Focus

There will come times in a man's life when he is left in periods of deep introspection. He is shut out from any stimuli, his smartphone will be out of battery, and he will contemplate one of the many unanswered questions of our generation.

Does God exist? If so, why is the world in such disarray if it seems to have both creator and steward?

Why are we here? Am I an existential accident? Is my life curiously meaningless?

Is there such a thing as love? Is it a biochemical phenomenon or can souls find one another in simultaneously serendipitous and predestined fashion?

Why do all expensive electronics come in packaging that could thwart the Incredible Hulk? Is that much anti-theft deterrence necessary? How often does the Big Green pillage a Best Buy?

While these are all complex questions worthy of intense cogitation, I have spent much more time attempting to structure the reasoning behind why menus are designed the way they are.

Why does something have to be decidedly Italian, or Chinese or French?

What is authenticity and to what degree must we strive to achieve it?

Is a restaurant defined by its menu, or is the menu defined by its restaurant?

As many of you know, I am a fairly voracious reader. What many of you don't know is that all this "reading" I'm doing is of cookbooks, which might as well be big picture books with small words and basic sentence structure. My elementary reading comprehension aside, what I really like about reading these books is less often the recipes (which, excluding the most heavily professional-focused cookbooks, are always a little watered down for home cooks), and more often the short chef and restaurant biographies that precede the pretty pictures.

My career is just beginning and naturally I am curious as to how all these cookbook-author-level-chefs came to achieve their chef-dom and their eponymous restaurants (though, naming a restaurant after yourself is decidedly 1970s porn; stylistically bankrupt and masturbatory). To see how others did it, achieved greatness not only gives me a bit of a personal benchmark to measure up to but gives me greater insight as to how the whole thing happens.

The most reoccurring theme is a romanticized depiction of the chef in his childhood; hovering around his mom or grandmother, and smelling and tasting the food of their heritage for the first time. Though kitchens are often incredibly diverse workplaces in regards to nationalities and ethnicities, it still largely remains true that Italian guys grow up to cook Italian food, American guys grow up to cook American food, and Asian guys grow up to cook Asian food. Regardless of any reinterpretations or modifications, all of their cuisine is anchored in memory, in upbringing, in culture.

I have concluded that there are many reasons for this.

Firstly, a chef is obviously going to cook food that they feel deep emotional attachment to. They cook the kind of food that is not only delicious to them, but comforting as well. We all have certain dishes that can be categorized as "comfort food" to us. Things we eat when we're feeling a little vulnerable, homesick or indulgent, whatever it may be, it exists. Sure, the food may be dressed up to match the expensive linens in the dining room, but rest assured it begins with genuine soul in the kitchen. Chefs want to share this kind of cooking with their customers and hope they come to appreciate it as much as they do.

And then there are the practical reasons to consider. They feel most familiar with this kind of cuisine. They are more intimate with the flavors, ingredients and techniques and are able to expand upon them with respects to authenticity and know-how. And despite this lovely rose-tinted shade we like to pull over the world that we aren't racist creatures, as chefs become the faces of their restaurants we still, as customers, expect to see some fat Italian guy personally rolling out pasta, or some wizened Japanese sage expertly slicing sashimi off a Cretaceous-era-sized tuna. Though there are notable exceptions beginning to emerge, including Brooklyn Jewish guys elevating Japanese ramen (see: Ivan Orkin), and Asian-American chefs manning the helms at the world's best French restaurants (see: Alex Lee, Corey Lee), most everyone is going to be a little skeptical if they see some Hollister-catalog white boy opening up a Thai restaurant. It's not impossible, there are many examples of success, but I'm guessing there are many more examples of failure. Every time you put forward a winning dish people will applaud you out of surprise, and every time you put up a pop fly they will scorn you out of knowing contempt. Such is human nature.

So I feel there is a little bit of pressure as to what kind of food I should know about and cook. If you asked me right now what I felt most comfortable making it's definitely a Parisian roast chicken, or a bucatini alla amatriciana. I am still quite uncomfortable making shrimp dumplings or even a roast pork fried rice. Even though I grew up with this stuff I didn't ever handle it and I just ate it with the kind of fat-kid-loves-cake mindset; I didn't think about it, I just put it in my mouth and enjoyed it (that's what she said?).

