LCFL #014//Family & Friends

So I am walking my daughter into school a few Mondays back. I see a classmate of her’s mother walking towards me. I have seen this woman a few times. She seems friendly yet I can never remember her, her husband or her daughter’s name. She stops directly in front of me, requiring me to stop whilst I am walking. She has my attention.

                    

“I came out to your restaurant Friday night.”

“Oh, fantastic. With… (what’s his name? what’s his name? fuck!)  your husband?”

“Yes, Chris (Chris!) and I enjoyed everything very much.”

“What did you get?”

“The duck and the scallops.”

“That’s great. I really app-“

“You didn’t come out to our table.”

“Oh. I don’t remember anyone telling me that-“

“Tim was our server. We told him to tell you.”

“Uhhhh…”

It all comes back to me:

It’s about 7:45. We have 26 open menus in our 50 seat restaurant. In case you are unfamiliar with the restaurant lingo that means we are about to get hit very hard. All the orders are about to come in at once. Not to mention the other 20 or so people we are in the midst of preparing at that moment. I am flying, I am delegating, I am rolling. Things are smooth, but in that not-for-long kind of way. A busboy – the dumb one who I think is stealing beers - comes in the kitchen and says to me, “Tim says someone out there knows you.”

“Oh, that’s fantastic, any further details? A name?”

“No. I don’t know. Wait… what?” He then drops a tray of glasses because I “distracted him” and the entire exchange is lost in cleaning, chastising and dealing.

Back to the school mom:

“… I don’t remember anyone telling me you were out there. There was a very busy moment someone told me someone wanted to see me, but I was-“

“Too busy to visit a friend when they come out to support you? I guess so. It was rude. We won’t be back.” She then extricates herself from my path and walks away, feeling confident she has crushed my hopes and dreams of a return visit and successfully shitting in someone else’s corn flakes.

Needless to say, I was a bit irritated.

When you come to my restaurant on a Friday night you cannot expect me to be able to walk out of the kitchen and chit chat for ten to fifteen about your daughter's freshman year at Brown. Come in on a Monday night and I will go nuts, bananas and several other delicious toppings. Multiple courses. Off menu specials. Chats at the table.

Friday? I am balls deep in other people's food.

You know that saying 'You always hurt the ones you love?' Hurt should be changed to disregard. I figure those closest to me are the ones who understand the job I do as well as the person I am. I am singularly focused. Of course I want to cook for my near and dear more than I want to cook for anyone else. Trust me that the meals I cook for my wife and daughter are my highlights each week. I want to entertain my friends at the shop, too, but within certain parameters. Otherwise I’m stressing that I can’t visit you while I’m buried in the back.

And no, do not come into the kitchen.

You are not welcome in my sanctuary of salty language and controlled chaos. You walk in and find me elbow deep in various proteins, seasoning madly away, juggling between spoons and spatulas, sweat pouring down my face and a flaring grill behind me for dramatic effect. It’s not what you expected. You expected me to be...what? Staring at a piece of chicken, searching for inspiration? Watching food network and Gordan Ramsey? Or perhaps polishing my all-clad cookware? No, I’m in the dishpit fixing the grease trap.

That’s when I hear your voice saying, "Hi Pawl!"

I come to a screeching halt.

Goddamned it.

I have to flip a mental switch, my assassin's filter is removed and my regular-dick filter kicks in. My voice changes from commanding to hospitable. I may even get a few witty comments out.

All that’s going on in my head is,"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck donthteyhearmytimersgoingofffuck."

If you're cool to be in and out without much more than a hello from me or a thank you at the end - but not both - then by all means come on down on the weekend. I do my best to pop out and chat, but I am the chef of an understaffed kitchen. The days of clipboard chefdom are over. Working chefs work. If you look around and see a full dining room, servers sweating, hostess looking panicked, please put two and two together: I will not be visiting the table any time soon. I do have some family who get bothered by this, though. You know what, I’m going to come down to your office and walk into your cube and just start shooting the shit and interrupt your busy day of minesweep and staring out the window or whatever regular ass folks do at work.

As for my daughter’s friend’s mother and her husband Chris, they have been back several times, and each time I see their names on the books – oh, I know their names now – I instruct the server who gets their table to tell them I am currently at home praying they come back and am currently unavailable.

James Pawl Kane

Chef & Way Too Busy For You

Apprentice Anonymous No. 3: In Vino Veritas Or Whatever They Say

I find my truth in whiskey. The person I become after two stiff drinks is the only constant in my personality. I find that on any given day my perspective on any given situation may alternate entirely between two extremes. Polar opposites. 

Better yet, bi-polar opposites. 

