"If you're with a girl and she orders chicken, it doesn't bode well…"
Amidst all the sex advice we've ever gotten from various unaccredited advisors, no one's ever served us more lively material than cooks. Anthony Bourdain will tell you: cooks are the most unhinged people on earth, and that quality extends to the bedroom. (Or to the walk-in freezer, when the bedroom is unavailable.) With that in mind, we've decided to give these knife-wielding lotharios a regular space on Hooksexup. First up: Christopher, line cook at an undisclosed Midtown Manhattan nightspot. Know a cook you think we should call? Email [email protected].
Why are cooks better in bed?
Being a line cook, you have to be a certain kind of animal. Cooking involves a lot of prior planning and precise implementation. And these traits, I believe, carry over into sex without much difference. Also, living in this city, a lot of people think they need a lot of money to "get action," but that's really not true. There was a time when I was a chef in the Czech consulate, cooking for fucking dignitaries who were smoking cigars, and I was homeless. So I would hide in the walk-in, and when people left, the janitor would let me into the locker room where I slept. Even then, I'd go to out to Employees Only or Tandem in Bushwick, and I'd have just enough money to get a drink for myself and a drink for a girl, and then I would have a place to sleep that night.
What would you make to impress someone coming over to your place?
It really depends on the situation. One of the last girls I met, it happened to be her birthday. So the next day at work, I found a cast iron pot and I made a molten chocolate birthday cake and brought it back to Brooklyn for her.
Did that get you action?
Yeah!
Christopher's Molten Chocolate Birthday Cake
Cake:
16oz semisweet chocolate
1c butter
8 eggs separated
16T sugar
2 3/4t vanilla
Glaze:
2/3c heavy cream
2/3c dark corn syrup
12oz semisweet choc.
Preheat oven to 350. Butter 10" springform, line with parchment and brush with soft butter. Wrap outside of pan with foil. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat till smooth. Remove from heat and cool to lukewarm. Gradually add 8T sugar while whipping egg whites to firm peaks; reserve in refrigerator.
Whisk egg yolk and 8T sugar until pale. Fold chocolate into yolks with spatula, add vanilla. Fully mix melted chocolate with egg yolk. Then gently fold in egg whites in thirds. Fully incorporate.
Pour into pan, bake approximately one hour (until cake tester comes out clean). Let cool, flip, and release spring.
Simmer cream and corn syrup. Add chopped semisweet chocolate; whisk til smooth. Paint on cake. Serve with candied rose petals, whipped cream, or raspberries, according to desired level of shamelessness.
People who work in kitchens are known for their reckless behavior. What's the craziest sexual experience you've ever had?
One time, I got a blowjob in the bathroom from a female sous chef before service started. Well, service had technically started, but we were both just like, "Look, we're not going to be able to focus unless we get this out of the way."
If you could only sleep with one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Duck confit.
What would you be impressed by someone cooking you, if not duck confit?
I'm impressed by the simple stuff. I'm impressed when a Latin girl can make me a good paella. I was married to a Somali woman for a while, and she could make the best sambousek, which is like a Somali sambusa. I'm just impressed by a person being able to express their love for me through food. I'm not going to hold a dish to a standard and judge technique — I just want to be able to taste the passion. But I'd be impressed by raw fucking oysters.
What's the best way to pick up a line cook?
Well, I've slept with two female line cooks.
At the same time?
No, at two different restaurants. Both of them were named "Brooke." I don't quite understand that. But I just treated them like regular line cooks and was, like, hard on them. They both legitimately wanted to learn. They knew that I would treat them like equals, but I'd also be there to help them if they needed it. This one girl was making a family meal with ham and potatoes, and it was just disgusting. So I had her put it into the Thermomax, which is this European cooking blender, and purée the fuck out of it, and serve it as brandade de jambon. I just told her to have that confidence and stand behind it and have the ability to sell her dish. And that made her feel empowered which, maybe, made her feel attraction.
And you were rewarded with lots of sex?
Yes.
What's a dish, that if someone ordered it on a date, you'd immediately be turned off?
Well, the cliché is that if you're with a girl and she orders chicken, it doesn't bode well. Which has actually proved true in my experience. The girls who are kind of bland in bed have bland palates. It's just an exploratory impulse that's lacking in them. I mean, I wouldn't like to imagine that I'd be going in to a restaurant that has bad dishes in the first place…
What do you recommend eating for a broken heart?
When I have a broken heart, I usually can't eat. Just, like bay leaf or grapefruit juice. Something that will pass right through you and help clean you out, detoxify you.
What should I eat to supercharge my libido for the night?
Clichéd but, raw oysters. And gravlax. And steak tartare. Anything raw.
Oysters somehow, kill it. It seems like such an old wives' tale, but it's so true.
It's the zinc. Well, for men at least.
Hmmm… Well. I mean, it works both ways.
Really?
Yup. Just sayin'.
Oysters and Chopin vodka. That's a good on-the-prowl meal.
That sounds delicious. I'm… hungry, I think. People often talk about incorporating food in the bedroom. How do you incorporate food in the bedroom? Should you incorporate food in the bedroom?
I've incorporated edible underwear, but that's about it. I'm not really big on the blindfold and whipped cream and strawberries kind of deal.
I don't think anybody really does that.
Thank goodness.