Front of the House vs. Back of the House

My apologies for the hiatus. A week of starting work at Blu, moving, and working in the kitchen kicked my ass. But here I am, ready to rock, living in Chicago at the Buckingham Palace, ready to start anew.

Now that I live in a real person apartment, I feel I can finally get a rhythm going and start really setting the eyes on the prize. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time living at 912, and a great time living at Frisbee house. But the time has come for me to move on from living with 11-13 people under one roof. And the time has come for me to get out of Evanston. Oh wait...

Yeah two jobs in Evanston. Not really leaving that college bubble yet. Oh how I dread serving you NU punks at Blu. Students just tip poorly, I don't blame you but it's the facts. The past two weeks have made me realize a few things about serving.

I haven't waited tables for years, and to be doing it for a job I guess is okay. The money can be good, and the job has relevance to my career, but it can just be a huge pain in the ass. Trying to placate a customer who clearly just wants nothing more than to bitch and moan at every given opportunity takes supreme patience. It's easy to keep a smile on when you're serving a nice customer. It's disproportionately harder to keep that smile genuine when dealing with a serious jerk. So here I am, at the juxtaposition of the restaurant business; front of the house vs. back of the house. Both are absolutely crucial to a successful restaurant. In fact, many people, myself included, believe that a restaurant with great service and mediocre food wins out over a place with stellar food and mediocre service.

Why is that? Well that's the heart of the restaurant experience I guess. People go to restaurants to celebrate, to relax, to have a good time mainly. The food can sometimes be secondary to that experience. People want to feel waited on and treated well, to let someone else take over the reins for an evening. An impeccable wait staff can really do wonders to compensate for kitchen mishaps, or poorly executed food. After all a restaurants profits really depend more on regulars and repeat customers than experimental newcomers. To earn regulars, to keep regulars, you need a well-oiled front of the house.

But then you ask the dangerous question; which is easier? Both sides love to argue that their job is harder, and me being a cook at heart definitely makes me a little biased. But I'll try to analyze this as objectively as I can.

Let's start with front of the house. You make more money, or at least you usually make more money. You work less hours (fact not opinion), you get to shower, dress nice, smell good and converse with customers, really use your people skills. You get AIR CONDITIONING. You get to see firsthand how a customer is enjoying their meal, their whole experience. You get thanked in person and get the satisfaction of knowing your customer is happy if you do your job right. That gratitude is manifested in cold, hard cash.

But then again, when things are going badly it can be real bad. When a customer gets pissed off, or wants to send back a dish it's you who has to grin and take it. To weather the verbal assault, to settle the anger, to alleviate the awkwardness. You have to make things right and it's not always concrete on how to do it. Every customer is different, is fickle and requires a different approach. Sometimes it's not even your fault but your income will be afflicted by it either way. No matter who you are, having someone be pissed at you never feels good. Messing up an order, not serving as you know you should, or god forbid spilling something is a terrible, terrible feeling.

Back of the house. The good? You get a fixed salary, and a steady job. A lot of waiters have to supplement their jobs with second jobs. You can usually sit pretty with one. You can learn a lot, the physical act of cooking can be both rewarding and fun. You get to flex your creative muscles here and there, and best of all you don't really have to deal with shitty customers if you're a line cook. You just keep your head down and do your job, and if you love that job like I do then it's great.

Oh but there's plenty of bad. The kitchen is a fierce place. It. Is. Hot. You will be gross and sweaty by the end of it, reeking of some kind of animal flesh and covered in a just perceptible film of grease. You work long ass hours doing manual labor and a lot of the times it's in a state of high stress and panic. On a busy night you are in an insane frenzy of cooking that can easily go horribly awry. You just have to rely on your muscle memory and most basic brain functions to go at that speed. If you fuck up a dish, if it gets sent back? Damn, that's a bad feeling too. And all the while some fat guy is yelling at you to go harder, faster no matter if you're doing well or not. You can injure yourself, you WILL injure yourself at some point, and generally it's thankless. You are a faceless, non-existent entity, simply an extension of the chef's creativity and genius. You are an integral part of the machine, but like so many obscure parts in a car engine, most people don't know what you do until you're gone.

The funny thing is, being a chef blends those aspects together. Most chefs these days present themselves in the dining room occasionally, or at least put their faces on websites so people know who's making their meal. So Blu can really help me out a bit here, I can get some more serious experience knowing what it takes to make the front of the house work. But which do I prefer? Which do I think is genuinely harder? Being a cook of course.

Those conditions sound pretty bad, but that's something you can love about cooking. I don't know how to quantify it so well, but all of that actually sounds good to me. It is truly a labor of love, and I feel bad for cooks who hate their jobs and do it solely for a living. It is truly a back-breaking job, and a spirit-breaking one at that if you don't derive any pleasure from it.

So here we go, establishing my life rhythm downtown, embarking on my culinary adventure to learn everything about restaurants. I'm playing catch up to the greats. I want to be great. So this year will hopefully be enough time for me to play some ample catch up. Grant Achatz unabashedly said, "I want to be famous. To be famous means you're the best." Well, Chef Achatz, you certainly are famous. Everyone knows who you are, and when I went to your cooking demo I seriously wasn't expecting a full house, standing-room only event where everyone knew you and wanted to see your magic. So you changed me then. You showed me firsthand the power of food, and I want to reach your level. Hopefully I will see you soon enough.

EP #6