hospitality – Stories That Are All True

What’s your favorite thing to cook?

Before we get started, I just wanted to tell you that I am willingly using my iPad today because oh my God. I refuse to code in anything but a monotype font. It has been 15 years since I’ve used anything but “Droid Sans Mono.” On my Android, I still do. That being said, when I dug into the app iOS app “Koder,” one of the recommended fonts was……. wait for it……… Helvetica. I’ll take a screenshot of the app so that you can see its ultimate superiority over Arial, the font that was so good Microsoft made a knock-off of their own…….. instead of buying the font from the actual artist. Seriously, fuck them. They did what people do to artists all the time. Although perhaps Steve Jobs had a non-compete with the artist so that Microsoft had to rip off Arial. I will be finding a documentary on YouTube shortly.

I absolutely loved the doc “Helvetica,” because it shows the artist, and just how many street signs are made with it in how many countries (it’s a lot). But, even still I had to justify switching from monospace. I had to sit there and justify it for a little bit. In the end, it was “you’re a writer…. you don’t code that much, anyway….. bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I just love fonts an autistic amount. And now I’m sitting here looking at the way I’ve loved Macs since I was 18. I had a Mac SE in my room in high school, and it was my favorite computer ever because it’s the last one I had that didn’t connect to the Internet. I want a computer from 1990, Zac just bought a word processor and called it a day.

Word processors don’t have Helvetica. But maybe e-Bay has a Mac that old. On second thought, I’d rather have one of those old as shit Mac laptops, because even though they’re much heavier than a normal laptop, I’d rather write with the computer in my lap as opposed to my desk. My desk chair is crap and I don’t want to change it because nothing modern would match. In the end, I might give in because I really do like sitting at my desktop, I’ve just gotten used to lying in bed with my tablet and keyboard in my lap, because I’m 10 times more productive that way and both my tablets have everything I need to work and play.

One of my readers said that she felt anxious I responded to her in a blog entry. I did it so she wouldn’t be intimidated by the length of the reply, because it wasn’t personal at all. She said something that stuck with me, that she’d been married for decades and we had completely different outlooks on relationships. I thought that was so universal that it was a blog entry all on its own. That yes, people do have different outlooks on relationships because there are so many permutations of human behavior that nothing in this life is a binary.

She’s not wrong, and neither am I. And I’m pointing it out because of the stigma that comes with ethical non-monogamy. I like what Jada Pinkett said on the matter. “Will is his own man. He has to make choices that make it ok for him to look himself in the mirror.” She made the point that she doesn’t control his time, and that’s how I feel about Zac. I do not get to dictate what he does while he’s not with me. I’m just here to receive him, because he offers me so much solace even when we can’t be together all that often. He’s cooked for me, and of course it’s always fabulous. That’s my boyfriend cooking for me. I’ve talked to him many times about cooking for/with him, but he says that he’s just always had this outlook that you could for guests. I am so thankful he’s not impressed I’ve cooked professionally.

“Food is hospitality. When you reject someone’s food, you reject them.” -Anthony Bourdain

Which is why my favorite meal to cook is never about the food. The food doesn’t taste gorgeous because of something I did as a professional cook. It tastes better depending on who’s at the table. I don’t celebrate the people who aren’t here, I value the ones that show up. It’s taken a lifetime to learn, this not yearning for someone who isn’t here, because again, that goes back to 14 years old. I made people priorities when I was only an option, and could even see it and not give up.

I have deep and abiding abandonment issues from my emotional abuser, probably why I lived in Portland for so many years. I had to prove to myself that she wouldn’t abandon me, and found out when I got there that was not the case.

With Supergrover, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d kept my big mouth shut a lot of the time, but I do know that her hotheaded anger fed mine. My dopamine and adrenaline went through the roof when she snapped at me. I don’t react well to that, and neither does she. But I can count on one hand the number of times she’s apologized for her own words, because it’s so much more convenient to believe that I am the sole cause of everything. I have no doubt that she’s telling people that I’m the most toxic person she’s ever met, because she couldn’t take accountability for shit when it was emotional. I know she’d send a fully armed battalion to remind people of her love if she thought someone was hurting me. What she cannot do is take in that I feel the same way about her. We just don’t have the same love language, and I became fluent in hers- acts of service. Over time, she became less and less interested in mine, words of affirmation. I would tell her that I felt bad she called me a dickhead all the time, and then all of a sudden I was enormously impressive.