Thus my problem emerges. When I look back and try to conjure up memories of my first gastronomic epiphanies, I come up short. I don't seem to have any significant culinary history even though my whole upbringing is deeply rooted in good Chinese food and the restaurant business as a whole. I'm afraid I don't have any kind of sepia-toned flashbacks to invoke for any cookbook I may inevitably write.

As an Asian-American, what exactly am I expected to cook? How can it be seen as authentic, unique in bearing my own signature yet paying homage to a greater culture that came before me? Even if I figure it out will I be forever bound by the first building I lease or the first menu I write?

Now I know I'm getting ahead of myself. There are many years of working as a kitchen slave, cooking other chefs' food to their exacting standards, and many if not all techniques to hone and master. But as a big picture person, someone who is seemingly incapable of existential myopia, I know that one day I will open a restaurant, I just know it. And when the time comes, when my dream is headed screaming for the plate, can I knock that son-of-a-bitch out of the park and feel good it hit the fucking rafters, not just eked by on a roided facade? Or worse, got lucky and some kid snatched it from the outfielder's leaping grasp? (See 1996 ALCS, Yankees vs. Orioles, Jeffrey Maier)

When I think back there have been three primary caregivers in my life in terms of keeping me well-fed.

Mom, grand-mom, and McDonald's.

If I had to detail the three favorite dishes of my childhood they'd each hold a spot. My mom's Sesame Chicken (well, the restaurant's; just think Chinese chicken nuggets with the sweet-and-sour sauce built in), my grandmother's tonkatsu pork chops with ketchup, and the good ole' #1, Big Mac with fries.

There's a theme there. Those are all fried foods with somewhat sweet components. I was a fat kid and there is little mystery as to why. I like crispy-anything paired with sweet-tangy-anything. There are few foods that I think cannot be improved with a little deep-fry and sauce. My inner fat boy is an easy creature to please and it craves processed chicken and chemical-laden sauces. So what the fuck kind of deep food-related emotions can I write about should I ever write a cookbook? What kind of picture can I paint when I never hovered around my grandmother's Sunday tomato sauce? (Okay, yeah, Asian people don't make tomato sauce I get it, bear with me for a second)

We need to go deeper.

I think it's important to assert my cultural identity. Minus my panda-like appearance, I very much consider myself American. I love American food, I generally have had an over-privileged life laden with first-world problems, I'm loud, larger than average and love the three-day weekend that I never, ever get anymore. So really, I'm an American who happens to be Asian. That means I honestly believe chopsticks are a more efficient utensil, my life will be forever burdened by parental guilt and the life they sacrificed to raise me, and the general female population finds me effeminate and/or unattractive.

I'm not so crass or simple as to be like "Herp derp Cantonese-style hamburgers, yeahhhhh! Great idea!" But I think its important to acknowledge the phenomenon that is the Asian-American upbringing. Though we grossly overpopulate your higher education (suck it, America, we're like intellectual locusts) there aren't all that many of us in the big picture. Our story is not yet written, and our food is not yet completely understood.

I've gone on and on about how Chinese-American food has become the way it is. It boils down to good business practice. You meet the demand of your consumers. Back in railroad-building days that meant the first Chinese immigrants selling steak & eggs and apple pie alongside their dried scallops, sea cucumbers and other funky shit. Slowly, as Americans became more adventurous, they delved in to the strangeness and it began to merge. Now we have General Tso's chicken. But the frugality and money-equals-success business model proved too effective, and like corporations, the food lost its soul. It lost all artistry and character, and along with it, its respect. Now, curious Asian-American cooks like myself, need to dig through the pieces and sift out the gold; to find meaning, to create anew.

I think the process is much more organic than one would originally believe. You don't sit there with a whiteboard and start listing American foods on one side, Chinese foods on the other and start criss-crossing to see what works. I think growing up here as a minority, knowing naturally what you've eaten your whole life and what makes sense goes a long way.

