Fifteen Hours in the Life of a Restaurant : Process: Just what does it take to get dinner on the table at a top L.A. restaurant? And what happens when Kareem Abdul Jabbar shows up hungry--without a reservation?

By LAURIE OCHOA

July 9, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

At 6 o’clock on a gray spring morning, Joachim Splichal, the chef and owner of Los Angeles’ acclaimed Patina restaurant, climbs into the driver’s seat of his matte-black Range Rover, rubs his eyes, wonders why he agreed to get out of bed. He glares at his chef-de-cuisine, Octavio Becerra, who sits on the passenger side. He barks: “Where do I go?”

Although Splichal is one of the best-known chefs in America, he needs directions to the produce market. It’s a place that most restaurateurs never see.

The time-honored ritual that so many diners imagine--their favorite chefs rising early to wander the stalls of an open-air market, haggling with crusty but honest purveyors and using their keen chefs’ eyes to pick out the sweetest carrots, the freshest fish, the most fragrant basil--is largely a myth. Most chefs just pick up a phone.

Patina is, however, slightly different than many of its competitors. Someone from the restaurant actually does visit the produce market every week. But that’s not Splichal’s job. Most weeks, it’s Patina’s head dishwasher, Victor Rodriguez, who drives to the market, checks the orders and brings the purchases back to the restaurant. Sometimes, Becerra makes the trip too.

“You can park over there,” Becerra tells Splichal as the chef maneuvers his Range Rover around the huge semis and beeping forklifts.

Splichal looks Becerra over and says, “Normally, I’m not told what to do.”

Becerra ignores his boss.

“I always feel confident coming down here,” says Becerra, 28, as he hops out of the Range Rover and up the steps of a loading dock. “It keeps me in touch with the seasons.”

Splichal trudges slowly behind. “When’s breakfast?” he calls out.

Some of the brokers call out Becerra’s name--he punches the arm of one, tousles the hair of another, trades jokes in Spanish with the guy at Archie’s Citrus who sits behind a podium labeled with a piece of masking tape that reads, “My name is Albert, ‘The Cubano .’ ”

“You can tell how all the restaurants in town are doing by the activity here,” Becerra says. “For the last year or so it’s been dead. Two years ago it’d take us 20 minutes to find a parking spot. Now we just pull in anywhere.”

Today’s order was called in at 1:30 this morning. Rodriguez normally gets to the market by 5 a.m., 6 at the latest. But on this Wednesday morning the dishwasher, who drove here separately in the restaurant’s van, has overslept. It’s nearly 7 and he’s behind on his pickups. When he and the others meet up, Rodriguez, looking like one of the cuter members of a speedmetal band, quietly goes about his work, avoiding the eye of Splichal.

Splichal walks to a stack of boxes that hold various sorts of baby vegetables: beautiful white-tipped radishes; perfect bright-orange carrots, petite, thin ones and short, stubby ones too.

He shakes his head. “This stuff is over,” Splichal says, scratching his ear. “We’re moving away from the tiny vegetables we used seven, eight years ago. Now we just use regular carrots.”

“That’s because our cooking style has changed,” Becerra says. “We don’t just blanch things, we braise them.”

Money is a factor too. Big carrots not only hold up better to longer cooking than their midget counterparts, they cost less.

“Buying the bulk of our produce direct from the market, we save almost 30% across the board--about $250,000 a year,” Splichal says.

“Some chefs are amazed that we buy this way,” Becerra says. “They ask, ‘Why do you wake up so early?’ They don’t realize that it’s essential to keep ahead.”

“Never mind keeping ahead,” Splichal says. “Where do we have breakfast?”

9:46 a.m.: Few people realize that as chefs and owners of their restaurants, big names like Wolfgang Puck, Michel Richard and Joachim Splichal are not just cooks, but CEOs of million-dollar enterprises. They often worry more about the rise in workmen’s comp rates than they do about the contents of their stockpots.

Even if there were someone to take care of everything but the kitchen, the duties of a chef are often performed far from the stove.

“The job is not just about cooking,” says Splichal, as he enters the upstairs office of the restaurant. “It’s about buying, writing schedules, working with people.”

And today it’s about plumbing. A pipe burst and a sink in the upstairs pastry kitchen is backed up. Becerra runs off to call a plumber. Splichal, sated after a sausage-and-egg breakfast at The Pantry downtown, kisses his wife, Christine, and checks his messages, hoping his second-in-command will make the problem disappear.

