Free THENASTYBITS by Anthony Bourdain Page B

good time.
    There was a "well, what were you waiting for" feel when Mario Batali and his chef Andy Nusser opened Casa Mono in New York. By now, it seemed entirely right that we needed a place to eat perfectly wonderful small plates of Spanish-style tripes and cockscombs, blood pudding, and cured hams at a bare lunch counter. Great ingredients done right, by cooks standing a few inches away. Order a lot and dig in. That Mario himself is often to be seen happily picking from plates with his fingers sets an inspiring tone.
    But the boldest, wackiest, most reactionary of the defectors to casual counter-style services has to be Montreal's enfant terrible, Martin Picard. At the crowded, chaotic, and giddily retro Au Pied de Cochon, he's stood everything on its head. The one-time chef of the city's "best restaurant," the more twee and traditional "big plate/little serving/cappuccino of whatever" Toque, Picard broke entirely from his precious, haute roots and opened a rude, crude, over-the-top fabulous ode to excess, specializing in insanely mammoth portions of Quebe-cois sugar-shack-style indulgence. You know from the very beginning what you are in for: Bar snacks are oreilles de crisses, ear-shaped tidbits of fried pork rind. Picard himself, usually unshaven—looking more lumberjack than chef—is to be found, usually in food-stained T-shirt, presiding over the madness by a roaring wood-burning oven. Dino-sized plates of pot-au-feu (a whole game bird, four marrow bones, stacked with boudin noir and foie gras), cassoulet, pig's-foot stew, duck "in the can" (a half duck breast, foie gras, and cabbage, slow cooked in a can and poured over a crouton topped with celeriac puree), and pontine —the Picard version of the classic Quebec guilty-pleasure fave of frites drowning in demi-glace and cheese curds, topped with a thick slab of melting foie gras—all are prepared in front of you by Picard's fellow transgressors, a crew of T-shirted and funny-hat-wearing cooks with similarly impressive resumes. There are a few tables, stuffed between wall and counter, but the fun is to be had watching the dedicated but underdressed cooks in the crowded, nearly unworkable-looking open kitchen, gleefully lopping slabs of foie and throwing them around like cheap shortening. The signature dish of stuffed pig's trotters is exactly that: two enormous pig's feet, absolutely jammed with foie gras and sauced with a rich onion cream sauce.
    It's too much. It's too loud. The kitchen looks like a train wreck. The portions are crippling. You won't want to think about foie gras for weeks after eating there. And it's an absolute joy to experience. Everyone—from customers, to cooks, to service staff, to the chef—seems happy to be there. The cooks will tell you so themselves, as they race to fill orders from postage-stamp-size work spaces, elbowing each other to get at one of the endlessly refilled crocks of mashed potatoes. There's no "attitude." It's about food—and company—and the enjoyment of both. It may well be the antidote to every other restaurant in North America.
A LIFE OF CRIME

''''Why didn't you give him a beatin' then?" "Well, 'cause . . . uh . . ."
"I told ya. Forget this other shit. Give him a fuckin' beatin'." "Well, the uh . . . I was waiting to hear from you." "J told you yesterday . . . What are you, Chinese? Hit him. This guy's nobody, and if he's somebody, I don't give a fuck."
—John Gotti, former Gambino crime family boss, discussing debt restructuring with an associate

    i love reading about crime. I like writing about crime. I like listening to wiretap recordings of gangsters, hearing the marve-lously loopy, repetitive, elliptical, and wildly profane patois of two semiarticulate career criminals who think they just might be being recorded by the FBI, but have business to conduct anyway. It's poetry to me.
    In my apartment, CourtTV, the twenty-four-hour criminal justice cable network, is always on; the sounds of badly miked