I find myself in this constant struggle, this tug-of-war between wanting to care about things, to develop an educated opinion, and then also the "fuck it, nothing matters; time is spherical, we're all dust anyhow" mindset. And so two bourbons on the rocks brings me to a level of my consciousness that is most familiar to me. I become this personality that I like to think of myself as when I am not in it.  A character. A celestial identity. My opinions - and emotions - are magnified in this state. And they are always the same when I return. I often wonder if this is my true self. I feel that I have become one with I, and therefor "the universe," (because we're all just stardust anyway).

But it's never just two drinks. 

The two wears off eventually. So two turns to three. Turns to four, turns to ten. Ultimately my brilliance at two becomes stifled by ten because of the continuous hunt of higher consciousness.
I am a self-destructive creature. Both in my desire to torture myself with rotten swill and my infallible ability to smite my own potential.

While I take no real belief in zodiac mythology, I am a Leo, and I believe, whether by stars or circumstance, that what "they" say about Leos is pretty accurate. I do nothing productive or creative except for observation by others. This does not mean that I take no personal gratification from my accomplishments; I simply desire to gratify others at the same time. 

"Oh the wonder of me!" - Peter Pan.

I can't help but feel these two staples of my personality help explain my existence in the kitchen. The kitchen, whether it be prep time or service, never fails to provide me with a constant. The clean just-laid cutting board atop a shiny stainless steel table, with a pile of produce on my left, provides me a moment of clarity.

My obsession with Kerouac has always had my second conscious nagging my foremost conscious to take up meditation, and practice the dharma. But I find my zen right here, knife in hand, calmly yet meticulously preparing for service. So thus, at three every afternoon, I am always the same almost fictional identity in a state of pseudo-zen that I am always striving for outside of "the office."

Service applies the same mindset, it's just faster and even more meticulous. But still it simplifies the mind and the task at hand, and it's still just do, do, do. 

And make it look beautiful, of course.

On a busy night, when you've dropped into tunnel vision, and you're sweating ferociously and gasping for air, the pat on the back, the hug, or even the kiss on the god damned lips from your chef afterwards, is really the type of gratification we seek as line cooks. You can milk your own udder all you want about how busy you were and how well you handled it, but if somebody else wasn't watching you and holding the bucket, well then fuck it.

-Kleb Tuckett

LCFL #013// Don't Call Me Chef

Are title and name
synonymous?

"Don't you realize you can't treat people like this?"
"This is the way kitchens work. The chef says go and people go."
"The chef can't fuck people all day and expect them to still go with any real loyalty."
"Then they'll lose the privilege of my god damned kitchen."
"That's backwards!"
"What are you talking about?! That's how fucking kitchens run! That's how it works! Don't you know anything? I mean, haven't you been in a kitchen before?!"
"I've been cooking for fifteen fucking years, 'Fred'."
"That's it. You're done. You don't call me 'Fred'. You're done. Go clean out your locker."
And with that another job was lost.
A good one, too.
Steady spot in a kitchen that was really becoming something. The chef had some real stripes - I think he soused for Bolud or Ripert or one of those NYC cats. His cuisine was exciting and he had just gotten clearance to rebuild the kitchen into a culinarian's wet dream, complete with sous vide station. I was the rounds man in a very solid situation.
Problem was I just can never keep my mouth shut.
Chefs have a tendency - myself included - to have blinders on during service. We forget regularly that the tortellini for five isn't the only thing in the world going wrong. We yell. Sometimes some of us allow it to get personal. I have seen some temper tantrums. Saw a guy get dressed down - the chef's finger all a-wagglin' in dude's face, spittle flying from the enraged leader's lips as he belittled and insulted away - all because he asked if he was going to be able to leave at his scheduled time or if he needed to call the sitter. No repercussions for the chef. The line cook was taken off the schedule. I saw a guy stand in the corner of the walk in freezer for half an hour - his punched out break time - over burning a tray of croutons. I saw a female chef refer to her saucier as a pussy after the towel in his hand caught fire and he scorched his hand good and asked if he cold step off the line. I'm still amazed he asked and then said, "Thank you, Chef," as he walked off line - even, "Yes, Chef," when she yelled at him to hurry up.
Usually, the promotion to sous chef is where this starts to break down. Once a chef accepts you as a sous then he is admitting by default that you might be pretty good. That's usually when, at least in the quiet moments, that one can address the chef by his given name. Anytime the chef is upset, whether at you or someone else, it'll be right back to Chef though.
So when I had earned a few stripes myself, had worked for a few Michelin stars, cheffed a few kitchens and created a few winning dishes, I felt I had earned the title. I thought my chef recognized me as possibly his intellectual equal and as a human being with emotions. I thought that maybe - just maybe - I had earned the right to address my chef by his christian name in a moment of honesty and an attempt at human connection. One chef to another.
Nope.
You see, there is a history of the title 'chef' being held in such high regards as 'doctor' or 'admiral' or 'officer.' A job title that connotes a high level of expertise and therefore a prefix added to your name. Most prefer to simply be called 'Chef,' bypassing any need for such a plebeian thing like a name. Everyone is a Vinnie or Debbie. Only the greats get called chef, right?
Wrong.

