FOH – Stories That Are All True

Two things have tickled me this week. The first was a meme talking about how people fawn over line cooks and somebody replied that line cook energy is Pete Davidson energy and she’d dated 15 of them. I wondered why if that was the case, why aren’t celebrities asking me out?

The other thing is that because of The Bear, people are starting to give line cooks/chefs Pedro Pascal energy. Yes, Chef is the new Daddy and I think it’s also hilarious. That’s because there is definitely something to watching us work. It’s mesmerizing. The mental and physical gymnastics on the brigade while it’s 110 degrees make us crazy and yet effective. Just know that it takes a lot to keep up that energy. Baby us when you can, because we hurt all over and our brains are fried. It’s not that the thinking is hard. It’s that it’s relentless. How do you time things to make sure everything is ready together? You work obsessively the whole time. We have more in common with athletes and ballet dancers than we don’t, because they don’t turn on the heaters and crank them up to hell at a basketball game.

I think that’s why Karens bother me so much.

It’s fine to complain about a restaurant’s food or service. However, Karens don’t seem to know how to get what they want without launching grenades. They will absolutely destroy someone’s self-esteem for a free soft drink…. and that’s not the scary part. The scary part is that they keep doing it over and over with absolutely no remorse. If I went on a date with someone like that, I would absolutely walk out in seconds. Even if I think you are God’s gift to the world, I will leave boot prints on your ass if you’re ever mean to waitstaff and cooks. That’s because there are some problems that can be worked out. There are some that can’t. Most of it depends on attitude. I have been a line cook for so long that I will not let it happen twice. Ever.

That’s because I’ve been hurt so badly that I’ve been taken to the ER twice in 25 years (I was waitstaff before I cooked), but I didn’t injure myself twice. I’ve worked a five hour shift after picking up a hot spoon where the plastic fused to my skin. I’ve still got a pink triangle on my arm from touching a convection oven, and I am proud of it on multiple levels.

Pink triangle on my sleeve…….

I have worked through the flu, migraines, shingles, you name it. In every restaurant where I’ve worked, if you needed help, you got it, but that shit takes a minute and a half, get back to work.

I could cut off a finger at some restaurants and they’d just put it in the walk in until we closed, because no one leaves til we’re done.

Yes, it is that bad, and I’m telling you that so the Karen shit stops.

I still have scars on my stomach from accidentally touching it with a fry basket because someone came toward me and I grabbed it reflexively.

If you’re wondering why so many of us are alcoholics and drug addicts, a small part of that is having no health insurance, so let that sink in. If no one is prescribing you actual medication, you have to get it from somewhere. However, we are all severely addicted to caffeine to the tune of several 300mg energy drinks a shift if we think we’re in the weeds.

And people wonder why I don’t watch “The Bear.” That shit is for waitstaff. For us, it’s just “trigger, trigger, trigger.” If I am ever in a coma, just play the sound of a ticket coming in and I will have my ass on grill IMMEDIATELY. I know that *some* cooks will watch it, but that’s not the majority. Most of us need Xanax after the first episode. You think that shit is easy? Chasing down a delivery before everything opens? That scene is where I went “nope.”

I went to bed thinking about my pars.

I went in on my days off because I needed to make sure everything was prepped because first rule is don’t trust anyone else. No one has your back in a meritocracy. It wasn’t a big deal to me, though, because sometimes it was just a matter of driving Dana when I was off. It wasn’t like I made a special trip. But still. Most blue collar workers don’t spend a second thinking about work off the clock and we dream ours.

If you quit a restaurant job, the sound of tickets coming in will haunt you for years.

The other thing you have to realize is that most waitstaff aren’t required to tip out the cooks, so the income disparity is enormous. They’re getting the pay while we’re doing all the work. It’s not your job to remember to tip out kitchen staff. People hardly ever do. But it is your job to recognize that you’re only seeing the top layer of a submarine…. just Denzel and Gene smoking cigars that cost more than drugs.

……and we’re all little ducks.

To handle that kind of pressure, we’re all assholes. Every single one. There has to be a relief valve somewhere. It is not unlike being a world class surgeon. You have to have the arrogance to believe you can save a life just like you have to have enough arrogance to believe that feeding 500 people is child’s play.

