#003/// A Smoking Hot Topic

Line Cook for Life #003

Allow me to take you back...

The year is 1996. I stroll into my recently acquired dishwashing position at a local cafe in suburban-upstate N.Y. Out of the little radio above the dish machine plays a mix tape while I toil away keeping Carlo, the chef, stocked on pans and plates. From the kitchen came hand made tortellini stuffed with braised pork belly, dandelion greens and ricotta in a sweet pea cream sauce with prosciutto and tomato concasse (Tortellini con Panna); platters of artichokes with tarragon, white sardines, caper-berries and grilled lemons (Antipasti Aroma); and stewed tripe with portabella ragout and mint (Trippa e Menti). It was a revelation - especially the part where they revealed what tripe was after I had asked for seconds. The wine was good, espresso was strong, service was memorable and the dishes were the cleanest in town. They all had to be. Carlo would not have accepted less for me or anyone involved.

Carlo was an interesting cat to say the least. He was raised in Rome to be an opera singer until his father, a wild mushroom gatherer, killed Carlo's teacher in a dispute over the bill. After that, young Carlo was apprenticed to a local chef instead. I never heard whether his father was ever punished, come to think of it. Neither answer would surprise me.

Still a dishdog, circa '96

Carlo had run with the bulls in Pamplona. He was a prize fighter in Lisbon. He was there when the Basilica's doors were opened in the Vatican. He rode camels in the Sahara. And his singing!!! It was like Bocelli himself were there. Regarding food and his kitchen sensibilities, the man knew his shit at a genetic level. To say he loved food was an understatement and his bulk was as impressive as his fundamental culinary instincts. His beady eyes saw everything. This was the man who introduced me to the magic of balsamic and strawberries, describing this almost mythic pairing  as,"This? This is what mommy gives kiddie after school... simple." My mind is still blown at watching this guy try to sell Western New Yorkers whole snapper with fennel, knowing that they were not ready. Knowing most went out for Italian for pasta and sauce. Carlo did not accept the understanding deep down that he had to cater to the guests and not the other way around. When the inevitable complaint came back to the kitchen along with the fish to debone and fillet for the guest, he would curse their families, ancestors and any future progeny in rich Italian because, "...these porca vacca are reminded the fish once was a fish and swam and fought and fucked..." While masterfully dealing with the fish, making it look like food and not life, he would avert his eyes from what his hands were doing so he, "...can tell saints that I was ignorant of what happened to God's creation." This dude was a chef of a dying breed.

Carlo was also an unrepentant smoker. At all times one of his Italian import smokes were burning in a stand up ashtray (with the button that makes the bowl spin and the ash fall into a coffer underneath - I still think about its design) that was propping the kitchen door open. Between slinging pans and throwing plates he was back and forth to the door, huffing down what he could before returning to the line and exhaling into the hood vents. When he wasn't actively cooking he was on the phone arguing with the local Italian produce company about fucking up either his order or the ponies he had money on, while smoking in the office. If he wasn't in the kitchen or the office, then he was out back mildly harassing some hostess, also while smoking. He bragged about his three pack a day habit.
One day Carlo caught me after a particularly rough turn outside in the parking lot sitting on a milk crate catching my breath and looking for a second wind somewhere. He flipped the fuck out. He was right, I had shit to do and I was just sitting down wasting time. He grabbed me by my ear and dragged me back into my pit. Guiseppi, his assistant, came to me ten minutes later while I was balls deep in Carlo's pans, handed me a smoke and said in his gravelly Italian-accented kitchen-English, "Five minutes, go. You have that lit, he no yell."
So it began.