This is an obstacle my grandmother regularly hurdled. Being an annoyingly picky eater for a fat kid, she was constantly figuring out ways to get me to eat. Knowing that I would lap up any American food, like hot dogs, burgers, steaks, etc., she would often improvise "fusion" dishes to my liking. So really when I think about my childhood food I think about this strange combination of traditional Taiwanese food and American junk food. There'd be soy-braised pork riblets on one plate, and then next to it a potato hashbrown cakes with scallions and A1 sauce. There'd be miso-noodle soup sometimes along with pork braised in ketchup and onions. Steak and pork chops rubbed with Chinese five-spice served with a side of garlic bread. Ground beef seasoned with soy sauce before being turned in to spaghetti sauce. I loved all of this kind of stuff and obviously she wasn't trying to impress me, she was just trying to cook something tasty using the flavors and techniques she already felt comfortable with. Is it the kind of stuff you could serve in a restaurant? Maybe not, but it gets the ball rolling on the thought experiment...

Take for instance, chow-fun noodles. I've talked about them before, even mentioned some experimentation I've done with them (nothing naughty), but it's still not right. Chow-fun noodles are only exceptional when they're fresh, have never been frozen, and honestly, the kind we get are way too thin. Careless cooks vigorously toss them in a wok and they break in to ragged and uneven pieces. They're rice noodles, the chewy proteins and starchy amylose compounds make that springiness delectable, you have to respect and showcase that. The noodles need to be thicker, they need to be treated more delicately and they need to be fresh. This is something that is just far too much hassle for a restaurant that has about 80 other dishes on the menu and doesn't have enough discipline to treat the product properly. But with a well-trained French culinary brigade, with people who actually fucking care about cooking something with integrity, I think it can be done. Sure, it's a pain in the ass. But cooking anything right, treating it with real care is always a pain in the ass. Professional cooks are the only people who are crazy enough to do it every day.

But that's just the first step of natural observation. The next is pairing. In America, pasta has become somewhat bastardized but few people can deny the deliciousness of spaghetti and meatballs. If it's done right, it works, it's a simple combination. Protein, savory, sauce, acidity, starch, body, there's a lot of components that just boil down to three ingredients and make sense. So I suppose that's the next step...

Chinese sausages are mostly dried. They're delicious to be sure, but they lack that meatiness that Western sausages often have. Whereas Chinese sausages are thin and dry, Western sausages are fat and juicy. I think a properly cooked bratwurst or andouille sausage is an incredible thing. A thick, natural casing cooked on a griddle so that the skin cracks at 165 degrees and has its juices run all over mixed with mustard, it's quite sexual...

Wow, that got gay and suggestive real fast.

What I mean to say is that I think chow-fun noodles and their chewiness can benefit a lot from the meaty texture of a properly cooked sausage. Add an acidic yet flavorful sauce and you basically have the balance in flavor profile that spaghetti and meatballs does.

We can go deeper.

The sandwich. The ultimate food item. Chinese food culture has sandwiches for sure, they just don't enjoy the kind of distinction and reverence that Western sandwiches do. Not only do we love sandwiches in America, there are endless varieties of them to appreciate. The basics remain the same though; starch, protein, vegetables, sauce and very often cheese (more on dairy later).

My focus is on the sub or the hero or the hoagie, whatever you want to call it. A crusty white bread filled with cold cuts, mayo and American yellow-cheese. There isn't much in the way of crusty breads in Chinese food, but there are mantou, which are big, fluffy white buns. If you deep fry them (oh yes, I've gone there... though I'm not the first) and you bring 'em out quick, they do not retain greasiness and they have a delicate crispness to them. They are the perfect hot bread for which to make sandwiches with. I'm not saying slather mayo and dump dry turkey slices in there with Iceberg lettuce, but there is a lot of potential for experimentation right there. A way to retain the firm structure of the hero loaf but along with a means to expand the flavors in to another realm.

Of course there remain road blocks. Mainly with the aforementioned dairy products. That being, there are no dairy products in Asian food. And yet butter might as well be one of the most important things to have in a Western kitchen. How to negotiate this gulf? Butter has an assertive flavor on its own along with being an incredibly useful fat in the kitchen. How can you make a bridge out of butter when it doesn't belong in one place, but is heavily relied upon in the other?

