My old pal, role model, and catering partner from Provincetown, whom I referred to as Vladimir, disappeared off the face of the earth back in the ’80s. I’ve heard he went back to school, went into computers or something. Though a photograph of him looking like a Mexican bandit adorns the front covers of countless thousands of copies of Kitchen Confidential all over the world, I have not heard a peep out of him, and he has not, to my knowledge, ever tried to contact me. He, unlike everybody else, got out—not too long after the time period I covered in the chapter titled “The Happy Time.” Vladimir (real name, Alexey) was older than us—and maybe he recognized what we didn’t yet: that the way we were going, times wouldn’t be that happy for long.

Those songs, from those days, from those first years working in New York—though I heard them first in the early days of heroin addiction—that honeymoon period when it’s fun and exciting and oh so…bad to be a junkie, they still hit hard, a mix of exhilaration and loss: “Mad World,” by Tears for Fears, The Bush Tetras, dFunkt, James White & The Blacks, early Talking Heads, Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message,” The Gap Band—all the background noise of that time. Those songs will always be a bit dangerous. Music to score by.

My chef and high school buddy, Sam, went fully down the rabbit hole with me—starting in the early ’80s. He’s on that cover, too, standing there with us, leaning against a wall, all of us holding our knives defiantly. It just took him a lot longer to climb his way out. He did some time in a federal prison—which, he says, saved his life. Clean and sober for some time now, he sells meat in California. Maybe you’ve seen him in such shows as…mine.

Beth Aretsky, the self-named “Grill Bitch,” after a long career in professional kitchens, came to work as my assistant, basically running my life for me when things got so crazy and complicated after Kitchen Confidential and the TV thing and I found myself the kind of person, suddenly, who needed such things as an assistant. She was my right hand, enforcer, and confidante for ten years—and, occasionally even my bodyguard. On book tour one time, when I was menaced by an overaggressive vegan, she slapped him up against a wall with a forearm to the neck. She has walloped overly liquored, overly friendly female fans with the occasional blunt objects as well. Beth married a man she’d been seeing periodically for years and years in the Caribbean—and the two promptly had a baby girl together. She left the service for a more secure, parent-friendly position a year ago—one where, presumably, martial art skills will not be required.

Les Halles Tokyo, the excuse—the purpose—for my first trip to Asia, my first, mind-blowing experience on the other side of the world, closed down shortly after. I will always be grateful to Philippe Lajaunie, the owner, for giving me that life-changing experience—and sharing it with me. People say, and I can well believe, that he is a difficult man to do business with. Strangely enough, even when I was doing business with him as owner of Les Halles, we never actually talked business. He is the best of traveling companions. Relentlessly curious, tireless—and totally without fear.

José de Meirelles, his former partner and the guy who hired me at Les Halles, has gone on to other things, taking sole control of the very successful kosher French brasserie Le Marais, in New York City’s diamond district—and opening a Portugese/Spanish-style tapas place (since closed). Les Halles Washington, DC, closed its doors, and Les Halles Miami changed ownership. Thank God, the way I look at it. They were always, in my experience, a drag on the reputation and finances of the mother ship on Park Avenue—and the successful downtown branch on John Street. I still love those two restaurants, still swing by whenever I can, and am much relieved that their bastard cousins in the hinterlands have stopped being a problem.

Tim the waiter still holds court in the dining room of Les Halles on Park, milking his notoriety for everything he can. If you go to dinner there and inquire of me, he will tell you that you just missed me, that I’m in Thailand having a sex change, or in a Turkish prison, or dog-sledding the Antarctic. Anything but the truth—which means I probably haven’t been around for quite some time.

The kitchens of Les Halles, finally, and deservedly, are now being run by Carlos Llaguna Morales, who started cooking on the fry station many years ago. He is a fantastic cook—far better than I ever was—and, to my surprise, a much better organizer. The dark recesses of Les Halles’ old cellars are now sparklingly clean and bright, compared to my time. The food handling and control systems, a whole different story. And though the kitchen is the same size, with the same number of cooks, the dining room has expanded into the space that used to house the deli next door, nearly doubling the number of seats. Where, in the old days, we considered a night of three hundred and fifty dinners to be a Monster, they now do as many as six to seven hundred.

In 2007, I got the bright idea that I’d go back to Les Halles and work my old station. The Tuesday double shift, no less—where I used to come in at eight a.m., set up, cook the line for lunch, then slam straight into dinner, behind the stove the whole time. That the dining room had gotten so much bigger and busier, and that I’d gotten so much older, didn’t really occur to me until the date was nearly upon me. I’d figured that it would make good television.

As the implications and likely outcome began to dawn on me, I struggled to find a solution, a distraction, some way to mitigate what could very well be a public butt-fucking of historic proportions.

So I invited Eric Ripert out for dinner and plied him with high-end tequila (which is something of a weakness of his), and when he was in suitably good spirits and nicely relaxed, the time was ripe. I suggested he join me for a rollicking good time cooking together at Les Halles. It’ll be fun, you know…

The result is something I’m very proud of. I managed (just) to bully my way through the night (a not very busy one, by current Les Halles standards). It was hard. Very hard. Made harder by the fact that I could no longer read the dupes. When I’d try and slip on my reading glasses, by the time they reached my nose, they were invariably smeared with grease. My knees were creaky, to say the least. But my moves were still there. I could still—if just barely—do it. But at the end of the night, I knew that to do it again tomorrow—as any real cook would have had to do—was out of the question.

Eric, to my surprise, was smooth. I’d hoped that he, who’d never in his life worked in a turn-and-burn joint like mine, who’d never had to hustle out hundreds of plates—much less grill steaks in such quantities and at such speeds—I figured he’d be thrown for a loop. But no. He made it through elegantly, his uniform as snow-white at the end of the shift as when he’d begun. It was enraging. He does, to this day, however, complain bitterly about how “understaffed” the kitchen is at Les Halles. That it’s “inhuman” to pump out so many meals with so few cooks. And “impossible.” He won’t let go of the subject, either.

I’m proud of the television show that came out of it—because it demonstrated in specific, realistic, and very visual terms not just how a busy kitchen works, but how fucking hard it is; how much it requires of a person, the kind of teamwork, the kind of endurance, the mindset, choreography, and organization—and what it takes away.