Some dishes come from a recipe. Others come from a moment.
This one started with a signed menu, the kind handed to you on your last day at per se, a tradition in the Thomas Keller restaurant family. The entire team signs it, a page of that day’s tasting menu turned into a kind of culinary yearbook.
We’ve got a few of those menus. Some mark celebrations. Others, transitions. But this one marked the end of a chapter that shaped us in ways we’re still unraveling. It was our final day in a restaurant that kicked our asses and gave us everything we needed.
Theresa and I were practically kids when we started at per se. She was 21, stepping into a dining room that demanded polish and precision, and a kitchen where the front-of-house spent much of their night weaving between cooks at full tilt. Her first role had her wiping plates in the pass, memorizing French culinary terms, and gently reminding the garde manger cook that, yes, they forgot the romaine spear again. You tiptoe. You try not to get yelled at. You try to remember whether table 16 is in the main dining room or in the salon. You figure it out. I had a different kind of onboarding.
My first few months weren’t paid. I was an intern, showing up at 11 a.m. every day for dinner service prep. Technically, you weren’t even allowed in the kitchen before that hour. They didn’t want it to be too easy for you. So I’d wait in the locker room, early, always, and then spend the next 14 hours doing whatever was asked. And at that restaurant, the standards for “whatever” are high.
Most of my day was spent chasing down herb requests from the cooks. Micro parsley for the entremetier, 300 individual plushes. Fines herbs and frisée tips for the poissonier, you get the picture. I’m a big guy with big hands, and they are not well suited to microgreens. But I got faster. More precise. You had to.
And then there were the eggshells.
The canapé station had a truffle custard dish, never printed on the menu, always ready in case a VIP needed a little magic or a moment needed saving. The custard was served inside a real eggshell, perfectly topped and cleaned. That was my job. I’d use this finicky little egg topper to shave the top clean off. No cracks allowed. The cuts had to be even, parallel with the ground. Then the shells were soaked in warm water with vinegar to loosen the membrane, just enough, but not too much or they’d get brittle. For every dozen usable shells, I’d ruin 40. Easily.
That was the job. Picking herbs and cleaning eggshells, five days a week, 14 hours a day, for three months. Just to earn a chance at being hired.
Fast-forward three years. We’d both made it. Theresa had been promoted to back-server, and I was the house butcher. It wasn’t a line position, but it carried a certain weight. It taught me skills I still lean on today, knife control, respect for product, a deeper understanding of where flavor begins.
One day, my mentor, one of the sous chefs, walked into the butcher room, closed the door, and said, “You know you’re moving to California, right?” It wasn’t a question. It was a tap on the shoulder.
He had just accepted the role of Chef de Cuisine at The French Laundry. He knew the type of cook I was becoming. He also knew I still had more to learn, and he wanted to keep pushing.
I hadn’t known I was moving. But a few months later, Theresa and I were packed and on our way to Napa Valley.
Years later, we pulled that signed menu out again, not in a fine dining kitchen, but in our apartment, cooking on a single-burner stove on the back porch. The menu listed a dish: Chatham Bay Cod with Anchovy Tempura, Artichokes, Eggplant, Romaine, Anchoïade.
It was clean, confident, briny, and bold. And it felt like the perfect challenge, to translate that moment into something we could make and share here. Not with tweezers and someone to pick our microgreens for us, but with the limitations (and creativity) of life on the water.
Anchovy Butter (The Activator):
Galley Club Pro Tips
You’ve heard us talk about the activator, that finishing move that ties the whole thing together and makes it sing.
Here, it’s twofold:
This is the kind of dish that reminds us why we cook. It’s rooted in a memory, one that was formed under pressure, forged through mentorship, and carried with us through kitchens, coasts, and now, a one-burner porch galley pretending to be a boat.
But that’s the thing: good food isn’t about the gear. It’s about the intention.
So whether you’re anchored off Nantucket, docked in the Keys, or just dreaming of a breeze while cooking in your backyard, this cod delivers.
Thanks for cooking with us. Cheers!
Max & Theresa