Mastery

2011.

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but it is a convenient time for restaurant employees to refresh their spirits. The holiday rush is over, business will slow down and you will have time to think things over, get some rest, and refocus upon your goals.

We are no exception. The holiday season has been rough. The kitchen is a bit under rested and haggard. They've been doing just about the same 12-hour shifts, but the intensity and speed required of them was far more demanding. Doing prep, cooking to order, cleaning the kitchen with barely a moment's rest for 2-3 weeks can topple even the most vigorous cooks. They, as a line, are slowing down and becoming more irritable by the day. They need an opportunity to chill.

And the restaurant is just ... tired. Forgive me, I understand this is a bizarre concept to many people, but I kind of see restaurants as living entities. If I had my own restaurant right now I would consider closing on Monday, just to give the ole girl a day to rest. The effects of everyday wear-and-tear start to appear in strange places. Kitchen doors start denting and chipping from where waiters push through hundreds of times a night. Your shelves start falling apart from having stacks of heavy menus thrown at them every time someone is seated. Your dishwasher hose starts unraveling, the water starts losing a little pressure, there isn't time during a busy dinner rush to be ginger with the damn thing. Restaurants, like our bodies, start to deteriorate with constant use and abuse. Treat them well.

But I will admit, that aside from the physical aspect of rest, I have a number of goals to refocus upon. I just don't want to call them New's Year Resolutions. Applying that silly moniker to something often means it doesn't get done. If you're going to do something, then do it. When you set a start date, you only set a date for you to delay. If you want to change your life, do something about it now, don't wait for the sun to come round.

Just wait for your restaurant to be less busy ...duh.

I'm talking about mastery. The human body is a pitifully stupid vessel, slow to learn and clumsy without constant physical attention. But magically, like some kind of high, memory-specific specific heat, when we learn something we are also very slow to forget it.

I think that is the case for nigh any physical skill. There's proficiency and then there's mastery, but the latter is for life, you never lose it. Sure, I can make vegetable dumplings that almost resemble my mentor's, but he can do it with graceful ease and machine-like efficiency. Is the dough cold, is it too elastic today, or is it not elastic enough? Doesn't matter, it always looks and feels the same in his hands. Me? If our dough is not elastic enough it starts tearing. But if it's too elastic the filling starts slipping out. He recognizes my extreme level of novicehood, and takes care to make beginner-friendly dough, but dim sum is a finicky thing.

That's why even if you have revolutionary food ideas, or are an extremely creative and charismatic character, BUT you happen to be a mediocre cook ... you have no hopes of leading a real restaurant kitchen. Why should the cooks respect you? How can you begin to execute upon all your lofty ideas? You have to always consider that in the kitchen, one of the most primitive places left in our modern world of intellectual drudgery, you must lead by example. If you plan a menu, and let's say you're crazy enough to put consomme on it, and one of your cooks is about to botch it, do you have the intimate understanding of how consomme works to stop him? To fix it and teach him why he was about to fuck that up? Because if you can't, then not only do you risk fucking up all your dishes, but your kitchen crew, even if it isn't a mercenary band of hack cooks and lifers, will never grow and evolve in to something better.

Mastery means an intimate understanding of how something works, and an effortless ability to execute it to perfection. It means doing something so much that it is instinct and reflex, rather than premeditated thought. Even if you don't know the exact science behind something, you can tell by the feel, the smell, the sound and the sight of it. Does Luo Shi-fu know that the crystalline molecular structure of pork fat breaks up gluten, and that's why his pastry crust is so deliciously flaky? No. But as soon as he puts his hands to it he knows if it's right or not. If it pinches away cleanly, or pulls like a wad of gum under your sneaker, he knows to adjust accordingly with more flour or more fat. He's made it countless times in his life. Doesn't matter how you know it, you just know.

How many skills can you claim to have such aptitude with? My guess is not many. To be fair, we haven't had much time. In your mid-twenties you've probably just mastered how to masturbate without getting caught by your roommates, as that is one of the more demotic activities of our generation. But science tells us you need to be doing something for 10,000 hours before you can call yourself a master of it. If we do some basic math (shut it, I can still kind of add), we're talking about 5 years at 40 hours a week? If we're being literal. In all practicality it probably takes 7-10 years to really become an expert at something.

That's why I'm concerned. One of my hobbies is reading up on the country's most well-respected restaurants, and then finding out all the information I can about the chef in charge. Where they went to school, where they worked, for how long, what countries, what kind of women or men they choose to marry, where they chose to locate, what their food philosophy is, what their favorite sandwich is. The information, shockingly enough, is out there (terrifying to be famous, eh?). Out of all the "useless" information I've compiled, you want to know what the lowest common denominator of success is?

Starting early. Seventeen, fifteen, maybe even nine years old you started putting in time in a real restaurant kitchen. Grant Achatz worked in his family's restaurant starting at 13, washing dishes while standing on a vegetable crate to reach the sink. Peeling potatoes, plating house salads, grilling hamburgers, real menial stuff. But yet Thomas Keller identified him as one of the most technically proficient and artistically creative cooks he's ever had. True, he is exceptional, and may have gone on to great success regardless, but not without earning the respect of the kitchen.

