A cook’s tale chapter-4 (last call)
It’s not that it’s Friday, more like I’m the new guy and I still have no idea what to expect, from the biz to the chef to the sous to the servers and I know what’s on my prep list. Mushrooms. Those damnable mushrooms. I wished for a blowtorch so I could caramelize those fuckers all at once and be done with them. What the f#*k! Why do I have to caramelize each individual mushroom when the f#&*ing shrimp tastes like meal worm!?!?! Tell you what, lets just throw these fuckers on a sheet-pan and roast them off in the convection oven. OK? They’re one ingredient in one dish, I think we can get over ourselves…because, considering the venue, this is a bar restaurant, not the other way around. To tell you the meat-smacking truth, if I were ever there I would go for the concept, if the food’s good, bonus. I don’t give a half a can of extra virgin if each and every piece of mushroom in my $18 dollar pasta is individually caramelized, I wouldn’t be able to tell at that point, IT’S A f#&*ing JAZZ CLUB!! As a chef it is great to have your ideals/ideas expressed and as a cook it is great to be pushed to perfection, but let’s be serious folks, Mr. Beard is not in the building, and quite honestly, I don’t think he’d like this over-perfectionist bullshit either.
I still suck. f#*k cooks, f#*k me and f#*k you. I can’t manage this god dam mushroom dish! I scorch two pans and eventually only have one going, infinitely slowing me down, how am I supposed to caramelize twelve pounds of mushrooms in one f#&*ing pan! I juggle that ALL DAY with the rest of my prep, and we get ready for service, the chef and the sous are bouncing me around like a play-thing, a couple of cats playing with a mouse, offering insight on everything but my hair cut. I throw some pasta in, she throws some chicken in, he watches…she doesn’t tell me about the chicks so they stay in there much longer than they should have. One of my first dishes…is a chicken, f#*k, I don’t want to serve this dried piece of chicken-jerky! I’ve got the sauce going, I add a little salt and before I taste it, the chef asks me to taste it. f#*k, he knows its been scorched because I was never told it was in the oven and was trying to hide it with salt, maybe some lemon to make it palatable, a little butter, and now he’ll call me out on it. “What do you taste?” He asks.
“Salt.” I reply, because that is the immediate answer. The burnt taste doesn’t hit me until 30 seconds later. OK now I get it, he thinks I’m over-salting his food, not trying to salvage a sauce.
“Then add a little lemon juice.” He offers, but why can’t he taste what I taste? Fuckit. Not my place. (And that is not how I want to feel! I take pride in myself and this is like a twist of the blade.) He walks away. I set the timer for the famous “six-minutes” (you’re on!) and the sous grabs it from me under the pretense of cleaning it, rubbing away as if it is the magic orgasm machine and I fire the order. Me and the grill. Boom-Ba-Bippity-here’s your food! “Fourteen minutes!” She declares, scouringly. No. Not a chance in bloody blue hell on Dante’s left side of a bag-piping shaved mother of a hound dog could that dish have taken fourteen minutes off my life…nope. I want to ask for the timer, for proof, eight to ten I could believe…but she holds it back, apparently it’s not polished enough. Fuckit. Carry-on, it’s Friday, let’s go! I try reducing some chicken stock to eventually make a decent sauce out of, but as with everything, their eyes are on me. “What’s this?!?” it’s like a sneer…
“Uhh…chicken stock?” I try to reply as casually as possible, I don’t want to tell him that the pans are scorched and that despite his tasting it I don’t want to serve it.
“OK…” he’s agitated, as if telling the dunce to get back in the corner.”…look, you take the stock and reduce it in the pan the chicken came out of. It’s more flavorful that way.” But if the pan’s burned, hey lets all eat crap and smile! I agree in theory but this bitch set me up man!