Since that day I have been a smoker. I love the act of smoking... the feel of it between thumb and forefinger, rolling the butt between fingers, flicking ash three times after every drag, like clockwork. I once had a cook working for me who claimed he could tell my mood based on how quickly I would chief down my smokes. I am currently a work-only smoker, at the detriment of my staff's supply. I don't want to bring it around my family at the behest of my wife. The request is not hard, though, seeing as I only really crave a smoke after a particularly stressful bit of line cookery. Hell, if I cook a largish size meal at home I don't even want to eat, I just crave a cigarette. No if-ands-or-buts about it, there is a completely Pavlovian reaction at play. It has been a two-pack-a-day habit at times, namely the times I have virtually lived at my restaurants - back in the day, sleeping on office couches or corner booths wasn't abnormal. It makes sense though, it really does, that kitchen folk are smokers. Generally speaking, those employed within kitchens tend to be poorer and less educated than those wearing ties to work. Those employed within kitchen have a higher rate of being from foreign lands where smoking isn't vilified and thus more widely accepted within their culture. People in hot, fast paced, stressful environments where the ebb and flow of what is to be done changes, mutates and adjusts every four minutes benefits from the occasional five minute break. Just a second to walk away from the noise and confusion and the perma-overstimulation we maintain simply to collect our thoughts - if only to prepare to take it on again. It can be the difference between a successful evening of smooth service and fisticuffs. In a world of micromanaging, multiple bosses, different standards mixed with confusing chains of command, sharp knives, distracting wait staff, hot ovens, wickedly brutal hangovers and withdrawal, tight quarters involving cracked flooring and puddles, multiple languages and subsequent barriers, team affiliations and the occasional big city rodentia or back woods bugs (depending on locale) it is very surprising that anything gets accomplished without drugs of a slightly stronger variety than just nicotine.

Nicotine.

Whether its effects are psychosomatic or medically proven, it has a way to take the edge off. Part of me feels that the cigarette and its nicotine have nothing to do with the addiction for food service professionals. The addiction is to the smoke break itself. The cooler, fresher, outside air helps to remind oneself that there is a world outside the kitchen door. A moment without other cooks within a foot of your private space. The chance to call your mom on Mother's Day while you're working brunch and cooking for mothers other than her can keep you in The Will. Actually, the smoke break is how we keep in touch with the real world and since the advent of smartphones the amount of shit that can be accomplished in that four to six minute time period allotted is surprising. It has become the part of our day where we tackle stuff that involves regular business hours. Things like banks and post offices have been a kind of kryptonite to the section of the populace who work evenings and off-hours. If I were to describe the wrath of a wife with a baby at home without any adult contact while I'm toiling away with a group of my 'buddies,' doing what I love for 15 hours and no phone call to check in you would think I was describing was in fact a pack of hyenas and the sounds make upon encountering a particularly cute and meaty looking gazelle in the Serengeti. Not pretty man. Bad news fucking bears.

Cooks love flavor. Its an added taste-bud stimulant that studies have shown deaden taste bud sensitivity. I think that is why most cooks have such wild and flavorful cuisine. Gotta cut through the palette covered in tar somehow, right? These studies, though, show that smoking neither decreases the number of the tastebuds an individual have nor the receptiveness of said tastebuds - rather the shape of the tastebud. The studies, carried out by the Greek Miliatary and published in BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders are inconclusive as to what a different shape means other than some flavors are 'perceived differently.' What does that mean when crossed with a cook, someone who perceives them differently to begin with? Is it possible that cigarettes are what help hone a chef's palette into the crowd pleaser it has become?

I would estimate approximatly eighty percent of the kitchen folk I have encountered were smokers, counter to the CDC who says it's around thirty-one percent - but that number does include waitstaff. The national average is just under seventeen. I would love to get some feedback concerning this from visitors of this blog. I know in my current kitchen it is running a solid 85%, however once you include the front staff that number drops dramatically. Today, seeing Anthony Bourdain do his globe trotting sans cigarette makes me feel my intellectual hero and spiritual food guru has given up the last true yolk of the kitchen - his self destruction and loathing as represented by the camel regular in his hand. After the cuts and burns healed, the sleep schedule stabilized, the knee and back aches subsided all with the help of travel channel paychecks and younger wives, just seeing him curse his producers with a smoke dangling between his lips was all the evidence I needed to remember that this guy was in fact one of us. Good for him but most working cooks don't try. Like I said, how else does one get a break in an industry that doesn't do the whole break thing?

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Keep up with the events here at Line Cook for Life. Lately we've been throwing a lot out there. I'm trying tp get the Facebook site really going, but the 'community'-type Facebook site is very different than the 'individual' variety. Check in on it, like it if you would be so kind and that way our updates will be in your feed. We cannot message or friend request anyone we may know. We have new contributions from a baker, a corporate GM and a bartender coming up. Also, continued discussions with Ian, Kleb and Nick within the next month.  I would like to give a nod to Nick, contributor to this site as well as a recent quitter. That shit is hard. The LCFL podcast is stalled due to scheduling conflicts but it is coming. My new goal is for it to drop on July 1, but we'll see. Cooks work late, man, cooks work late.

Keep bangin'.
James Pawl Kane
Chef and Smoke Bumming Bastard