Brian Morton, Patina’s manager of operations, has brought the plans for Splichal’s new Studio City restaurant, Pinot. He lays them out on the floor of the office. Splichal walks over and has a look.

“It’s very important to do a second restaurant,” Splichal says. “You need to give people room to grow. If you can’t promote your best talent, you lose them.” Becerra, for instance, will be put in charge of Pinot.

“When we first opened two years ago,” says Christine, who runs the front of the house, “we had 42 employees. Now we have 64. And with the new place we’ll have 110.”

“Joachim, it’s almost 10 o’clock,” says Shannon Tumpane, the Splichals’ administrative assistant. “You should leave soon if you’re going to make that 11 o’clock meeting in Orange County.” Splichal is set to meet with the managers of a Chanel boutique in the South Coast Plaza; the store is hosting a dinner at which Splichal will cook.

“We’re a small restaurant,” Splichal says, explaining his departure. “We can’t just rely on turning our tables.”

10 a.m.: It’s delivery time. Rodriguez has returned with a vanful of produce and restaurant supplies.

A boombox at the top of the restaurant’s back staircase pumps out KROQ, and like a crew of kids answering the call of a mom’s car horn, everyone in the kitchen comes out to help put away the groceries.

The cooks, most of whom have been at work since 7, place themselves at various points along the stairs, and then pass boxes up the line as if they were buckets of water to douse a fire. Rodriguez and sous-chef William “Johnny” Fernow stand at the bottom, checking the orders. Becerra is at the top of the line, setting boxes in the upstairs prep area.

There are sacks of potatoes, flour, sugar; boxes of onions, apples, tomatoes, fennel, oranges, avocados; cartons of shortening; bleach.

“I’m not carrying potatoes,” says Monica Gannon, who works the lunch line. She carries everything else. Morton, dressed in his office clothes and street shoes, pitches in too.

After five minutes the rhythm suddenly changes. Everyone descends the stairs, hefts a box onto a shoulder, then carries the load to the top in time to the music.

“ Vamos ! Andale !” Fernow shouts.

Becerra cracks a smile as he trots down the stairs for another load: “This is the way the Egyptians built the pyramids!”

10:37 a.m.: An hour before lunch is set to start, Patina’s kitchen is in full use.

Line cook Gannon is at the stove. She sautes potato slices, then stacks them in a small, narrow paper-towel-lined plastic bin. She checks a slow-cooking pot of lentils and onions, then dumps a huge pan of boiling water and garlic cloves into a colander that rests in a sink. Eventually the steaming cloves will be pureed and stirred into mashed potatoes.

At her side is sous-chef Fernow. During lunch service, he will cook most of the meat dishes; she’ll make sure the plates get the potatoes, the vegetables, the garnishes that finish the dish.

Both wear baseball caps: Hers reads, “Mandela Fight for Freedom”; his touts the rock group Mary’s Danish.

He opens an oven and pokes at a hunk of corned beef, today’s staff lunch. Gannon grabs a piece and pops it in her mouth. “Mom,” she whines to Fernow, “it’s tough.”

Fernow slaps her hand. “It’s not done yet.”

A few feet away, baby-faced poissonnier , or fish cook, Andy Barrera assembles his “kit.” He pours rock salt onto a bed of ice held in a flat plastic container. Into the ice go smaller containers, which resemble the bottoms of old bleach bottles. They hold parsley and basil leaves, chopped chives and scallions; sliced tomatoes, fennel and red onions seasoned with salt, pepper and olive oil; cooked white beans; creme fraiche ; tiny nicoise olives.

The kit is a central element Barrera’s mise en place --the ready ingredients he will need to have at hand for the orders to come.

At the other end of the line, pantry chef Macario Mecina whirls arugula in a salad spinner. Then he takes a piece of salmon and cuts it into cubes for seafood salad. Like every cook in the kitchen, Mecina has his own checklist of ingredients. Some in the kitchen mark their lists with neat checks or wild slashes as each item is prepared; Mecina, for the most part, ignores his list.

“I’ve got it right up here,” he says, pointing to his temple.

11:15 a.m.: “I hope we’re not having chicken again,” says a waiter who has wandered into the kitchen looking for lunch. Waiters and servers gather around. Rodriguez, moving quickly, ignores the commotion and takes stacks of plates from their drying area to a shelf above the stove. The waiters stand around eating, some still in T-shirts and work pants, some fully dressed in Patina’s regulation Hugo Boss designer shirts and ties.

