The Beautiful Struggle

My chef was just chattering today while we were running through our Valentine's Day prep and he mentions the movie Julie and Julia. Now I've yet to see this movie, which is damn near heresy in the food-o-sphere, but I hear good things. Le Chef shares the opinion that many others do. Basically yay for Meryl Streep and Julia Child, boo for Amy Adams and whoever the hell she plays. He ends his quip with a question to me and asks, "Why don't you write a blog about your road to culinary school? Maybe people will find it interesting. Maybe for some reason they'll think you're interesting enough to talk about."

Well thanks for the faith in my life being somewhat intriguing, but actually I already started that so, :P.

But I realize some must think, "Oh look at Eric, trying to be so different and look at how exciting he makes his career out to be and how much he enjoys it. Ooooh fancy!" But that's not always the case. True, I do enjoy my career, it's the reason I'm pursuing it in the first place, but it's not all puppies and rainbows. It's kind of like the first year of a relationship. Everything's all exciting; you're learning new things, experiencing new experiences, everything is so goddamned lovey-dovey. But there are a bunch of roadblocks just on the horizon. All jobs are hard in their own way, kitchen work is just hard in a different sort of way. And when it gets hard it can really test your mettle.

Today was not a good day (Sorry, Ice Cube). Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And it all started because the guy who usually works the cold station really didn't prep his station at all. He wiped it out on Wednesday and left me a laundry list of shit to do and some. I knew that going in to the day and it still caused a bevy of hiccups.

I wish I had a photo (so you could see how shitty my handwriting has become) but here's what my prep list looked like. I usually write down the list of things on a blank sheet of receipt paper.

2 recipes budinos (2 sheet trays large, 2 small)
200 arancini
Basil pesto
Roast squash/zucc
Roast beet
Beet carpaccio
Pesto butter
Strawberries
Oranges
Normal prep

So basically what that means is I have to prep about 200 budinos, which are mini chocolate cakes essentially, 200 arancini, which are fried risotto balls, and then all that other shit on top of normal prep responsibilities for my station. I am pissed, I am fucked, I am so deep in the weeds I can't see the sky.

Making two recipes of budinos requires me to crack 64 eggs, and then separate 64 yolks, so 128 eggs and be careful to get no eggshells in the mix. 200 arancini means I have to cook about a pound of risotto and steep saffron, and risotto requires your undivided attention for at least 30 min. Cool it, add fontina cheese, form it in to 200 one oz. balls, bread it, fry it. And then all the other shit requires some time and I have about 3 hours until service to do it. Granted, I should have come in early to make sure everything was done in time but I fucked up and woke up late. Oh did I mention I have to make employee meal also?

I knock out the pesto, the roasted veg and start working on the budinos. Cracking eggs takes about 15 min. to my surprise, but mixing the bastard and then pouring it out into individual cake ramekins wrapped in plastic wrap takes almost 30 min. I decide to make jalapeno mac and cheese for employee meal and that takes me at least a half an hour as well. By the time 5 PM rolls around I'm not really close to being ready.

Around 6 PM my chef asks me where the arancini are. They are on the antipasti menu for tonight. I was under the impression they were being prepped for this weekend, not tonight. They were sitting in the cooler waiting to be formed in to balls and breaded. Shit.

We kind of half-ass a solution but the risotto is undercooked. My fault. I throw it back on the stove with some chicken stock and then I overcook it. My fault again. Things are not going well because orders are being called and I'm still trying to prep for the night. I'm running back and forth between the stoves and the pantry to stir my risotto and make salads at the same time. I am pissed off that I am left in this situation.

So I start acting like a child. Slamming cutting boards and oven doors, hacking off endive roots with brutal alacrity, cursing under my breath and shoving finished plates in to the window with careless bitterness. The staff starts to notice, and the Mexicans get annoyed. Finally, Luis curses me out after I slam the oven door right by his station.

"Huevon, a la casa!"

Huevon is an insult to mean a lazy, stupid person. I was taught this recently and I did not appreciate for a second that I was a) being called lazy when I was picking up someone elses' slack, b) being told to go home by someone who is not my boss.

