It’s 5:53 PM, which means that Cold Brew Nitro is probably the worst thing I could drink in the universe rn. However, today is double star day, and I couldn’t pass up a relatively expensive drink to further my quest for even more free coffee. If I need to, I’ll take some sleep medication rather than staying up all night… but sometimes I am even more productive in the quiet, so we’ll see how I’m feeling later. I am certainly typing faster. Again, cold brew on nitro is INSANE, and apparently it isn’t rolled out all over the country- at least, not yet. So therefore my Houston friends are jealous that their nitro won’t arrive until at least Feb. 2018. For my Portland friends, imagine that you can’t get Jubelale on nitro this Christmas. Yes, it’s that sad. Tears, gnashing of teeth, the whole bit. My Houston friends are just lucky that they don’t know what they’re missing.
If any of them come to visit me, they will… and then all Starbucks coffee after that will just pale in comparison. Those poor, unfortunate souls.
I came over here for some black coffee and writing because I just finished dinner at the pub; I had a chickpea burger, a metric fuck tonne of Diet Coke, and an herbal gimlet for dessert. It took a while to get said gimlet, and one of the bartenders told me that it was because the other bartender had to go downstairs to get some basil. When the drink arrived, there was no basil in it. There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that the restaurant is out of basil. The second is that the second bartender was covering for the first. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt…. several, actually. Never leave a man behind. You never know whether you’re getting a customer who’s been in the service industry before and understands everything about why the food and drinks are late, or someone who’s never been in the service industry and makes their displeasure known by screaming across the entire restaurant. My favorite is when BOH (back of house) is running behind and people are screaming at FOH (front of house) because their food is behind, as if the waitress has any influence over the kitchen whatsoever. FOH is running interference, because that’s about as much as they can do when the kitchen is in the weeds…. if the manager is feeling generous, perhaps a comped appetizer or dessert. Other than that, there’s nothing the server can do except grin & bear it.
FOH and BOH have a fight between them that’s probably been going on since the beginning of time. One constantly blames the other. It’s not the waitstaff’s fault the kitchen is behind, because they’re in charge of getting their shit together on their own. It’s not the kitchen’s fault it’s behind, because when you slam the kitchen with an entire restaurant full of orders all at one time, the kitchen can’t help how fast the food comes out…. unless the waitstaff doesn’t care if it’s wrong, because they’re rushing too fast to look at the orders properly. So, FOH is yelling at BOH because either the orders are wrong or aren’t fast enough. BOH can’t win. BOH just goes on gritting their teeth in pain and trying not to kill anyone. The one point of respect that FOH gets from BOH is because at least it’s not them having to deal wth customers. Cooks are not great polite company. There’s a reason BOH stays there.
With cooking, there is no HR department. You just have to get used to the fact that during service, your mother is a whore and chef’s dead grandmother can cook *and* wash dishes faster than you. Also, your salad looks like crap- redo it, I’m not serving it, it doesn’t matter how many orders we have to get out in the next five minutes. FOH is just going to have to wait, those sanctimonious motherfuckers.
You just can’t help but swearing at each other when the atmosphere is that high pressure. As I have said before, it’s like doing Zumba in a bikram yoga studio for eleven hours at a clip.
I am also not impressed by food safety laws that put cooks in danger. For instance, at one of the pubs where I worked, the burgers were cooked over an open flame and we were required to wear latex gloves. It didn’t take 45 seconds for the latex glove to fuse to my skin and burn my hand…. badly. Believe me when I say the heat is enough to get germs off your food. In fact, vegetarians wouldn’t believe this, but cooks can actually fry meat and vegetables in the same fryer without cross contamination because the oil is so hot it kills all biologicals. We separate it all out, anyway, but basic science is on our side. Now, I am not advocating for using the same utensils or griddle, just deep fryer…. and there are few things in the world I enjoy more than a deep-fried Garden Burger… often my sandwich of choice with bacon, called “The Hypocrite.”
My diet is partially vegetarian and vegan because I try to save calories where I can when the food is delicious. I don’t think anyone was meant to eat meat for every meal. For instance, the chickpea burger I had was greek, with onions and feta. Maybe next time I’ll order it with bacon and let people look at me funny until I use “The Hypocrite” line on them and they fall over with laughter. I have had much success with that joke, along with “it’s a burger in which two animals don’t have to die for me to have it.” But on the flip side, when I order real bacon burgers, I always make the joke that I love them BECAUSE two animals had to die for me to eat. Why yes, I am the Diet Coke of evil. Thank you for noticing.
Well, maybe not evil, but definitely willing to do damn near anything to get a laugh. I enjoy just forgetting who and where I am, because grief goes out the window when no one knows me and I can just be funny- without ever divulging my personal problems as if people want to hear them. When I’m just funny, there are no people who look at me with pity and say, “now, how are you REALLY?” There are precious few people in the world I will let have the answer. The rest of the time, I want to laugh about deep-frying veggie burgers and topping them with bacon.
The other laugh line that made me smile last week ran thusly:
Friend: I hope you had a nice birthday.
Leslie: I didn’t get nearly enough cake.
For my birthday, I always like to go “full on fat kid.” I did that the week before, where Dan and I went to dessert and got a peanut butter mousse with chocolate on it, but not a “death by chocolate” experience- mostly because I do not like them. So, anyway, Dan had one or two bites and I proceeded to inhale the rest. It was just on my actual birthday that I should have gone to the store and bought myself some kind of fruit-filled monstrosity. You have to do that when you don’t really tell anyone it’s your birthday and you like it that way.
On holidays, though, I tend to gravitate toward white cake with white icing, all due to an old girlfriend that said something to me I’ll always remember. She said that she loved white cake with white icing because it reminded her of joyous occasions, such as weddings and birthdays. So, to this day, white cake is all about joy.
Perhaps I will buy one for Christmas as I celebrate the first woman Doctor. It’s a huge joyous occasion that deserves celebration.
Maybe I’ll even spring for Cold Brew on Nitro to go with it. It’s all about balance- smooth black coffee and icing sweet enough to cause cavities all by itself. It will taste great after the deep-fried hypocrite I’ll be eating for dinner. 😛
And now it’s time to go home, having finished my, again, INSANE cup of coffee to look up where I can watch Broadchurch. Christmas is too long to wait for a Jodie Whitaker injection.
Again. Nitro? INSANE.
Do it.
Stories That Are All True 