This is a question I am not completely able to answer. You have to resort to using butter for its technical applications rather than its flavor, I suppose. Mounting butter in a sauce gives it thickness and lusciousness without asserting its pronounced flavor. A light brush of butter on a (rested) sliced steak gives it that extra note of luxury while still letting a well dry-aged beef do its thing. Butter-poached shallots and lobster give the respective ingredients a protective and delicious bath to cook in without becoming overly buttery, yet still bestowing incomparable texture and flavor on almost anything.

So these are just preliminary thoughts. Just some ideas perhaps as to how to bridge the gap. But in wondering we are lead to the inevitable question, is this authentic and does it matter?

What is authenticity? Well, it's hard to put that label on anything that is American. Food, culture, demographics, language, anything American is inherently an adaptation of, or mash-up of various influences from numerous backgrounds. That's why American food is so hard to classify, there wasn't really an extended period of time where we were confined to one geographic area and let the land, the ingredients sculpt our cuisine. We took European food, applied it to the incredibly diverse American landscape, and then included African, Caribbean, Asian and South American influences and ran with it. Ran with it all over the fucking place in a relatively short amount of time. I mean, the French spent hundreds of years in the same place figuring out what tasted good in their own country. How could we expect to have such a strong identity when we were so spread out, so diverse in an even shorter amount of time? The answer is we can't. So what does that mean for our question, what is authentic?

Well, there isn't really anything that is authentically American. And since Asian-American identity is an even more ambiguous and undefined thing, how could we even claim anything authentic for that? I think what it comes down to is that authenticity is a combination of taste, respect and execution.

Taste not as in flavor but as in class. You don't hate-fuck two things together just because you think you can. You do it with some serious thought and introspection. You gotta put a lot of effort in to it, be able to defend your reasoning and explain why you think it works. Any "fusion" dish you lob up there might as well be a fucking dissertation. You have to have really thought it out and be able to defend it to show that you gave the idea some serious effort, some respect...

So I suppose that's what it's all for then is respect. As much as we hate on those pansy Frenchmen, they have established a culinary identity that has changed the world. The same can be said for the millenia-old Chinese food culture. I mean these are dishes that have passed the test of centuries, you can't be that asshole that throws it up whimsically because you think it's cute or because it fits your restaurant's personality. You do it with intimate knowledge, with great care and appreciation for what came before you. And we all know that when you cook something with great care, what you are really doing is practicing good...

Execution. That's what good cooking is, taking an ingredient that someone painstakingly raised, and treating it right. You don't overcook it and say "Whoops" and throw it in the garbage. You realize all the manpower, careers, sweat and tears that went in to that one fucking heirloom tomato, or that one acorn-grazed pork belly, and you cook it right. You showcase it, you put that pretty girl on stage and you tell her the whole time you love her and she's the most beautiful girl in the room.

Okay, my analogy is spiraling out of control again, but I suppose that's what sums it up for me.

Taste, respect, execution.

I don't call it fusion because that name has been besmirched. No matter how many good things the Nazis did for Germany, they'll forever be fucking villains in the discourse of human history. Well, I feel almost as vehemently about the word "fusion." Yes, I am comparing bad fusion cooking to Nazism, get over it. It's caused too much pain and suffering to ever be redeemed.

I'll just call it cooking. Doing something right, cooking good food that I grew up with and thought to present as a representation of myself. An Asian-American boy who likes fried food and sweet-and-sour sauce. I realize this post wasn't terribly conclusive, more a loose organization of fleeting thoughts. But I feel like we're gaining ground. We're slowly starting to understand a bit more about why we cook and how we should cook. If there's a should at all.

But while I daydream and get hazy-eyed over the menus I may write I must first remember. There's a shitload of dishes to wash. Hurricane Irene has increased our weekday business by three-fold, and the old white Long Islanders aren't going to feed themselves. Mother Nature has handed us a golden goose egg, we must take care to handle it properly.

Back to work, Cindarella. Dream about your prince another time.

