Dicks, bitches, fucking assholes: Or 'There is no Island of Misfit Cooks' pt2

Cooks are often romanticized as nomadic characters, running on the boundary of society, living hard, playing hard, just as likely to be in jail as at work. When it comes to upper end dining, That's pretty much a load of bullshit. While the industry does allows flexibility in the character of it's employees, some core qualities are still required. You have to give a damn. You have to show up. You have to do drugs on your own time (preferably not on your own time right before work, that's a bad idea). You don't drink until your shift is mostly over, but generally follow the lead of management. You can't be a fucking dick. This last statement needs some qulaifying. There are a lot of dicks in the kitchen. I'm one. However there is a major difference between a dick and a fucking dick or a fucking asshole. A dick can be compulsive, moody, mildly confrontational (overly confrontational and your a fucking dick), a smart ass, and sophmoric. Sometimes the dick rubs you the wrong way, most of the time you tolerate them because, well, your probably a dick to. But under that all, a dick just really wants good food to go out the window. When that ceases to be the focus, when things become unstable, when pettiness becomes paramount, the dick can become a bitch. Being a bitch can be tolerable as long as the job gets done and not too many people are getting pissed off. When the bitch becomes a fucking asshole, it's all over. A fucking asshole, or fucking dick, can rip the gentle fabric of kitchen cohesiveness as if it were so many yards of charmin. Why is this even an issue? In most businesses people follow rules of conduct that try and prevent coworkers from aggravating other coworkers. You know like acting professional, being a grown up blah blah blah. (Yeah, well other businesses don't have employees slumped over a stove for six to ten hours straight. Of course, there are a lot of dicks, bitches, and fucking assholes in the real world. They're just harder to spot initially due to the superficial curtiousness.) You see cooks don't make a lot of money. Since there is little financial motivation to cook, pay in this market is pretty much capped at ten bucks an hour for a line cook, you aren't necessarily attracting the best and brightest. (There is a resurgence in cooking over the last fifteen years or so. More people are going to cooking school, more college age students are going into the kitchen instead of getting Philosophy, or Art History degrees. Being a Chef has become more fashionable; few realizing the actual effort it takes to become succesful though.) Hiring some kid with no experience because he seems like a good kid. Hiring a potentially burned out seasoned pro with too much experience, because talent is needed at an untalented price (big red flag, potential fucking dick). All in all though, it is hard, stressful work that requires skills, cooking and otherwise, that few truly possess. So here we are, the kitchen is populated by potential malcontents, why? In order to work under these conditions, for this pay you have to be a little bent. You care about food, you really believe you can be successful at it, you like the lifestyle, and/or you don't know how to do anything else.

What is a foodie?

I honestly don't know. I sort of assume that a foodie is one who has chosen food in all of it's facets as a hobby. I have a friend in town. We were talking about where to eat that night. Being from the south, he likes to get as much varied ethnic cuisine in him while he's in town. This is right up my ally. When I do go out I like to eat simple, clean, purposeful food. Food that has history. Not that I don't also enjoy more elaborate dining, but working in that environment all the time has jaded me a bit. I love dropping a franklin on myself for dinner and drinks, but I'm also a bitch. I feel as if I'm in analysis mode when I should be relaxing. So my friend and I are talking about were to eat, which leads to a discussion on restaurants with another friend who was present. He made reference to the fact that I tend to go to out of the way ethnic restaurants and he likes good food but also likes to be seen. He used the term 'purist foodie' and 'scenester foodie'. Which I thought was funny. 1) I don't consider myself a foodie, though I love food, since I do this for a living 2) I didn't really think about classifying foodies. Once the wheels were in motion though I realized that there are several strains of the contemporary foodie.

1)Purist Foodie: seeks out traditional, authentic cuisine regardless of where, and really thinks they now what the cuisine is about (and are usually wrong).

2)Scenster foodie: Really likes good food, but thinks it tastes better when served somewhere by pretty people for pretty people.

3) Wannabe foodie: The foodie that wishes they actually had the balls to cook professionally. They fancy themselves chef material but have no real idea what a chef is. Really enjoys being called chef by friends. A disturbing psuedo-erotic worship of Emeril, Bobby Flay, Tyler Whats his name or any other TV Chef.

4) Wine Geek: I lump this in because of the natural connection between food and wine. Of course there are serious classifications within the broad spectrum of wine geek; from California oak chomping ingrate to serious Barolo quaffing oenophile.