Don't call me chef.

For years, I lived above the worst diner in the city of Buffalo and the douche bag who owned the joint and ran the kitchen had a licence plate frame that simply said, 'Chef.' Chef, huh? From slinging hash at a filthy place in North Buff?! That's dubious. I don't wanna be lumped in with him. Not to sound like a pompous ass myself but I have achieved a little more than that and want to be regarded differently - I feel I am, but the title brings all that right back.
I also do not want to be included in the numbers of chefs like Fred who insist - on point of sight - to be referred to anyone within the industry as Chef. Respect is not something to demand but to earn. If someone - after eating your food, seeing your sanitation practices, watching you butcher meat and monger fish, listening to you wax poetic about the season properties of various herbs, and outdrink the entire front of the house - wants to bestow the title on you, then so be it.
They can feel free to call you Chef. You earned that shit. It would be an honorific.
I believe that to be the original intent.
Instead of trying to redefine the word to be used as a title, I just say give it up. Let it go. I like how Thomas Keller uses the term in his kitchen: everyone calls everyone chef. If you're in the kitchen in the finest establishment in the world then you are obviously chef caliber. Even down to the lowliest prep kid - do they even have that at the laundry? I know they have prep, but lowly? Keller has taken it back and removed the pomposity from the term and the title.
So, since my run in with 'Fred' I have decided to take my own stance: Don't call me chef. I try not to be too obnoxious about it, I don't correct people until we have a regular relationship or whatever. I just invite those around me to call me by my name, please. My name is Pawl. I like it. It is an odd spelling I know, but it is what it is. I can also use it as a way of filtering phone calls between those I do and do not do business with already.
"This is Pawl."
"Hello, Chef, how are you today?"
"Oh, me? I'm not THE chef. He'll call you."
Click.

Pawl

Staging

            Experiences posses a great deal of affect over the development of a young cook's identity. The first chef, the first night on the line, the first failure on the line, the first dining experience that changes one's conception of what a restaurant can offer. These are moments of substance, which will forever rise above the countless services that often blend into one another as a series of practiced and repetitive actions. The challenge to the cook as his or her career steadily advances is to occasionally rise above the repetition that is mandated by the nature of our industry and seek out new, informative experiences that will contribute to our culinary identity.

            Within my own world I've been seeking out these experiences through the institution of staging, one of the great remnants of an older time for our industry. Although the apprenticeship model has been largely abandoned in this country, the practice of staging remains entrenched within our culture as there is seldom a restaurant that will turn away free labor. It is a symbiotic relationship between the restaurant and the stagiaire, as the kitchen benefits from a presumably competent set of hands, and the cook gains insights into the restaurant's food and style of service that cannot be understood by simply eating at the establishment. These experiences become distinct in the mind as we force ourselves into an abrasive foreign environment filled with commotion. We feel alien to this space that is not our own, but often warm quickly to its environment as the typical landmarks of a kitchen become readily apparent. Cooks quickly go from strangers to temporary compatriots with the realization that their prep lists became a bit shorter, their stress a bit subdued, and for a night you become a member of the line working towards the same goal as the rest of the staff.

            The cook is welcomed because of the assistance he can lend, while the experience is pivotal to the stagiaire because it offers a fresh vision, a different perspective on the same ingredients we all become accustomed to seeing in our respective walk-ins. It is this breadth of experiences that function to guide a line cook's development, constructing a more nuanced character that will only benefit him or her as the cook progresses towards the positions of sous and chef. But, more importantly, as I entered kitchens with Michelin stars, I witnessed a level of execution to which I was previously unaccustomed. Cooking was cleaner and more exact, stations more carefully manicured, and food plated more deliberately. This is of course a reflection of the number of cooks on the line, the demands that the chefs place upon the kitchen, and the expectations of the restaurant to meet a certain standard for dining, but it also inspires the stagiaire to embrace this level of service and bring it home to their own kitchen.

            While most cooks do not work within a service style that allows them to only plate three or four menu items, the behavior and standards of a Michelin cook are easily translatable to one that works in a more casual setting. Staging not only allows the cook to experience new modes of preparation, but more importantly he or she witnesses a level of cookery that inspires change in their own work ethic. We come home to the comfort of familiar walls and temperamental ovens, bearing with us the inspiration to change for the better, the challenge to embrace an ethic we only experienced momentarily. I will continue to immerse myself in foreign walls, consuming that which is unfamiliar while fitting these experiences into a constantly shifting culinary identity. Roaming Linecook For Life.

Ian