Medium Raw

One gets the impression very quickly that the concept of cross-contamination has made a powerful—even terrifying—impression on him. When he wipes down his cutting board with a wet cotton side towel, he throws the towel away. Every time.

He is a man set in his habits. He has organized his time and his space the way he likes them. He has a routine, a certain way he likes to do things. And he never deviates.

“With Justo,” says Le Bernardin’s chef de cuisine, Chris Muller, just arriving for work, “it’s all about no wasted motion.” In a Buckaroo Banzai–like explanation of the universe (“Wherever you go…there you are”), Muller holds up one hand flat, representing a fish in Justo-Land, and says, “It’s here…” then turns the palm over, like flipping a page, “…and then it’s there.” He holds my gaze for a split second as if I should understand that he’s just revealed something profoundly important.

Every sous chef, line cook, pâtissier, and stagiere who walks by Justo on the way from the locker rooms, stops, smiles admiringly, and says, “Good morning, chef” (which is the way it’s done at Le Bernardin—courtesy is a matter of policy—one says good morning to all of one’s colleagues, regardless of position, addressing each and every one as “chef”), every one who passes by and sees me standing there with a notebook in hand has to linger for a second, to determine if I’ve gotten it yet, how phenomenally, amazingly, supernaturally fucking good Justo Thomas is at doing this job. They appreciate this better than I ever could, because when Justo goes on vacation, it will take three of them to cut the same amount of fish that Justo, alone, will scale, gut, clean, and portion in four to five hours.

It’s not just that one man will cut seven hundred pounds of fish today, and a thousand pounds Friday, and do the same, more or less, every day, day after day after day. But that every single portion must be perfect. He is well aware of what’s at stake.

“Every piece. It’s the chef ’s name,” he says.

He’s not overstating the case. At Le Bernardin’s level of success and visibility in the fine-dining firmament, it is no exaggeration to say that were a single order of monkfish to smell even slightly “off”—to hit the table, the result could explode across the Internet like a neutron bomb. The scrutiny of a place of Le Bernardin’s particular longstanding preeminence atop the high-wire is ferocious. There are all too many people ready, upon hearing of even one such incident, to declare the restaurant “not as good as it used to be” or “over” terms that are, for better or worse, the currency of influential food nerdism.

Let’s put it another way: I graduated from the best culinary school in the country. I spent twenty-eight years as a professional cook and chef. I’ve cleaned and portioned thousands and thousands of fish in my time. The executive chef–partner of Le Bernardin, Eric Ripert, is probably my best friend in the world.

And I would never dare to put a knife to a piece of fish at Le Bernardin.

Ripert maintains an unofficial intelligence network that would be the envy of the CIA—solely for the purpose of Defending the Realm. If you are a food critic, a person of importance, anyone who could possibly hurt or impact the restaurant in a negative way, you are recognized within seconds of walking in the door. Your likes and dislikes are…known. Even if you’re a journalist who’s never been in the restaurant—but are likely to visit soon—and write about it, chances are, you will not, on arriving, be a completely unknown quantity. Ripert is an astonishingly plugged-in guy. Point is: he has to be.

So, Justo’s not being disingenuous when he says he identifies each piece of fish with the name and reputation of his chef. That—at that level of fine dining—is The System, where every server, every cook has to look at every little detail as having the potential to bring down the temple. Everything—absolutely everything—must be right. Always.

If you’re Justo Thomas, and you cut and portion fish for a living, you find it’s necessary to do things in a certain order. He works in the same unvarying progression every day. Fernando, who receives and weighs the fish, always arranges it in the same order and configuration. The way Justo likes it.

“I like fish,” says Justo without a trace of irony. “I eat a lot of fish.” He does not feel the same way about meat. He doesn’t like it. “I don’t trust the blood,” he exclaims, almost shuddering at the thought.

“I get cut? The blood get in me.” Fortunately, he’s not required to touch the stuff often. Perhaps out of sensitivity to Justo’s phobia, the one beef dish on the menu—a Wagyu beef surf and turf—is portioned by the line cooks.