So, in a lot of ways, I feel that we could have fixed a lot with one night where she was my sous chef. She’s a very good chef. Horrible line cook….. which means that what I wanted was being able to tumble and roll in those roles.

This wouldn’t be appropriate for us because we’re not a couple, but it illustrates a point.

One of the things that therapists do in age gap relationships, because they often become a big damn problem, is to ask the older partner if they ever lay in the younger one’s lap. If the couple says no, then generally they’ll make them do it in the office. Over time, the older one views themselves as wiser because of course they are, but not about everything. The problem becomes the older half parenting the younger, making their relationship a strict power dynamic rather than one that’s fluid.

She couldn’t lay in my lap. That’s all on me, but that’s what we lost that made me push her away. I didn’t like feeling that my letters were making her feel guilty and not knowing it for weeks on end. I hated that she always relied on her own instincts to figure out what I was saying, and she was often wrong. I have no doubt that telling me she’s “read through many lines” means that she’s read through the wrong ones because she had no context and didn’t ask for clarity so that I could reassure her that I wasn’t attacking her. She assumed I was attacking her, so we never got back what we lost.

Here’s why it’s such a shame. I told her that I was French-trained, but that I’d had friends who were Japanese-trained and either works well. She said she didn’t know the difference, so I sent her two pictures of me holding a knife over a cutting board and wrote “French” and “Japanese” on them. She said she kind of uses a mix of the two, and one of the things I would have told her if we’d cooked together is “there is no such thing. You’re holding your knife wrong. Here, let me show you. “Spider on a mirror, Supergrover. Spider ona mirror.”

The. Food. Doesn’t. Matter.

P.S. Look upon my beautiful font.

What are your favorite types of foods?

I want to tell you a secret.

When you become a professional cook, you stop cooking at home. You do not have the time or energy. There were nights when dinner was microwave popcorn over the sink, I was so tired. Just stuff a few handfuls in my mouth before I pass out. I also bought lots of junk food. We all do. Most cooks I know are absolutely obsessed with dino nuggets. Some of us even take the time to warm them up. 😉 My favorite is grocery store pizza, because it takes less time to put it in the oven than it does for delivery, and I can put whatever I want on it.

I want to tell you another secret.

Most, if not all professional cooks want you to invite them over for dinner just so they don’t have to cook it. We don’t care if it’s KD and ketchup. Just please, feed us without making us stand in front of the stove. We will help with dinner if you ask, but most cooks won’t go out of their way because they think it’s rude…. like we’re lording over a kitchen we don’t own. We’ve also been burned by people asking us to help out and then criticizing us as if we have no idea what we’re doing- or worse, something goes wrong and you’ll never live it down….. because professional cooks aren’t allowed to make mistakes, even among friends. We have to be arrogant on the line. There are too many people counting on us. But we cook the dishes in our restaurants over and over until they’re perfect.

You want something obscure, something that hasn’t been popular for 40 years, and we tell you that we’ll try. When it’s not impeccable, we can see the disappointment in your eyes, because you didn’t ask us to make something we’ve already made a thousand times and think it’s the same.

I liken it to handing someone a horn for the first time and asking them to play the third movement of the Hummel trumpet concerto four minutes later.

You’re expecting Carrnegie Hall when they don’t know a straight mute from a spit valve.

Let them have at least five more minutes……………..

Cooks rehearse like trumpet players, and are the same amount of obnoxious. I have been a trumpet player AND a cook, which means I have no problem being an absolute dick in the kitchen some of the time, because there are no seconds to spare. There aren’t even nanoseconds. Cooking is all about fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope….. usually black, not cute red uniforms.

But make no mistake. The Spanish Inquisition is coming for you, and they generally look like waitstaff.