5) Home Cook: Someone who just really likes to cook, has no real desire to do it professionally. May enjoy entertaining, likes to casually learn about food, beut generally just likes to eat well. The true home cook is a credit to the foodie world.

6) Scoop: The foodie that really wants to find the next great place to eat. Forst to post on the message boards, first to give their two cents. A fickle bird. It's not known what is more important to Scoop, good food, or finding a new restaurant.

This is just an 'off the top of my head' list. I'll be updating this list now and again as new strains are verified.

Food as craft (pt1 of many)

There is a desire, by both layman and professionals, to lump Chefs with artists. It can be understandable. The layman is presented with food they themselves are incapable of creating, and potentially elicites any number of emotions. Some Chefs also enjoy propigating this concept for what reason I don't know, I can only speculate. My guess is ego. The real procedure, skill and techniques, however, are shrouded in a hidden kitchen by years of training. It is this training of skills that elevates the understanding and manipulation of food. Just as a Scientist can be viewed as Wizard by a primitive culture, so is the Chef seen as artist. The abilities of the true Chef are so superiorly honed that their creations may seem to be that of pure inspiration. Not to discredit the creativity of top chefs; however they have achieved a level of artistry through mastery of a craft, not necessarily some amorphous muse. Only by mastering technique can one truly master their medium. Only through mastering ones medium can one truly express their ideas fluidly. So many young chefs are lauded for their creativity without truly mastering there chosen craft. Too often creativity is emphasized rather than skill and consistency. It is this lack of mastery that often clouds the food of young chefs. This creative process requires the manifesting of idea into tangible form. The only way for that to translate fluidly is for there to be no resistance in the flow of idea. If one does not master ones medium then ideas do not flow smoothly. Just as I struggle with translating my ideas to words, as writing is not my profession, so does the young chef or aspiring cook struggle with turning vision into truly edible food. That is where the true Chef shines. It is through a thorough understanding of the manipulation of product that they visualize and predict the eventual outcome. Not to say that even the most experienced Chef does not experiment or guess at times; however the window of error is far smaller and most likely only perceivable by the Chef themselves. Where as misjudgement or poor 'editing' by an aspiring chef can be noticeable to all.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Another Sunday in the books. Generally at this time (it's 11:00 pm) on a Sunday I'm asking myself 'why the hell am I still cooking?'. It takes two jobs to pay my student loans, house bills, and save a little for an eventual trip abroad. Hey, no big deal right? Plenty of cash coming in to cover what I want to do. Damn though if it don't add up. Up at 6:00 am, cook breakfast until 2:00 for the chronologically challenged. Off to the pm place for a little dinner service, home by 10:00, or so. It's a numbing day filled with caffeine highs and lows, lulls and rushes, and an unavoidable afternoon crash. Breakfast really is a brutal shift. Not only does the shift start too early for one to be thinking clearly, but despite it's seemingly straightforward appearance (Eggs, potatoes, toast, right?) it can be one of the most mentally taxing. No one likes to wait for breakfast and the general simplicity of the food makes for quick preperation. Also, EVERYONE has their own breakfast quirk, which shows up as modifications to orders. (A brief aside. A modification is any alteration to an order that is not on the menu. Say, the standard breakfast comes with, 2 eggs, potatoes, toast, and meat of your choice. Easy enough. Now Customer A has that standard breakfast, but wants toast dark. Easy enough, I can forget about toast. That's generally how it get's dark. Customer B would like the standard breakfast without potatoes. No problem, one less thing to worry about. Customer C would like the standard breakfast with no potatoes, no toast, and fruit on the side. OK, now I'm getting pissed. I have to stop my flow and grab fruit for the plate. Customer D would like the standard Breakfast with eggs basted, one piece wheat toast, one piece sourdough, bacon crispy, potatoes fried instead of hashbrowned. Fine dammit, toast no problem, I'll ruin the bacon, drop potatoes in the deep fryer, and throw some eggs in a pan on the back burner with a lid. Anyway you get the picture.) Instead of falling back on instinct and muscle memory at 8:00 on a Sunday morning, I HAVE TO THINK. And there's nothing, as a cook, that I hate more than having to think about an order. Oh yeah, and the shift is six hours long. No breaks. Needless to say by hour four I'm starting to fade. Hour five hits, and everyone is my enemy. The customers are like wolves tracking the smell of blood; waiting for the first sign of visible weakness to pounce. Hour six and I am a crushed broken man. Uncurling myself from my fetal postion on the floor I collect my knives, bid everyone adieu and propel myself home. Shell shocked, I head to the pm joint, swearing that I will not work breakfast past memorial day. Of course I've told myself the same lie over and over. 'I won't work another Easter'. 'This is my last Mothers day'. 'I'm no breakfast cook'. Of course, like Sysiphus, I keep coming back. But really I'm no breakfast cook, I can quit at anytime. Just doing this to make a little extra cash. I can quit anytime.