When it gets bad, people drink themselves to sleep. They drink on the line when it gets worse.

The kitchen itself is a drug from the moment you walk in. Even if you’re stone cold sober, you’ll feel adrenaline coursing through you. When I worked at a local brewpub, I drank Mexican Cokes after work and it still took several hours to calm down. I’m not an alcoholic/addict, but I don’t drink often now because I didn’t want to fall into the trap. Besides, their beer was barely below room temperature and all I wanted was ICE. The sugar replacement didn’t suck, either.

When I was working in the kitchen, I stayed up all night and slept most of the day. That’s because since it took so long to come down, I’d write until the wee hours. My favorite schedule was writing midnight to 0400, because I didn’t have to go to work until at least 1500, sometimes later. I fell easily into waking up at noon or one, and I had Bourdain’s perfect life, complete with anxiety and bipolar depression. It’s why he’s St. Anthony to all of us, really.

Dooce is not the only manic rambling spiral I aspire to be. I wanted to be Tony first. I didn’t want to do the whole TV thing, I just wanted to cook and write so that I didn’t have to do IT. I couldn’t write when I was in IT. I was tethered to my phone and laptop 24/7. I loved being able to be off.

The hardest part of cooking is that very little is open all night, and even though we *can* do our business before noon, dollars to donuts we won’t. We are too tired to do anything but sleep right up until service. I can be totally sober and still look like a tweaked out addict because there’s no one who doesn’t using caffeine at that level. It is straight up abuse.

So, when you come into our houses and treat us as lesser than, we get a bit………… testy.

If you want to know the power of the high, ask your coworkers whether they’ve ever been cooks. Most people who tell you they were will tell you they got out because of the stress and pain, and tell you it was one of the happiest times in their lives without taking another breath.

We don’t do it because it’s easy, we do it because it is hard…………. and chicks dig scars.

I started my morning by making coffee and a “kitchen sink” wilted salad with over medium eggs on top (I am a vegan who cheats. A lot. #noguiltever). By “kitchen sink,” I mean I just threw in whatever fruits and veggies were available.

I started out with sesame seed oil, onions, garlic, mushrooms, diced Granny Smith apples, and ginger. To finish, I added a mixture of shaved brussel sprouts and spring mix (red romaine, baby spinach, radicchio, green romaine, arugula, red mustard, red chard, frisee), then put some rice wine vinegar in the bottom of the pan and let it reduce, helping the to greens soften and mix.

When the veggies were ready, I pushed them to the sides of the pan, making a perfect circle for two eggs, spraying the pan with sesame seed oil again so nothing would stick. I was going to do sunny side up, but I didn’t have a lid for the pan, and I grew tired of waiting for the yolks to cook, because it takes so much longer without steam.

The dish turned out perfectly, and I am my harshest critic. I was hungry in a now sort of way, otherwise I would have served everything over wild rice and lentils as well.

I have a rice cooker made by Instant Zest, and it is the best kitchen purchase I have ever made, because it was cheap and has settings for white rice, brown rice, steel cut oatmeal, quinoa, and veggie steam (which I have also used successfully for soft/hard boiled eggs).

It’s actually been a few days….. almost a week….. since I’ve cooked, because I had to gather the courage to do it again. I was cubing raw sweet potato, and I cut myself in such a spectacular way that I don’t think I’ve ever had a worse kitchen injury. It happened so fast that I’m not even sure where I made the mistake. I don’t know if the cutting board slipped, the knife went sideways, it wasn’t sharp enough for raw potato, etc. It could also have been something I wouldn’t have caught, like my monocular vision making me think I was cutting a straight line, but I was actually cutting diagonally. This is a problem that is as equally likely as an accident I would have seen coming. All that being said, no matter what the cause, the effect was the same- absolute searing pain and bleeding so severe that I should have gone to Urgent Care/the ER to see if I needed stitches, but I didn’t.

My kitchen training was just too ingrained…. fix the problem and get back to cooking. It took forever to get it to clot, even using a styptic pencil for vasoconstriction. Once it did, I put on some Band-Aids and finished what I was doing. Two days later, I was taking off the Band-Aids to change the dressing, and it ripped open again, which led to another half hour of trying to fix profuse bleeding. Though I’d bought a first aid kit and very advanced bandages, I’d forgotten to get the one thing that would have really helped, and is a staple in a professional knife roll– Super Glue. If I’d gotten some, once the bleeding stopped, I probably could have avoided ripping it open again. You can chalk that one up to #dumbassattack, and it won’t be happening again.