The thing is, though, you don’t go from read-through to full dress. You stage- pronounced stahj– which is basically “get your ass handed to you and if you survive, you might get the job.” These are all unpaid, though in most places they’ll either comp you a drink or make you something to eat (or both). In my stage at Denizen’s, the pub I worked for in Silver Spring, we did 300 covers that night. Just tickets on top of tickets and the entire kitchen was in full-tilt panic mode.

Rehearsal is actually during the performance, and if you fuck up anything, you just have to hope someone catches it before the food goes out. It’s your third day, not theirs.

It was a complete surprise to me that I got hired, but I did notice that I had improved considerably since my last gig. It really kept the imposter syndrome to a minimum. I had my share of shitty days, but I had to get this job. I wanted it more than anything else in the entire world. That’s because I had two reasons that gave me drive and passion for it.

The first is that I was married to a chef trained at a Cordon Bleu cooking school. she actually had her stripes. She paid $20,000 for her education, then gave me all of it for free. It is a gift I will never be able to repay, but the flip side of the coin is that I had to prove to myself that I was a cook, I wasn’t just riding her coattails.

The second is that my mother had just died, and I was a shell of a person. I was flat affect for months. I could barely take care of myself. Cooking brought me back to life. I had focus and drive on something besides earth-shattering grief. My mother was dead and yet the world kept turning as if nothing had happened, because if it did, I missed it. I was out of it during my own year of magical thinking. It took time, but I got my mojo back one hamburger at a time.

It is a gift I will never be able to repay.

In terms of the types of food I like to cook in the restaurant, I’ll tell you by station instead of dish. I like saute because it’s basically throwing prepped food into a pan, flipping it a few times, and pouring it onto a plate.

Editor’s Note: I like pantry the least because plating salads and desserts to look beautiful seems to require angle of convergence and depth perception, two things I was born without that make up 3D vision.

In terms of food I like to cook at home, I don’t. Home kitchens aren’t built like professional kitchens and when you get used to that much specialized equipment that cooking at home is a drag. I want a flat top and some scrapers, not whatever the fuck this is.

I want a gas stovetop, not electric. We can’t do that because the kitchen isn’t wired for it. I learned this because I asked Hayat for a gas stove after the fire, and I really like the electric one she bought. It’s just not the same because an electric range doesn’t let you refine the heat from the jump. I need to cook on an electric range a few times to learn the difference between three and four. On a gas range, I can just tell by how hi the flame is- consistent across brands.

If I am cooking at someone’s house for the first time, I sweat bullets because I am cooking on unfamiliar equipment with unfamiliar pans. You don’t think of this, but the thickness of pans varies, so you can’t always use the same amount of heat. At a restaurant, you don’t buy equipment piecemeal. All the saute pans are the same, all the rondeaus (wide thin pots) are the same, all the storage containers are the same. You don’t want anything to affect consistency.

The hardest part of getting an A team together in a restaurant is to make sure everyone makes everything to the same standard. If you’re on the B team (generally Sunday and Monday nights), you know why. You are not fit for Saturday night. You’re not even old enough to watch the show. Go sit in the corner.

If you start out on Mondays, when you get a Friday or a Saturday night it will feel like Ed McMahon showed up at your house with a big ass check.

The reason you need comfort food once you get off work is that all the food in the restaurant is so rich that sometimes you just want a sandwich.

In fact, it’s been 15 minutes since I wrote that last paragraph because I realized I hadn’t eaten dinner and it’s 0212. I had a cup of coffee way too late today, but it’s Sunday morning. I’m pretty sure I’ll still wake up at 0500, that’s automatic. But I’ll go back to sleep easily after I realize my entry is already done for today.

Instead of writing, I’ll roll out of bed and make my ultimate comfort food, breakfast. Yesterday I had scrambled eggs with pickled jalapenos, cheddar, and a dollop of plain yogurt. Nothing fancy except the difference between having made eggs every day of your life and making a hundred in three to five hours during every single brunch shift you’ve ever had.

That’s when dino nuggets taste best.