Oh speaking of that, we’ll go back a little…I had managed the prep and set up my station despite those f#&*ing mushrooms, and it being my fourth day with minimal training, I’m doing pretty good! The sous is going to the walk-in for “last-call”. “Arright!” She announces, “What are you going to run out of at 9:30? I’m going to the walk-in.” We each rattle off something, mine being mushroom stock for the ever-popular mushroom pasta, which I promptly forget about, bad idea. I set up, get hit, take criticism from the chef on the line the sous on expo and try to communicate with the grill. I’m doing ok for a Friday on my own with helpful pointers from the chef, after the rush he finds other outlets to channel into. I plate one of those chickens I can’t seem to get on the right side of the round plate and the sous, expediting, says, “More sauce.” I’ve been putting the same amount of sauce on this f#&*ing dish all night and now it’s “more sauce”
“Ok” I put more sauce on the thing. Fuckit. Not my place.
“No. More sauce on the chicken!” Apparently she wanted the sauce on the actual bird, which is contrary to what I ‘d already been taught. She told me not to put the sauce on the bird as to not wet the crispy skin. Mmmmm….crispy skin! (Thank-you Homer Simpson!). So I’m confused… “But…” I try.
“Sauce. Now!” she demands. Wow, she’s pretty upset! Now if this was the middle of the rush there is no way on god’s good green earth I would have questioned her, but seeing as I’m in between fires, I want to know why the discrepancy (fng), it seems this is the last straw, you must not question the sous chef in times of peace! The chef comes over, “What’s going on?” shit. I don’t know what passed between them, only the unspoken words of too many bone-crunching nights together, I believe, because all they do is glance at each other.
After my twentieth mushroom pasta, I get another to fire, guess what time it is? 9:30! (OK, 9:36!) He asks where my back up stock is. Ummm…shit, I look at the sous, she looks away, and it’s nowhere to be found. Mushroom stock? We don’t need no mushroom stock! “Hey, look, go to the walk-in and grab some…I got this.” He says meaning the rest of the line. Feeling like a lab-reject I go to the walk-in and get the stock that should’ve been on-line. I’m taking second seat now and he’s plating most of the dishes, I’m screwed, done. I go thinking that this wh%%e has set me up from the word yay. Never once telling me where anything was or showing me anything, admonishing me, belittling me and now sabotaging me by not telling me about the chicken in the oven and leaving the one thing I knew I would run out of in the walk-in! I still remember the smug look on her face as I walked out of the kitchen for the last time.
So after four days of being made to feel like I was an illegitimate, half-retarded, stepson of a circus chimp, the chef asks me to go home and think about whether or not I want to “buy-in” to what they were doing there. No, actually. I didn’t want to “buy-in”, f#*k, I wanted to “cash-out” after my first day. But, like all good gamblers, I was content to pay for the blinds and wait for my hand, until I realized we were playing Bridge, not Hold-‘em. Fudge-crackers! I don’t even like Bridge! So I chewed it over, as the saying is. I decided that not only do I not like Bridge; I don’t like playing with cheaters either. I call the restaurant the next day to confirm that we’re all on the same page (I think I’ll turn in my chips, baby), and guess who answers, my Machiavellian tormentor. I can practically see the snide vowels of distorted victory dripping from her tongue. Yup, I was beat. If there was any gas left in that engine, she had managed to siphon the last of it out with just a few words.
He calls me back on my cell and we agree on an amicable departure. But I (being the abject perfectionist that I am) want to know what I can do better in the future. He tells me to be a better student, not to take everything so personally…to stop making faces (you know it’ll freeze like that!), I make faces? hmmm…that maybe I would be better off in some place smaller…he wished me well and told me to look inside myself and decide if this was something I wanted to do. So I did. I was depressed for days, I didn’t shave or leave the house…but I did start to write. I wouldn’t say I’m bitter, but I would say there were demons to be exorcised here and I thank you for putting up with them…and me. I was just reading the other day that after you write about something it fades from your memory like a photograph left in the sun…maybe that should be updated for the internet age because the chef sent me an e-mail…
well, i would love to see the chefs’ email that he sent you. you def should’ve given a few training experience pointers, but actually i think you are a great writer, i enjoyed every last word, and felt like i was right there with you.
you should write a book, maybe call it, “confessions of a chef in the making sabotaged by an insecure sous”.
i worked for tavern @ granite links in quincy, what a bunch of frauds-if you want more of this treatment, work there!
anyhow, keep writing, it brings a smile to my face!!