's obviously the language
but I think there's a common and shared experience,
especially in America where almost everyone had
to come through the country in the same way
and in the same experience so there's
this silent understanding.
And then the language itself lends itself
to move itself away from any type of foreplay
and go right into it and just be like, yo, what's up.
And so he was talking to the guy and then they made
the exchange and they put the goat in the back
and it was a beautiful little goat.
I remember it was a white coat with a little spots of brown
and beautiful small head and small little horns.
And I had no idea what the heck we were doing.
I was just going along for the ride to get a free cup
of coffee and I mean, I was very naive.
I didn't really think about what was going on.
I thought we were picking up a pet to be honest.
And so then we put the goat back and we drove back
to Borrego back through the desert and we went to his house
and he let the goat out.
And again, I'm thinking everything's okay.
But then there's that moment where you start to see clues.
And then as we walked into his backyard,
I looked to my left and I saw a small little table
with knives on it.
And then I saw a rope hanging from a hang man's
kind of noose.
And then I saw him go over and start to fill a bottle
A Corona bottle
empty Corona bottles with water and salt.
And again, we didn't really talk, we're just chilling,
but it's still really early.
By this time it's only like 9:30, 10 o'clock,
the sun is really hot.
And he looks at me again and he asked me again,
(speaks in foreign language)
And I said, "Yeah, I'm ready."
And then we started running after the goat.
And it was like Rocky with the chicken
and then like we were running after it
and I remember the goat was up in the corner,
way up in the corner.
I swear it was like he was looking at me like,
he was like trying to juke me like Barry Sanders.
He was like looking which way to go.
And then like Salvador went from the left,
I went from the right, we couldn't catch him and then all
of a sudden I felt something.
Salvador came from like up in the clouds like Lucha libre
and jumped right on to the goat and got him in a headlock.
And then he started yelling at me,
(speaks in foreign language)
And then he told me to get the bottles.
And then I gave him the bottles.
And then he just took the goat and started feeding water,
the solution to the goat.
And it looked really really beautiful for a moment.
And then once the goat drank all the salted water,
he pulled the goat over and at that moment I started
to see things change very rapidly.
I cooked at this point for a while and I'd butchered a lot
of meat but I'd never killed an animal before.
And he was just so natural about it.
He wrapped the rope around the hind legs,
pulled the goat up.
The goat's horns were maybe a centimeter above the dirt.
And I remember that goat.
And I remember it every day of my life now,
right at that moment that goat was looking straight
at me in the eye and I don't know if it was really looking
at me or if it was my imagination or it's like
that feeling when like you think that every baby
is looking at you recognizes you but I remember that moment,
those eyes were staring straight at me and almost crying out
to me to like, yo man, what the fuck dude.
(crowd laughing)
Fucking help help me, man.
And those were eyes huge like the sun.
And then right at that moment when the eyes like open,
Salvador came up with a knife and slit that neck.
And the goat's neck snapped back and the blood fell from
the neck and then he went right to work on the belly
and split the hide, opened it up, pulled out the guts.
And he looked at me and he reminded me about the bottle.
And he was teaching me what was going on.
And he explained to me that the solution,
when you cut the belly open that the guts wouldn't smell.
And I realized that there was no smell.
And so we went to work from there.
He showed me how to pull the hide off.
We moved it over to the table,
broke it down to the primals and subprimals,
packed it up and wrapped it.
We had the music going.
We were playing, at that time, this was the late 90s
so we're playing music from Juan Sebastian
and a group of (speaks in foreign language)
was Banda Ricardo.
And all that music was going on and the sun was creeping up
and we were packing a wrapping in Ziploc and plastic wrap,
putting in igloos and ice.
Took a moment, had a cigarette and a beer.
And it was like 11 o'clock.
And then we jumped in the car, put everything in
and then we went down to Mexicali, we drove
it's about an hour South.
We drive through the town
We go through Imperial Valley basically,
drive through Calipatria, Brawley, and El Centro.
And you enter Mexicali which a lot of people
call Sexy Cali.
You can find some of the best Chinese food
in the world there which you may not know but you can.
And we went into town and went to his mom's restaurant
and we went through a screen door and there were a bunch
of ladies in there.
And you know that feeling when like you're made
to feel like you're late when you weren't even late.
Especially when mothers do that to you like where you been
but it's like there was no time you were supposed
to arrive in the first place.
So like they were there and it was like, oh,
and then all of a sudden when you arrive then all
of a sudden it's like, oh my God, you wasted my whole day
and now I can get to work.
But they were already cutting the cilantro
and the onions and the garlic.
And I brought the goat and then she brought me over
and I have this weird connection also with like mothers
and grandmothers where when I walk in they pull me over
always and then they want me to cook with them.
It's really weird.
And then so she showed me how to make birria basically.
And they were wearing flower aprons and all the knives
were really worn and there was wrinkles on their faces
and they were tasting with their thumbs and their fingers
and I sat down and then helped them
and they fed me the most wonderful bowl
of goat stew in my life.
And then we got back in the truck and we headed back over
the border and across the border a different man.
I felt like I knew everything about cooking when I went
to that town, this small town I kind of I looked down
on them in a way like I was just like crazy chef,
amazing young chef from New York City.
I was going to show this desert town like how to cook,
but I came back a different man and we went back to work
and about a month later Salvador called me again
and asked me if I was ready.
And I told him (speaks in foreign language).
(crowd laughing)