There exists an anecdote about Achatz's time as the Executive Chef of Trio. Michael Ruhlman pulled aside a line cook for a brief interview, and what was the most outstanding quality about Chef Grant Achatz?

"If you're slowing down on the line, look like you're lost, he'll just come in ... and just ... work it. Work your station better than you could on your best day, work it at a level you didn't know was possible."

So that's why I'm quite concerned. Why did I waste all this time? I could have been a master of Chinese cuisine by now, a cleaver more like an extension of my hand, a fiery wok just another beast I have tamed, but no... I had this career epiphany a bit too late, even though this restaurant was always here for me.

I'll have to try my best. But I have to say at 24... I'm feeling old for the game. So that's why I need to start now, with my good friend, and always quotable Allen Iverson...

We talkin' 'bout practice.

Unfortunately I'm very bad at practice. Here's kind of a pitiful self-admittance, but my ability to read music is disturbingly inadequate. Most classical musicians spend years studying music theory and solfege, honing their aural skills so that when a piece of music is set before them, they can methodically dissect it and translate it to their instrument. The very best and most practiced of them can do it instantly. We call this sight reading, and I've had the pleasure of knowing a few exceptionally skilled musicians who can sight read something with 99% technical accuracy on the first run.

To earn that level of skill takes years of hard work, and hours of practice every day. It makes sense that all these Juilliard Prep kids go to such good colleges because they're already determined, overachieving douches from their dogmatic dedication to music. You simply can't survive in that place without a nose-to-the-grindstone attitude.

Unless you're me.

To give you an idea of how piss-poor my music theory fundamentals are, I failed Juilliard's basic theory class three times. That means by my senior year, when I was 17, I was taking classes with 9-year old's. I mean I can read music. I can read different clefs, I know all the lingo, and all the different markings. But it doesn't make sense to me. A sheet of music might as well be a giant hash of black dots and I-talian mumbo jumbo to me. That is until I hear it. See, I got "lucky." I was blessed with a very good ear, so when I hear something I can play it. I don't know why, it's just always been that way, and the counterpoint is also true that when I see it, I am utterly lost.

I was blessed with an ability to take shortcuts.

My cello teacher from high school, Andrey, used to be kind of confused by my ability to sight read. He'd often put all the classic cello concertos in front of me, old workhorses like Dvorak, Elgar, Haydn D Major, and scratch his head at why I could play it without having ever really practiced it. Then he figured it out...

He put a contemporary piece in front of me. A cello sonata, not 50-years old, scarcely played by anyone in its existence. I had never heard it before. He simply said, "Go." Couldn't do it. He sat back in his chair, like an evil Russian mastermind (which he kind of was) and smiled contentedly,

"So ... you actually can't sight read."

The point of this long-winded tangent is this.

I got lucky with cello. I survived and at times thrived in an environment I shouldn't have because I was blessed with some natural ability that compensated for my lack of work ethic. That will not be the case this time, God has not been so kind as to give me two gifts.

I will have to earn my stripes, and earn my restaurant the hard way, and because I started so late I'm going to have to ramp up the intensity. I'm going to have to cram, if you will, cram in what could have been a decade's worth of cooking and restaurants, in to one year. Well, at this point, maybe less than that.

Do I think it's possible? Yes. There's practice, and then there's purposeful, focused practice. Even I can tell the difference. You learn much faster when you have the intent to do so, and are mindful and aware of what's going on around you. Even if you did start working in a kitchen before you started shaving, I doubt you paid the same kind of fervent attention I am about to throughout these next few months. So don't sleep, I'm quickly catching up.

But that means doing everything. I need to master how to serve. I can carry a tray over my shoulder, but I can sense nervousness from our customers as I teeter and totter to the dishwasher. Will I ever open a restaurant where they use old school over-the-shoulder trays? My best guess is no, but it can't hurt to have the skill. It will add to an overall sense of mastery if I can achieve it.

I need to become more proficient at dim sum making, and especially more proficient at working the line in a Chinese kitchen. I'll never be able to attain the level of mastery that Luo Shi-fu has, that would take decades, but I'm going to have do my best. Will I ever use dim sum again? My guess is seldom, but again ... it could have an untold influence later in life. Will I ever use the Chinese style of stir fry, the Chinese cooks' equivalent of sword-and-board, the wok-and-spoon? Can't say. Though there is something to be appreciated about it's efficiency in time and heat transfer, and any knowledge of a cooking technique is good knowledge in my book.

I need to learn a myriad little things that make restaurants tick; balancing account books, haggling with purveyors and suppliers, finding a good liquor license lawyer, food cost, employee management, scheduling waiters, etc. etc. ohmygodwhatamigettingmyselfinto, etc. It seems like an insurmountable task, a never-ending pile of information, but that's exactly what I like about it.

I need to be constantly stimulated. I have a very short attention span, and I don't like being bored. I will notify you immediately if you are boring me. So that's what makes this profession kind of fitting for me. There is quite literally no end in sight for the amount I need to learn. This will be an eternal education for me. But I like that. I like to learn something new every day.

For truly, this is a career worthy and possible only through a lifetime's passion.

EP6