And Finally...

Meanwhile, Chase is floating about the restaurant. He checks in on the raw bar near the front of the restaurant where raw oysters and clams are served. Each morning the dishwashers prepare the raw bar—they make two five-foot-long mounds of crushed ice and jam the oysters and clams in for an inviting and elegant presentation. On a given night, they’ll shuck 500 to 1,200 of the oysters and clams, and tonight, Alfredo will do most of the work. He’s a speed demon, and says he can shuck 10 oysters a minute. “You’re crazy,” says Chase, who says it’s more like 30. “Alfredo’s 10 times faster at this than I am. I’m like a turtle.”

No more than a handful of diners populate the seating area, a dimly-lit maze of rooms that can hold about 200 people at any one time. The restaurant is made of Virgin longleaf heart of pine, a now extinct wood, but plentiful when it was built in 1842 as the Canal Square building. In 1880, Henry Hollerith invented automated punch cards for the census, and later founded IBM. The building, as framed documents across from the women’s restroom claim, is the birthplace of the computer.

It’s 3:00 p.m., nearing the end of the lunch service, and Chase retreats to his office in the corner of the kitchen, which is not much bigger than a closet. There’s a computer and his dirty chef jackets hanging on the wall, and stacks of invoices and reminders. He has two hours of down time, and he’ll try to catch up on some sleep. He shuts the door to drown out the noises of the kitchen--the clanging of metal, the Spanish music.

“What the f…!” Sgro snaps, peering down into the freezer. The peanut butter ice cream bon-bons with a hard chocolate shell, imported from Italy at $3 each, were just thrown in there, and now some of them are crushed. “It’s people not caring,” Sgro says, as he deems the damaged ones useless. He takes one, though, puts it on a plate with chocolate and peanut butter sauce, just like they serve it, and the staff grabs spoons.

Sgro, who spent a year as Sea Catch’s general manager and is in year two as executive chef, is the most laid-back boss Chase has worked for, so long as his cooks do what they are supposed do, and do it right. It’s nearing 6 p.m., and Sgro walks to the ticket machine, clears a five-foot area on the metal table, plate covers to his right, his line cooks on the other side. The tickets emerge, one after another, and he calmly grabs each and yells out the order.

It’s show time.

“Order: two chicken; two linguini; one halibut; one crab cake; one scallop; one grilled tuna, medium; one shrimp,” Sgro says at 6:51 p.m., his voice booming over the clanking of pots and pans. Each line cook—two responsible for sautés and pastas, one for vegetables, one for the grill—contributes to every dish.

“Pick up: two chicken; two linguini; one halibut; one crab cake; one scallop; one grilled tuna, medium; one shrimp,” Sgro says 20 minutes later. Garcia, on vegetables, adds spinach to a plate. The seared scallops go on top, with bacon and grainy mustard. He puts down sautéed leaks on another plate, and Tyrone, on the grill, adds the sesame seed-covered seared tuna. The halibut is plated, then the crab bake, chicken, linguini. Sgro wipes off the rim of each dish, covers it, puts the ticket on top, and sends it off to the runner, and he will give the dishes to the server. Twenty-four minutes, and the table of 10 is served.

Sgro shoots for five to 10 minutes for appetizers and 20 to 30 minutes for entrees, and he’s almost always right on schedule. But, from time to time, the waiters upstairs will push him. The quicker food comes out, the more tables they can serve, and the more money they can make.

He tells them, bluntly, “This isn’t f….. McDonald’s.” So he operates on his time, and he lives by it. “My life is run by a clock,” he says. “That’s why I do nothing in my personal life.”

Tonight, Chase grabs the coveted spot alongside Alfredo at the raw bar. Coveted because it’s out of the steaming kitchen, and, well, it’s Georgetown, and pretty women love raw oysters. “The scenery is a little distracting,” Garcia said earlier. But it’s slow at the raw bar tonight, and Chase gets to handle the operation and spend a little time with the guests.

There’s some debate back in the kitchen. Does Chase’s special, now complete with an amberjack fish from the gulf of Florida, have sprinkled pepper around the edges? “Yeah,” Garcia says. But they’re out of pepper. “There’s five pounds of pepper upstairs,” Sgro says. Garcia looks up—bad move. “Go get it,” Sgro tells him. Tyrone lets out a hardy laugh.

The orders continue, and everything is right on schedule. No send backs, no missed orders. Every time Sgro speaks to his cooks, he makes sure to be polite, and he thinks it has an effect. “When you’re working 18 hours a day, sometimes all you want to hear is please and thank you,” he says.

At 7:13 p.m., though, the kitchen hits its first snag. They might ‘86’ on trout, kitchen speak for run out. And a dishwasher has disappeared out the back door, apparently to go to the liquor store. Sgro tells Chase, who has made an appearance in the kitchen, to give him a stern talking.

The tickets keep flying. Thirty to 35 entrees every half hour. Sgro’s team is a well-oiled machine. He yells the order, they register it like a computer. No call backs, no “can you repeat that.” And Sgro remains calm, every so often sitting down and taking a drink out of his pitcher of water.

“That’s the way I like it,” he says. “If you hear me yelling, somebody’s f…… up.”

It’s 8:45 p.m., and there’s about another 50 people left to serve. “We’re looking good,” Sgro says. A party of eight’s ticket comes in, and goes out in 23 minutes.

At 9:07 p.m., “All right guys, here comes another f…… rush.” Two crab appetizers, four linguini, three crab entrees, one scallop. Moments later, Tyrone sends out greasy fried calamari for another order, and for the first time, Sgro isn’t pleased with the quality of the dish. “Hey I got you the paper towels, why don’t you use them? Let’s do it again, please.” Tyrone blames the frying oil, which should have been changed out the day before. But he doesn’t argue, and dumps another serving of calamari into the fryer. Five minutes later, he sends the plate to Sgro, and “much better,” Sgro says.

The last order comes at 10:07 p.m: crab appetizer, surf and turf medium rare. Sgro surveys the night’s damage: He jots down what he needs to order the next day. “I wasn’t going to order anymore salmon and then you got the run on,” he says. So he put down 10 more pounds of salmon. The cooks wipe down their stations, but they don’t have to sweep and mop the floor, unlike all the other restaurants Sgro has worked in. “They’re rock stars,” he says, somewhat in jest.

Upstairs, Alfredo estimates the raw bar served 500 oysters, about an average night. The final tally for diners is 230, plus about 20 at the bar.

Sgro takes the mound of tickets for the night off the upright nail and throws them in the trash. “Let’s go home,” he shots.
Chase, who left at 8:15 p.m., stayed at home the rest of the night instead of going out. He was dead-tired. Luckily for him, Sea Catch is closed on Sunday, so he can sleep in. That is, if the three kids upstairs let him.