I continue my immature behavior and shout back, "I'm not fucking lazy! Maybe Maestro should have done some fucking work yesterday!"

He retorts, "Shut up you little bitch" in English.

It's never good to get someone so angry they consider physical violence. It's especially never good to do this in a kitchen where there are a plethora of sharp knives and fiery objects around. Now I'm not very good at throwing knives (It's an optional part of the curriculum in Asian Parenting 101), but I do have a big one in my hands. I come much closer than I would like to admit to actually throwing the thing at Luis' face. It's pretty difficult to get me this enraged, but I've taken enough abuse for the day. I end up pointing the knife menacingly at him and taking an unfortunate amount of time to come up with a good riposte.

I can't call him lazy. This guy is actually fairly well-off in Mexico, but he came to America anyway to work 14 hour days. He starts at 7 AM at Bravo! Italian Restaurant and then comes straight to Va P to work a dinner shift. Shit, that won't work..

I can't call him fat, as immature as that would be, because he's actually one of the thinner guys in the kitchen. I can't knock him on his cooking because he's a solid and reliable cook. So my only choices are to be really stupid and say something borderline racist, or just give him a big "Fuck you."

I opt for the latter. I shout "FUCK YOU, pinchi culero," which translates to "FUCK YOU, you fucking asshole." Effective I know. He flips me the Mexican bird (which is kind of like a flick of the palm) and the chef comes in to give me a stern talking to. He doesn't think the dining room heard me, but I'm being loud enough that he thinks it's a problem. He gives me a prompt, "Shut the fuck up."

I am seething, but I've stopped my petulant behavior and just turned it inwards. The dark side of the Force is pouring through me, but I'm being good enough to release my anger in to solid cooking. I get plates out fast, I plate desserts real fast, I just stop talking and stop thinking and just doing. Before I know it almost everything is done, except the last recipe of budinos (all the eggs are cracked, and the ramekins are ready, he just needs to mix and pour).

But I'm still furious and every time someone talks to me I grunt back and give them a dirty look. I avoid eye contact with Luis because it'll just make me more angry. I am hating every inch of this stupid kitchen and all the foreign Mexican chatter floating around. I leave with a serious urge to kill rising in my gut.

This was just one of those days that makes you hate your job. Every job has those kind of days, but in a kitchen these days usually coincide with the busiest weekends. Valentine's Day is fucking war, kids. Whether you think it's a stupid holiday or a great excuse to get laid, it causes upheaval and panic in the restaurant industry. Okay, good restaurants won't panic, and we aren't panicking, but it is stressing me out. I have a long ass weekend ahead of me and I just want it to be over.

But that's the reality of the job and I had the whole way home to think about it. And the more I thought about it I realized, I was being a little bitch. Alright, you got screwed that's true. What the hell does complaining about it do? Nothing. Do you want someone to feel bad for you? Sack up. What does acting like a child throwing a fit do? Throws everyone else's chi off and disturbs the rhythm of service, not to mention just annoys people. Cooks often call the start of service time "curtain call," which is a very apt description. As soon as service starts, the show must go on. No one fucking cares what kind of bullshit is going on back there. Paying customers show up and they expect results. In hardcore kitchens there are no sick days, there are no excuses. Customers don't care if your dishwasher decided to not show. They don't care if your shipment of beef didn't come in, or that you by accidentally let a box of frisee rot. They just want their food, their restaurant experience, and they'll leave their money for it. Just get the job done.

This Rule #76 (No excuses, play like a champion) attitude to the job is both exciting and disheartening. When things are smooth it can really jack up your adrenaline as you feel you are in a constant, but winning battle against the customers and the clock. When things are bumpy, it is terrible. You're fighting a losing battle to keep up and god keeps throwing wrenches in your plan. There's nothing you can do, customers get pissed off, then the waiters get pissed off, then the cooks get pissed off. Shit hits the effing fan, chain reaction to hell commences.