There is no Island of misfit cooks

I've worked my share of jobs. Canneries, car lots, messenger, high tech, stage hand, etc. etc. I graduated from college believing that I would somehow be instantly legitimate. I would grow up and join my peers as fledgling economic contributors. My degree would begin to pay for itself. I would now reap the benefits of 16 years of cumpolsory and chosen education. It would be easy. Find myself a good company to work for. Prove to be both amicable and smarter than most, then sit back and collect the rewards. Easy money. Along the way I would accumulate wealth that was unimaginable to me during my undergraduate years. Oh, the life I would lead. Apparently when one enters into the professional workforce one should to be polite, listen to their boss, and follow the rules. I was a miserable failure at all of the above. I honestly didn't try to offend anyone, dissappoint anyone or upset the general balance of things. It's just that I have a distinct ability to rub people the wrong way sometimes. I didn't understand the unwritten rules that everyone else was following, and why they where following them. Why do I care about this leviathian that barely recognizes me? Why do I bust my ass, or at least try to, for something that I never see, and for someone I'll never meet. It's almost as if it becomes a faith of it's own. One has to buy into the concept of the corporation as provider, which it can quite successfully be. Of course I've never been one for belief in the unseen. I've only ever trusted the tangible, the tactile, the immediate. I left the square world behind for the kitchen.

I would make my home there. There, in a wonderful place were the lack of pay, insane stress, and ever present instability was forgotten in a shift drink. Where "Eat a dick Potsie" is a term of endearment. Where 3:00pm is a reasonable start to the day. I found my people. It is one of the finest collections of freaks, flakes, slackers, sociopaths, addicts, malcontents and anal retentive assholes anywhere. Anyone can find a job in a restuarant. Cooks come and go, servers just stop coming in, people are transient. Resumes are doctored, references go unchecked, or a warm body is just needed to fill a shift. Some are in it for the long haul. The professionals that love food, love the job, and are crazy and OCD enough to be good at it. Most are looking for something better. Getting an education, looking for a 'career', looking for better pay, maybe benefits. Regardless, they have all found a home in the lifestyle. It's a club, a secret society for those that have the common bond of being professional servants. You see these misfits have found pride in doing a job that few others want, and fewer still can do well, and outsiders don't understand. We can take the shit of the average joe; slap a smile on our face, curse your guts under our breath and still make you happy. As long as you can do your job, and show up for work you are welcome. You can find a home. We are not like Pirates, as Anthony Bourdain waxes. We are misfits, the collected detritus of all social and economic backgrounds. We are the three legged dog, the two dollar bill, and Charlie in the box.

What do we do?

