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.

Today, halibut comes first. It’s one of the easiest fish to clean: two fat, boneless filets, top and bottom on each side. You zip them off the central spine easily, the skin comes off in one go—and the meat portions itself—like cutting filet mignons off a tenderloin. A twenty-five-pound halibut takes Justo about eight minutes.

Cod is a different matter. It’s delicate. Extremely delicate—and perishable. The flesh, handled roughly, will mash. The physiognomy of a cod is not suited to eventual portioning as the identical, evenly shaped squares or oblongs a three-star restaurant requires. But before I’m even fully aware of what’s going on, Justo’s got the filets off the bone—neatly stacked. He puts all the left-side filets in one stack—the right-side filets in another. With the inappropriate (one would think) slicing knife, he’s drilling out absolutely identical cubes of cod (all the left-hand filets first—then the right-hand ones). If they’re not identical, he quickly—and almost imperceptibly—squares them off, trims them down to uniform size and shape. The trimmings form a steadily growing pile off to the side, which will be joined throughout the morning by other trimmings, for eventual donation to City Harvest. Tail ends—or smaller but still useful bits, doomed to never be uniform but, in every other respect, perfectly good, form another pile—above and away from the uniform ones. After he finishes one stack, he lays them out in a plastic tray, in the order that they came off the fish. When the uniform, cookbook-quality left-hand sides and right-hand sides of fish have been arranged (never stacked on top of each other) in the plastic tray, he pulls down the little gram scale from the shelf above him and, at supernatural speed, starts pairing up oddball pieces. He needs only weigh one piece for reference. The scale goes back to its shelf and he squares off and pairs up the remaining pieces of cod—segregating them to the side in the tray. These will be used either as two separate orders for a tasting menu—or artfully positioned on plates as whole orders. The point of segregating them from the others is that when the cooks have two or more orders of cod for the same table, it will be easy for them to ensure that all the plates will look the same (either two smaller pieces of cod—or one brick). The whole system is designed for uniformity and ease—under worst-case-scenario circumstances, the user, after all, is presumably a very busy line cook in a hurry. When Justo’s done loading the cod, he covers the portions with plastic wrap, slaps a bright red WEDNESDAY label on top, covers that with the clear plastic lid. He puts the scraps of cod for City Harvest on a small, plastic wrap–covered sheet pan below the work table. He wipes down his station completely with hot water. Presses the button for the elevator. Washes his knives and hoses out the sink, knowing that he has just enough time to do this while the elevator to the à la carte kitchen comes down—not wanting to waste a minute waiting. Then he takes the tray upstairs, opens the walk-in, and places the tray on the shelf in the same exact place that the cod of the day has always been placed and always will be placed. The cooks will be able to find it blindfolded, if necessary.

Le Bernardin is a seafood restaurant—and we are hip-deep in the stuff. Ice from the fish crates is melting onto the floor, and Justo is even now hauling an enormous mahi onto the cutting board. But it does not smell of fish in this place. There is not even the vestigial smell of seafood you get at even the best wholesalers or Japanese fish-markets. The fish is exquisitely fresh. Fernando is constantly mopping—around and below us—every few minutes with hot, soapy water.

Full crates come in, empties are dragged out, an ongoing process—almost organic. It reminds me of the opening passages of Zola’s Belly of Paris, a supply train of horsecarts laden with food, stretching from market into the countryside and beyond.

Any piece of fish you are likely to see at your supermarket or fish-monger’s would be sniffed out and thrown away immediately here.

“If it smells like fish, it goes back,” says Justo. Fish obtained from regional sources is sent back if deemed inferior in any way. Fish from a high-end wholesaler in Maine is simply weighed and thrown out if not up to standards. They reimburse without question.

He attacks the mahi with his chef ’s knife, taking the filets off with two strokes. Elapsed time? Sixty seconds. Left-side filet goes to one side, right-side to the other.

By eight fifteen in the morning, Justo has finished the day’s portions of halibut, cod, and mahi.

It’s time for the skate, a fish he’s not so fond of. He empties a big bag of large wings into the sink, about thirty-five pounds in all, and immediately starts washing them with cold water. Skate are slimy, delicate, highly perishable, and loaded with transparent bits of cartilage, which, if left inadvertently inside, could do serious damage to the inside of your mouth or throat. Picture an airplane with fat wings. Top side of each wing is a thick filet. On the underside, another, thinner one. The perimeters of each wing bristle with little bones, and between the top and bottom filets is a barrier of thin, flexible, dangerously translucent, cartilagenous spokes, like the buttress of a church—and about as unpleasant to bite into.