#008// Line Cook: A Redefinition

Line cooks, by definition, are middle tier employees who work in the kitchen. They are the people who execute the chef's vision regarding menu, cleanliness and cuisine. A good line cook can be a valuable and damn near irreplaceable team member who busts ass daily to ensure that standards are upheld. When a chef has a team of badass line cooks behind him, he can accomplish anything.
A line cook, though, is notorious.
Line cooks oftentimes have issues that kept them from other 'real jobs.' Whether it be drug problems, criminal past or simply the inability to hack it in college for whatever the reason, line cooks are a breed of culinarian who stay in the middle of the hierarchy.
Some people make this a life choice. Others end up there. Both can be exceptional cooks.
Ambition tends to drive certain folk who inhabit the kitchen to management and chefdom. However, a solid line guy is worth his weight in gold and can have lifetime positions. With yearly pay hikes and tenure a line cook can establish a well deserved paycheck, stability and comfort - even in our hot, stuffy environs.
Many believe that line cookery is for the unambitious or failing - I am still asked by my father if I flip burgers for a living. Folks generally feel this way regarding most middling positions, regardless of industry. I cannot disagree more adamantly. A line cook is the person solely trusted by the chef to do his job according to another recipe so perfectly that the innovator trusts him to accomplish said task. A person who is unflappable, even when the chef is flapping away unabashedly.
The line cook is also the one who generally keeps his job even after the wildly flapping chef gets fired due to his flapability. Most of the time after this happens, though, a new chef is hired from outside and he brings his people with him. Which leads me to my next point: The Squad.
At least that's what I call it. Early in my career it was The Crew. Whatever you call it, its the family that these culinary assassins develop over time, usually starting with the chef that brought you up. Over time, you follow the sous chef to his first chef gig, which inevitable leads to failure, but you keep your position. You get a buddy hired there and later you get a call from your first chef. He needs a sous, so you and your buddy come back, and so on. Eventually, you have four or six guys who have worked elbow to elbow for so long, in so many situations that they can communicate without words. A squad is a team of line cooks who get jobs together, leave jobs together and make people a lot of money in the process. We pick up good servers, bartenders, et al. along the way and create a culture.
That's the dream at least and it can very well happen - if you are a solid line cook.
A solid line cook knows their place and keeps their cool under pressure, able to maintain a productive calm through the pressure until service is over. It's only after several promotions and earning the title sous chef can a culinarian actually voice an opinion. This is the place temperament gets in the way of many careers, but those who can avoid it tend to keep moving onward and upwards until the eventual chef title is bestowed upon them.
That's when ego really can take over.
Until recently this was the point that most chefs stop slinging knives and start carrying clipboards. Cheffing - as any managerial position - is about delegation, utilization of your tools, proper placement of the soldiers in the field, aces in their places. The irony is that once a line cook is made chef,  the skills that gained him the recognition and reputation to be considered for the position are also the things he must turn his back on. Who has time to monger the fish or put away the produce truck when there are labor costs to calculate and functions to plan?
However, there is another breed of chef, one who doesn't turn their backs on the position that taught them how to live their lives. A chef who refuses to give up that well-earned saute position, who preps his station nightly, who does the deep cleaning, who gets involved in 'The Game' and drinks with the boys. One who gets their hands dirty in the grease trap as well as the media or customers - more of all of these things in fact because he now has to do those things in addition to the chef/manager duties.

There are plenty in our business who are even keeled and respectable individuals who pay parking tickets on time and remember to leave the seat down. These highly skilled professionals can remember that at the end of the day its just a job. Then there are the rest of us. We are highly skilled professionals who are in search of over stimulation - because that's what the job entails: all day long eating. Not meals mind you, but a constant stream of tablespoonfuls of everything. The most decadent, rich parts of the process must be quality tested. I cannot think of a time when one of my senses were being overstimulated when the others didn't decide to join in the fun. If you're eating then you're also smelling. All day long, smell is the first line of defense against bad product. Also the first sign you've fucked up - I cant tell you how many times I've heard a chef yell, "What's burning in the oven?" and know I have forgotten about the goddamned croutons again. One chef had me eat the sheet tray straight in hopes that'd learn me. You can tell bacon is done when you can smell it. Fresh baked bread. There are huge fans blowing all day. The rattle of overworked refrigeration, the constant hum-hiss of the dish machine and the rattle of glasses. It comforting, but gets loud and therefor we get loud. Add to that irritant of the heat of poorly ventilated galley kitchens. Heat can cause people to act erratically. I know, I know, but the person who coined that phrase obviously had cooks who were complaining to him for a new hood fan and was not, himself, a professional cook. Its brutal. The probe thermometer in my coat pocket regularly touches 120-25 while working the broiler. I'm there for five hours straight on a busy night. It is no mystery why cooks tend to get fired a lot, walk out of jobs, and generally be pains in the ass who acquire unnatural affection for the bottle.
The early line cook phase of some of the most ambitious and successful cooks were a phase they couldn't keep a job more than eight months to a year, chasing quarter-an-hour raises, better equipped kitchens and more interesting food. How many restaurants has Anthony Bourdain worked at? Thomas Keller was famously described himself a 'hothead' early on. Who fired Keller? Please stand up!
Maybe the search for over stimulation is the key. Maybe the sensory overload is the unifying element of the kitchen. The addiction itself at the root.
Linecook for Life is meant as a rallying cry for a certain breed of cook. We feel that cooks (and therein all levels of restaurant worker) can take pride in their part of the greater whole. Chefs who maintain their levels of intensity and actually work the line are a dying breed. I'm not talking expo and working the pass. Im talking a chef who steps in and clears the pit at the end of a long Saturday to show appreciation to the dishwasher, help the underpaid kid (who you were a billion years ago) and cut down on the evenings labor costs all in the same fell swoop is a rare and beautiful thing. Dishwashers who are coming up can look up to the rest of the Crew and possibly help inspire a career in food. Servers can see this passion and cooperation, step up and accomplish tasks that help the restaurant at large, not just their section.
Passion begets passion.
Linecook for Life is a state of mind illustrating what one can achieve if they remember hard work creates success at every level of this industry.
Restaurants are like the rest of the world and thereby flawed. I don't celebrate those flaws, but rather share the flaws that have created the chef that I am. Good and bad decisions make up us all - everything I'm not is everything I am. Though I have moved up the brigade system and may no longer be a line cook... I will always be a line cook, regardless of whichever of my hats I happen to be wearing - fun dad, devoted husband, Cardinal fan, drinking buddy, kitchen manager.
Being a line cook has made me a better person.
I am proud to be a linecook for life.

James Pawl Kane
Chef & Linecook