Laurent Sadou, Patina’s back waiter, or expediter, squeezes through the crush and, with bits of masking tape, secures a clean white tablecloth, folded in half, on the metal surface of his portion of counter space. He stands opposite the head chef and right inside the double swinging doors that lead to the dining room. From here he will keep the peace between the waiters and the chefs. He calls out orders, checks plates before they go out, soothes bruised egos.

The kitchen extends across the width of the restaurant. But it’s a ridiculously narrow room. At one end is the dishwasher and a service station for the waiters. At the other end is a tiny dessert area, a freezer (which often doubles as counter space) and the end of the cooking line where the fish cook works. The bulk of the room is taken up with a giant stainless-steel work station made up of a series of low-slung storage units and counters that divide the room in half. One side is for the chefs; the other is for the waiters. Splichal will direct service from the waiters’ side so he can watch the whole line, but often moves around to the stoves--especially if he sees something he doesn’t like.

11:25 a.m.: Most of the staff meal has been cleared away. The dining room carpets get a last-minute vacuum. Fernow checks on his pot-au-feu and crosses his fingers. Sadou sets several folded napkins in a pile; the waiters will use these to carry hot plates to the tables. Barrera takes a hunk of raw tuna and sears the sides. Rodriguez, now dressed in a chef’s coat, stands at the stove sauteing brains with a little white wine and a clove-studded onion.

As the first customers take their seats, Fernow goes over the day’s specials with the waiters. And he explains that the pot-au-feu won’t be ready right away--give it at least a half hour.

“Hey, you spelled creme fraiche wrong,” one of the waiters says.

“Nobody sees this menu but us,” Fernow growls.

“ OK , I just thought you’d want to know,” the waiter tells him.

“Lunch is crazy,” says Sadou, the diplomat, who knows when to change the subject. Victor, the high-speed dishwasher, is back at his station, drying plates at a furious pace.

At 12:10, the zig-zag of the kitchen’s printer sounds out.

“OK,” Sadou calls out. “Here we go, first order. Two gnocchi appetizers . . . ,” Sadou pauses. “Johnny’s going to flip out,” he says to himself then calls out, “Two pot-au-feu .”

“ Pot-au-feu ?” Fernow says, amazed. “Three weeks in a row, nobody orders it. Now we’re behind and everybody wants it.”

12:59 p.m.: Splichal walks into the kitchen. He’s just returned from Orange County. “Hey,” he announces. “An actor just came in--someone from “L.A. Law.”

“And Mary Hart’s at table nine,” says Christine, who follows her husband into the kitchen.

“And Ed Harris is eating with Diane Keaton,” Sadou says. Part of his job is keeping track of VIPs.

The crew has been working nonstop since the first order came through. Becerra pitches in at the fish station. Rodriguez is enlisted to open oysters. At 1:02 Sadou phones upstairs and calls the pastry chef down; the first dessert order has come through.

“Can I get a two-minute warning on the tuna?” Barrera calls out to Fernow, who works on the duck entree that will go out to the same table as the tuna. The goal is to get every dish for a party finished simultaneously.

Mecina quickly assembles a salad special. He arranges four endive blades on a large white plate, tosses a batch of greens with pearl onions, yellow beans and marinated artichokes. Then he piles the salad on top of the endive, drops a few strategically placed pearl onions and a few shavings of Parmesan cheese. Next he’s got three Caesars to make.

“Caesar, Caesar, Caesar,” Splichal says. “They love it.”

“How’s that duck?” Barrera asks.

“About two minutes,” Fernow answers.

Barrera quickly gets to work on the tuna.

Becerra looks at a plate about to go out and suddenly plucks away a basil branch. “We’re not serving trees,” he mutters.

Splichal looks around the kitchen. “Hey, c’mon,” he says, then claps his hands. “There are other orders to come.”

“Yes, sir!” responds Fernow.

Splichal looks at the order slips Sadou has arranged and calls out to Fernow, “C’mon superstar, find me some chicken--move it.” And then to pantry chef Mecina, “I need two Caesars, in a rush.” In a lower voice he tells Becerra, “You know those people at Chanel, the clerks? They treated me like a delivery boy. I guess they didn’t like my clothes.”

Christine bursts in the door. “I’m going crazy,” she moans. “There’s water dripping on table eight--Diane Keaton’s table.”

“The plumbers can’t start working until after lunch,” Becerra says.

“We’d better make her salad nice,” Splichal says.