Believe it or don’t, this is the first time I’ve cut myself in many years. When I was working professionally, at home I ran on sandwiches and hot dogs. The last thing I wanted to do when I got home was cook for myself…. so, the only time I used knives was at work, where everything is built for safety, even for short people like me. The counter is lower, the cutting boards are heavier and held in place by wet rags, at least one person in the kitchen has honing and sharpening tools, etc. I had plenty of injuries when it came to burning myself, but that was it.

It was funny the emotions that came up for me as soon as the knife went from sweet potato to the side of my finger and nail. I thought of all the professional chefs and cooks I’d worked with, including my ex-wife, Dana, and shame washed over me. I felt like I’d let them down. It was my own moment of feeling wilted.

For a home cook, it’s just an accident. For a professional cook, it’s “you were being a dumbass and whatever you did got you hurt. What the hell is wrong with you?” And believe me, with some chefs, that is the nice version of what they would have said. And if the chef wasn’t in the kitchen, your coworkers would do their job for them. For instance, Dana used to work in a high-end grocery store for the meat, sausage, and fish department. One of her coworkers sliced into his finger while filleting a fish, and the entire department called him Filet-O-Finger for YEARS ON END.

Speaking of which, the only time I ever got a nickname was due to no fault of my own. During junior college, I was on the waitstaff at my local Chili’s. It was a busy shift, and they hadn’t switched over to plastic mugs yet. So, this waiter broke one of the heavy glass mugs and like an idiot, just stuck it back in the rack. The manager made an announcement that the glass was broken, but I was delivering food and not there to hear it.

The way the mug was stuck down into the rack, you couldn’t see the broken part, so I came around the corner and it’s (of course) the first thing I pick up. Little shards immediately went into my pinkie at the knuckle, and it was definitely bad enough for stitches. The manager rushed me to the ER, and I didn’t go another day in that kitchen without being called “Worker’s Comp” by somebody. The reason that memory is still seared into my brain is that it’s been 20 years and the scar is still visible.

I have no reason to doubt that this cut will be the same. 20 years from now, I will still remember the day I was dicing raw sweet potatoes, because the cut is deep enough the scar will never fade.

So, today was about ignoring the fear I felt about cutting myself again so I could move past it for real. “Act as if,” you know? In fact, as everything was cooking, I kept cutting. I didn’t need but about a half of diced apple, so I cut the rest into very large dice, and did the same with another whole apple. It was enough to fill two Zip-Loc bags. With the first, I shook in a small box of sugar free cherry Jell-O powder, an idea my mom got from a magazine and is delicious with any flavor. A moment of grief washed over me, because I couldn’t remember the proportions and she wasn’t there to call and ask. She used to put Jell-O apples in my lunch box as a kid almost every day, so I knew she would know off the top of her head…… and Google is just no substitute.

It was yet another moment of feeling wilted, but due to the hopelessness of the situation, I just had to move on.

I figured I would learn on my own when I tasted them if I’d gotten it right or not, and moved on to the second bag, to which I added some rice wine vinegar to keep the apples fresh for cooking savory dishes or adding to a salad (Hmmmm…. there’s goat cheese in the fridge……).

The last thing I was thinking today is that my knife is so sharp that there’s no way it’s time to sharpen again, but it probably needs honing. I’ll call around and ask how much it would be, because I’ve never learned how to sharpen and hone a knife properly….. and no matter how much I spend on an electric honer/sharpener, it will not meet my expectations. I have seen the most expensive ones chew up a knife and spit it out, even if it worked perfectly before.

If it is more expensive than another chef’s knife from Chicago Cutlery, I’ll just get a new one and leave this one in the community block…. but I’m really hoping that it’s not, because this knife, since I hide it from my housemates, has become mine. I never got first blood on Rachel (so named since she was as sharp as a Maddow takedown), or the three knives before her. I haven’t named this one……..

It’s probably going to be “Worker’s Comp.”