So it's good and it's bad. That's the case with everything in life, nothing is perfect. Do I regret base jumping in to a kitchen with no real experience? Not for a second. Had I gone straight to culinary school like I had originally planned, I think there's a good chance I would have washed out. The pressure, the pace, the stress might have broken me. Do I wish it were easier sometimes? Yes, sometimes, but as my mom and eerily enough my chef always says, "If it were easy, everyone would do it." The difficulties of any job are something you either kind of enjoy and rise to the challenge of, or something that breaks you. Only the truly successful, the cream of the crop enjoy life's endless obstacles. Though they shave years off your life, cause you terrible stress at the time, overcoming them is an achievement in itself.

So while I've somehow managed to wax motivational again, with this whole "Life is unfair, work is difficult" shpiel, I'm glad this happened. Though the steam is just done boiling out of my ears, I realized that all the inspirational shit I tell myself, I now must start doing. Showing up is not enough. Work is not playtime. You didn't come here to socialize, you came here to hone your technique, to learn what it's like to work the line, to fight through service. To be thrown in to the weeds and to hack your way out. Well I didn't do a great job of it today, but I'll be ready next time. No more excuses, no more shortcuts.

The kitchen doesn't teach me everything. I learn a lot on my own because I read a ton of cookbooks and just expose myself to a lot of food information in general. When I make jalapeno mac and cheese, I don't need a recipe. I see jalapenos, I see various cheeses, vegetables, milk, butter, flour = Bechamel sauce with mixed cheeses, sauteed onions and jalapenos, combine and enjoy. Chef Jeff never taught me what a Bechamel sauce is (Blonde roux + milk, salt/pepper, mother sauce). I learned how to make that myself, embarassingly enough from Bobby Flay on an episode of Iron Chef I think. I learned the principles of what makes it work from Harold McGee. I know what a chiffonade cut is, I know how to dice an onion, I know how to hold a knife, I know what sauteing vs. braising does to meat because I learned it myself. I think Chef assumes I learned it at Oceanique. I didn't really learn anything at Oceanique. Almost all the food knowledge I have is of my own doing.

My point is, I need to stop relying on people to sympathize, to pick me up when I'm down. True, kitchens require teamwork. But I want to be an island. I'll help as necessary, but I want to be so badass of a cook that I can bump you off your station and work 2 of them like it was nothing. That will require my ongoing personal quest for knowledge and a strong application of it in the field. This isn't a profession that people just happen in to or can't escape anymore. This is becoming an ultra-competitive profession that people will fight tooth-and-nail to succeed at. I'm not saying you have to cut people down on your way to the top, but you have to learn how to rely on yourself and your skills as a cook.

As a generation of young people who have no idea what they want to do with their lives is beginning to bloom, I think a lot of them are finding their way in to the restaurant business. It's an attractive industry for these kind of people who, like me, think of cubicles as galleys, and ties as nooses. Of course everyone would like to work for Thomas Keller at Per Se. It's the best restaurant in America. What are you going to do to earn that though? Thankfully, politics and appearances do little to get you there. It's all about how you handle service, how much you know about food, how unquenchable your thirst is, how impeccable you can be, and how well you can fight your way out of the weeds. At the end of the day it' just about how well you can fucking cook.

Recently an American cook quit Va Pensiero. He said he was really into molecular gastronomy and didn't really fit in with the food and the people here, but really he had sort of a meltdown one night like I almost did tonight. It was maybe 3 weeks since his first day. On his first day the Chef asked him to make our beef tenderloin dish, kind of as a tryout. Grilled beef medallions, garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed rapini, glazed shitake mushrooms, beef peppercorn sauce. The Chef asked for medium rare. I watched him cut it open to see a grayish ring of meat and a pink center. Medium, rested improperly. He knew he had kind of pushed it past temp and plated it too soon. The Chef hired him anyways. But now that he's gone, he has a sort of resentment that his cooking style was scorned for this newfangled scientific school of cooking. He tells me one day,

"That's great and all if you're in to molecular gastronomy. But before you do all that you got to learn to hit medium rare."

Lesson learned. Onwards and upwards.

EP6