Christine sighs and goes back to the dining room. “I’m going to move them--this is ridiculous.”

“Lunch is a kamikaze operation,” Fernow says.

“It’s like being in labor for 30 minutes,” Becerra says.

“With Joachim as the midwife,” Fernow replies.

3:15 p.m.: A new set of faces appears in the kitchen. The lunch cooks have cleaned up their stations and gone home. Fernow has gone upstairs to check in with his suppliers. Members of the night crew go through many of the same preparations as their morning colleagues. Only Becerra, Barrera and Rodriguez remain from the day crew. Splichal, running on just three hours of sleep, sneaks home and tries to nap.

Line cook Sam Marvin finishes making a batch of basil sabayon . But it hasn’t turned out right. “See, it’s too dark,” Becerra tells him. “You left it a little too long in the blender.”

To Marvin’s left, night fish cook Paul Arenstam sautes a panful of oysters. Arenstam came to Patina from Boston. Marvin, 28, is a native Californian; he grew up in Pasadena. Arenstam, 26, studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Upstate New York; Marvin studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Over at the pantry station, Thorsten Gillert, 25, a guy with very cool sideburns, mixes batter for corn blini. He came from Germany in January. “I’m interested in the kind of cooking here,” Gillert says. “It’s totally different from what I’m used to. The places I worked in Europe have just one seating a night. And there are always at least five courses. The kitchens are set up differently too. Everyone has his own station--and is responsible for everything in it. No one helps anyone else.”

In many ways, the kitchen at Patina is a paradigm of an L.A. kitchen. In the heat of a dinner rush several languages are heard--and all respond to the universal Splichal bellow.

Another thing: Youth counts. Everyone on the line is in their twenties. Splichal himself is just 37.

It used to be that years of training as a commis or apprentice were required before a position on the line could be attained. In the past 15 years--since the change from traditional French and Continental cooking (which mostly relied on the expertise of well-trained Europeans) to California and New American cuisine (which mostly relies on the creativity of young--and impatient--Americans)--the training process has accelerated. New recruits to the kitchen are often immediately given a position on the line, usually making salads, where they either sink or swim. The most famous young American prodigy remains La Toque’s Ken Frank, who was a culinary superstar in Los Angeles before he hit his twenties.

Becerra first went to work for Splichal in 1984, when the chef’s first L.A. restaurant, Max au Triangle, was still open. His pay at the time: Nothing.

“I wanted to become a significant restaurateur, so I went to learn from the best. I had never really seen food of that nature--so cerebral and provoking. I was like a little kid in a new world.”

Of course, the first time he met Splichal, Becerra had a Mohawk haircut. “I still remember his face when he saw me,” Becerra says. “Fortunately, he didn’t recognize me when I met him again and asked for a job.”

5:55 p.m.: It’s time for a coffee break. Customers are due to arrive in five minutes, but every day at this time bartender Taylor Presnell delivers a trayful of foamy cappuccinos for the kitchen crew. Four straight hours of cooking are ahead--a little extra buzz can’t hurt.

Becerra sips his cappuccino and then shows off a portion of his mise en place . He reaches for a plastic box that contains several organ meats. “I call this the gland box,” he says. “Let’s see, tonight we have cow brain, cockscomb, veal kidney. We sell a lot of odd things. People come here anticipating unique items. Still, some nights I go home smelling like a horse proctologist.”

6:08 p.m.: Splichal, bleary eyed, enters the kitchen. “Give me an apron,” he grunts to no one in particular.

“Oh, he’s always a gem when he hasn’t had enough sleep . . . or sex,” Becerra says.

6:18 p.m.: “OK,” Sadou shouts. “First order: one greens, one veal shank, one rack of lamb.”

“Awesome!” Barrera says.

“It’s a good order for me,” Arenstam agrees. There’s no fish on the order.

“That’s the vacation staff,” Becerra says.

“Their time will come,” Sadou says. “You wait.”

“Night service is totally different from lunch,” Barrera says. “Lunch is really fast and dinner is really long.”

There are three copies of every order: a white one for Becerra, a yellow one for Arenstam, and a pink one for Sadou. Sadou lays active order slips out on his service area. He marks a black X through the items that have gone out. When the order is finished, he sticks the slip on a spindle.

“After I serve the food,” Sadou says, “I go around the room and watch the table. If they take their first bite 30 seconds after the plate is set down, I know I better get the next course right away. If they’re talking and having a good time, it’s going to be a while.”

6:30 p.m.: Another order comes up on the printer.

