When Jacinto Guarddarrama first walked into Gotham Bar and Grill 24 years ago, it wasn’t to whisk sauces or prep mise en place. He slaved over a steaming hot dishwasher, hands stuffed into rubber gloves, watching the cooks work from a distance in silent awe. But about a month later, a man walked into the kitchen who would change his life, bringing him up the line from pot washer in chief to his current role as chef de cuisine. That man was Alfred Portale.
“I know how to recognize talent and nurture it,” says Portale, who’s celebrating Gotham’s silver anniversary this month. “He was incredibly hardworking.”
Guarddarrama is not Portale’s only success. In fact, over the years, he’s mentored some of the city’s greatest chefs including “Top Chef” host and Craft master Tom Colicchio, Telepan’s Bill Telepan, The Grocery’s Charles Kiely and Sharon Packhter, and more.
Portale, a former jewelry designer with a taste for cooking, knew something about unlikely transformations.
After being rejected from the Culinary Institute of America, he fled to France to cook with luminaries like Michel Guerard and Jacques Maxim. Upon his return, Jerome Kretchmer hired him to save his fledgling restaurant on East 12th Street.
Just five months after taking the helm at Gotham, he had not only earned rave reviews from city papers, but altered the concept of fine dining by stripping it of pretense, and replacing it with a convivial and welcoming spirit.
Ever since, he’s earned a handful of three-star reviews and several awards from the James Beard Foundation. Not too shabby for a CIA reject.
While many of his former brigade haven’t worked with him in well over a decade, they each recall their experience with an incredible sense of respect and admiration.
“We’d do like 400 covers a night,” recalls Telepan. “When you’re doing that kind of high volume, to turn out such highquality food and have it always be consistent, explains what makes him successful.”
The lesson stayed with Telepan, who worked at Gotham for seven years as the executive sous chef. “Today, I really work on taking the time to teach [the cooks], allowing them to have recipes and being available to them so they put out a consistent product. That’s totally Alfred.”
Charles Kiely, who opened the pioneering Smith Street restaurant The Grocery with his wife Sharon Pachter in 1999, fondly remembers Gotham’s jovial atmosphere. “Alfred was playful in the kitchen,” he says. “He would screw around with us. If it was 8:30 or 9 p.m., he would say, ‘I can’t believe its only 6:30!’ just to f – – k with people. That’s stayed with me. I still do it almost every night.”
Portale openly frowned on the traditional model of the volatile chef. Rather than make an example of a young cook by sending a sauté pan careening toward his head a la Gordon Ramsey, he mentored.
“Alfred is very supportive of his chefs,” says Adam Longworth, his chef de cuisine for the past four years. “He lets me make mistakes and helps me learn from them. He doesn’t rub it in my face.”
Telepan agrees, though he admits to a slightly different style. “Alfred would always question you if you were doing something wrong, but he was never a shouter. I was always yelling at cooks. At one point Alfred took me aside and was like, ‘You don’t have to do it that way.’ He said, ‘Bill, just calm down.'”
Consistency and playfulness are all fine and good, but having happy hands slice and dice isn’t worth much if the food doesn’t measure up. But Portale’s food was not only good, it was groundbreaking. Aside from his eyebrow-raising architectural presentations (he was known as the tall-food chef), Portale is credited by many of his peers with creating the first real, modern American restaurant, free from the heavy-handed fuss of French cuisine.
“It was the beginning of the time when American chefs spent time in France,” recalls Tom Colicchio, who worked with Portale as a line cook in 1986. “But Alfred found his own way. His cooking had French roots, but stylistically it was American and very much his own.”
Beyond his innate culinary talent, Portale is also credited by many of his protégés with a fatherly kindness. “There is a spirit of generosity that is uniquely Alfred,” says The Grocery’s Sharon Pachter. “He is a fountain of information and is always willing to lend an ear, which is what makes him a true star of our industry.”
And one who’s made it his business to turn the restaurant industry into a sea of other stars.
* Bill Telepan
Then: Executive sous chef from 1987 to ’90 and from 1991 to ’95
Now: Chef and owner of Telepan, a seasonal American restaurant opened in 2005
* Charles Kiely and Sharon Pachter
Then: Kiely was Gotham’s line cook from 1989 to ’90, and Pachter was the pastry chef assistant from 1994 to ’95.
Now: The husband and wife team are the chefs and owners of The Grocery in Brooklyn, a seasonal American restaurant opened in 1999.
* Tom Colicchio
Then: Gotham’s line cook in 1986
Now: Owner and head chef at Craft, which opened in 1991. He’s also host of Bravo’s “Top Chef.”
* Scott Bryan
Then: Gotham’s garde manger and line cook from 1986 to ’87
Now: Chef at Apiary, a contemporary American restaurant opened in 2008
* David Walzog
Then: Gotham’s line cook from 1988 to ’91
Now: Chef at the Wynn’s SW Steakhouse in Las Vegas
* Tom Valenti
Then: Gotham’s sous chef from 1985 to ’87
Now: Chef and owner of West Branch, an American bistro opened in 2008