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It doesn’t matter how many molecules you have slung in Spain: You have to bring it if you want to work in a New York kitchen. That’s the moral we gather from an item on Insatiable Critic about how a sous-chef with culinary mecca El Bulli on his résumé quit on chef Alain Allegretti hours before the latter's restaurant, Allegretti, opened on Monday.

“It’s too tough for me,” he told owner Alain Allegretti, a son of Nice who worked at Michelin two star Le Chantecler and three-star Alain Chapel before coming to Le Cirque 2000 as co-executive chef in 2001. “But you just come from a year at El Bulli,” his boss protested. “They had a kitchen full of cooks,” responded the whiney slacker as he left. “I can’t afford a cook just to glaze the lamb all night and brush the lamb and tell the lamb how pretty it is,” the chef-patron told me. “In this kitchen a cook has to keep three or four things going at once.”

We understand, Al. This city is a hard place and tends to weed out the non-hackers.

Short Order [Insatiable Critic]
Related: Restaurant Openings: Opus and Allegretti.