“OK, Andy man,” Sadou says. “Risotto with whitefish.”

The printer sounds again.

“Oh, man,” Becerra says. “This one’s for you Paul. A guy wants a double order of whitefish lasagna.” It’s an appetizer from an old menu.

“Can we do it?” the waiter asks.

“Most definitely,” Becerra says.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Arenstam says. “The whitefish is portioned out for the risotto.”

“But we give them what they want,” Becerra says.

“See, your karma’s got you back,” Sadou tells Arenstam.

Two minutes later the waiter returns. “They want three double orders.”

“Are you sweating yet?” Becerra asks.

7:05 p.m.: “What’s that smell?” Gillert asks.

“Something’s burning,” Marvin says.

Becerra yanks a smoking pot from the stove. “It’s my Aunt Harriet!”

7:15 p.m.: It’s a blini blitz. Hostess Chandra Lee walks in the kitchen and shouts, “I need 10 blini. Four with caviar--super VIPs.” Two minutes later, she’s back: “Four blini, table nine.”

Anyone the restaurant considers important gets a free pre-appetizer: corn blini topped with creme fraiche and smoked salmon. Sometimes caviar too.

It’s actually pretty easy to become a VIP at Patina. Celebrities qualify. So do Patina’s investors. And, corny as it sounds, just about every regular is considered a VIP here. Splichal is fond of almost anyone fond enough of his restaurant to return again and again.

“Two more blini,” Sadou calls out after Lee hands him a slip of paper with the name of the honored guest.

“Sometimes,” says Splichal, who’s returned to the kitchen after schmoozing an investor in the dining room, “It seems like everyone in the place is a VIP.”

8:40 a.m. A super VIP has arrived.

“It’s Kareem Abdul Jabbar,” says Christine, who’s just come in from the dining room.

“Ka-reeeem!” Becerra shouts.

But the basketball superstar hasn’t made a reservation and every table is filled.

“We told him it would be just a couple minutes--that we had to set a table,” Christine tells Splichal.

“I hope he’s not like that director John Landis,” Splichal says. “He thinks his face counts as a reservation. Last time he walked in, we told him we’d seat him in one minute and he cursed at us and told us he’d go down the street.”

8:44 p.m.: Kareem is still waiting.

Christine rushes in. “Table 10 is the only table he’s comfortable with,” she tells her husband.

“Well, get rid of Table 10!” he responds. “They’ve been here since six.”

“Joachim!” she scolds.

“I’m a pain in the butt,” Splichal says, “but my wife still loves me.”

8:50 p.m.: Still waiting.

“You know, at Spago, they have 65 tables,” Splichal says. “A table opens every 10 minutes.”

8:52 p.m.: Table 10 leaves.

“OK, move!” Joachim says. “For the next three minutes I don’t care about any other table. I want it ready now!”

8:54 p.m.: Kareem and his companion are shown to their table.

8:55 p.m.: Lee waltzes in the kitchen. “Two blini for Table 10,” she says in a sing-song voice. “For Kareeeeeem.”

“Two blini for a professional basketball player, please,” Becerra calls out.

10:30 p.m.: Service is winding down. The last entree orders came in nearly an hour ago; there are only dessert orders to come. Most of the cooks are wrapping up their kits. Becerra has snagged an autograph from Kareem--on the inside of the Raider’s cap the chef has worn all day.

Dean Lee, who has spent the night quietly plating desserts and pitching in at the fish station, holds a large white dessert platter. On its border, he has piped the inscription, “Go Lakers!” in chocolate. The number “33” is inscribed on each side of the plate.

“He can order anything he wants,” Lee tells Becerra.

Becerra winces. “Sorry, man. It’s great, but the big guy bailed. Maybe next time.”

A DAY IN AN L.A. KITCHEN

6:30 a.m.: Sous-chef opens kitchen.

7:00 a.m.: Line cooks, prep crew start work.

8:00 a.m.: Pastry chef begins desserts.

9:00 a.m.: Chef-owner arrives: returns phone calls; arranges meetings; worries.

11:15 a.m.: Staff lunch. Dining room vacuumed. Waiters finish final lunch prep.

11:30 a.m.: Open for business. Back waiter checks reservations for VIPs.

12:10 p.m.: First lunch order. First of many.

2:30 p.m.: Lunch cooks break down stations. Catch breath.

3:15 p.m.: Dinner crew arrives. Preperations begin again. Chef-owner tries to nap; worries.