I came home from work the other night. Typical Saturday; up at 8:00, off to the cafe for a little prep/backup shift. Done around 2:00 and then off to the PM place to bust out some prep and get ready for service. Usually finish anywhere between 9:30 and 11:00. My roommate, a 'wine guy' ,more will be discussed on what 'wine guy' means later, asks me if I want to come work for him. "Better hours, better pay", both attractive ideas. "You'd be able to enjoy cooking again", what? What the fuck? If I didn't enjoy cooking for a living, then why the fuck would I be cooking for a living. Nobody in there right mind would; 1)get paid shit, 2)wallow in stress about wether total know nothing strangers approve of their work, and 3)have little or no job stability, unless there was joy coming from it. See there is this general disconnect between what people think cooks are and what we really are. I do love to cook at home, though I don't do it very often. It's the old 'a Mechanic never works on his own car' addage. It's what really got me into this whole trip, but make no mistake the two things are completely different. You see it isn't about a love affair with food, though that's important if you don't want to get burned out and actually want to be more than a line cook. It's not about entertaining friends, though it is satisfying when customers pass on kudos throught the window and you develope friendly regulars. What it really isn't about is some sort of bullshit misconception involving creativity. There are no artists in the kitchen when the doors open. It's about people ordering a shit load of food, and being prepared enough and capable enough to bust it out perfectly every single time. It's about adrenaline, it's about speed, it's about getting your ass kicked and liking it. Knowing that the customers are lining up to kick your ass confirms that what your doing is good. And the faster you can do it and still be good even better. It's about transforming your self into a machine for six hours straight and doing nothing but reacting to what customers want. No home cooking is not like this. You are comparing some fat assed house wife jumping on a treadmill to El Guerrouj running the 1500. (A little aside, El Guerrouj is a world class miler, and has dominated middle distances for the past 5+ years. I guess for sake of clarity I just should have said "Some really fast olympic mother fucker" instead of actually naming someone. But you know, I'm here to educate). It's stressfull, it's potentially chaotic, it's underappreciated, but damn it can be fun. There is no finer feeling, (let me qualify. Anytime I use superlatives, or comparisons where the only thing that could be better would be sex, fell free to imply it. Consider it a sophisticated literary tool. It also saves time. I could write 'There is no finer feeling' or I could write the more cumbersome line: 'There is no finer feeling...other than having Scarlett Johansson tickling my balls oh so gently after hours of viagra and coke induced porn sex.' That would also be presumptuous. I have never taken viagra). Sometimes it feels like the restaurant is about to burn down around you, crumbling, smoldering pile of brick and glass, yet all you can do is calmly go about your job as efficiently as possible. Like some sort of lame matrix shit, all you see is people moving in slow motion while your chucking out perfect plate after perfect plate.

More food plucked from the headlines

You'll take my salami when you pry it from my cold, dead nitrate bloated hands

The funny thing is, is that sometimes this isn't that far from the truth

Ahhh, thank god I'm not a server.

Hist'ry

I've been busting chops on line for quite sometime now, often times working two jobs. I've worked in seven restaurants. Four of which are closed, hopefully in no part to my contribution or lack there of. I'm getting a pretty good Idea why restaurants fail. Why restaurants succeed is a far more elusive set of criteria. I've worked all stations on the line. I was running a line solo for a small misguided suburban bistro. Make no mistake I was no prodigy, it was out of necessity. The place was that slow. The Chef worked the floor and I ran the line. My first restaurant experience was a study in everything that could be done wrong. Wrong to the point that after only a year and a half in a professional kitchen I was running the bistro and planning the menu for their new bar. Once again I need to stipulate that this was not due to any prodigeous talent (I am by no means stupid, nor am I a savant in the kitchen) it was due to the owners inability to trust anyone. More importantly their proclivity to firing chefs when things weren't quite working out, they had no concept of consistency and more importantly they had no firm concept. I am proud however to say that I lasted as long as the previous chefs (about six months) who had legitimate skills. Of course when your a rat on a sinking ship one doesn't necessarily need the skills to pilot the ship, you just gotta now when to get the fuck off. Knowing that I needed to work with real chefs again I gave notice, and was subsequently fired. Good riddance. Since that first experience I have worked under many chefs, all of which I respect. I resolved never to compromise myself by producing food I wasn't proud of and work for someone I didn't respect. So continues the journey. It's been pretty brutal at times, on and off unemployment, working multiple jobs, never knowing if the paycheck is going to clear, or if suddenly hours are going to start evaporating. Of course this is the price you pay for working in small restaurants and, for now, I wouldn't want it any other way. I know where the food is coming from, literally and metaphysically. I know what success of a small restaurant will mean: an individuals dream and vision becomes realized (an excedingly rare thing) as well as the cultural contribution a small restaurant can bring to an area. I know what it's failure means: jobs lost, a dream lost, financial disarray. It is real life played out on a very small personal stage where you really know and care about the actors. Instead of being lost in a corporate environment attached to artificial goals, working solely for those two weeks off and that sweet retirment condo waiting for you in Scottsdale, where success or failure are quickly consumed within the beast and rarely noticed.n So this is the world I exist in and some of where I came from. More will be posited, and expounded upon in the future, but then again noones paying any attention.
XOXO

Back at it

Yeah, It's been six months since I've done anything with this. I'm sure no one is paying attention now, but what the fuck. The idea was more to get me writing than to amuse people. In order for this to work and maintain some cohesion I'll focus on food, primarily cooking professionally. It's the thing I do everyday, have the most opinions on and generally have a solid bullshit meter with. So enjoy, or not, I don't really care.