EP6

PS- Why do I keep referencing myself as a female character?!

Customers

If my blog had an overall literary personality I would sum it up as a...

"Generally misanthropic, bitter, and ofttimes hateful treatise on restaurant work that is over saturated with adverbs, unnecessarily long vocabulary, fragments, misogyny and run-on sentences. It bears a curiously paradoxical nature in that restaurant work entails interacting with people often and daily, yet the writer seems unable to normally socialize with and/or like other people."

::deep breath::

The paradox, in short, is that a restaurant's lifeblood is a constant stream of paying customers, and yet I seem to hate customers. Especially vapid, entitled, gold-digging trophy wives who add zero value to society and whine at me over their aptly-named Platinum Blonde Martinis. I suppose they are a rather chesty carrot at the end of the stick to incentivize men to acquire material riches in life, whatever societal value that adds. And American culture in turn does a good job of teaching women they are worth little more than their boobs.

But I digress. Allow me to holster my angst-ridden, lovelorn sociology major.

It's just that, every time I get upset with a customer, I internalize it. It buds in to the beginnings of an embolism, and I lose a few minutes off my life as I smile through my teeth. It is not unlike The Machine in The Princess Bride. I'm convinced it won't be long before a Prince Humperdinck-like beast of a customer will come in, and in one fell swoop torture me in to a coma. The Six-Fingered Man will appear and scream "Not fifty years!" and my shouts of agony will echo throughout the synagogues of Long Island...

Wait, nope, nope, nope, let me try this again...

What I mean to say is, I don't deal well with customers who lack empathy for or understanding of the restaurant industry. I wouldn't presume to come in to your place of work and tell you how to do your job. But just because eating at a restaurant is universal human behavior suddenly everyone's an expert.

We are here to serve and create a nice experience for you. You are entitled to a reservation. We try our best to give you one at the time you request but this is not always possible. You are entitled to at least respectful and efficient service, food that is at least seasoned and cooked properly, and an atmosphere that is at least clean and hospitable. That's your skeleton Bill of Rights right there for you.

The problem is that very few people understand how difficult even the most basic restaurant services are to provide. The main obstacle lies in doing all of that, and more for hundreds of people in three hours. They seem to think were they in our shoes, they'd never make a mistake. That a trained chimp could do this flawlessly, and that a couple dollars thrown our way entitles them to be Yertle the Turtle. I know no one who reads this blog (because pretty much only my friends read this blog) would ever act like such a cretin in a restaurant. But for your viewing pleasure, for the betterment of mankind, here's a handy guide.

How to Handle Restaurant Cock-Ups by Eric Huang;

1) Attempt to remain calm. Getting mad may serve cathartic for the rest of your first-world problems (e.g. wife not going down on you since you got married, boss made you come in on a Saturday, your rec-league dodgeball team lost in the semis, etc.), but it is actually not very helpful. When you aren't bearing down on some poor new hire with your fangs out, they have more calm and wherewithal to fix your situation. That isn't to mean that you should tolerate indifference, instead...

2) Acknowledge and specify what the restaurant did wrong (e.g. this waitress is a huge bitch, this food is salty like my balls after a tournament in August, this food is about 20 minutes late to class and is getting an F, etc.). Perhaps deliver said message in a more respectful manner.

3) Speak to a manager or preferably an owner. Continue to remain calm. Smile if possible.

4) If the restaurant is worth any of its salt they will accordingly apologize, compensate you for your grievances and treat you with super-extra-fragilistic attention and care. If you are gracious throughout your complaining, they will feel even more terrible about their errors and try that much harder to fix them. You are a long-term investment for the restaurant. Losing the 8.5% profit margin on a steak is better than losing you ever coming back to the restaurant, and/or telling all your friends how horrible it was. Rarely is anger necessary to convey your disappointments.

5) If step four is ignored by the restaurant, calmly leave and never return. If you must Yelp, please wait at least a day for the anger to subside so that your review will be more helpful.

I could go on about the injustices I feel I have suffered at the hands of curmudgeonly geriatrics who use the negative gravity of their empty lives to siphon off what's left of my soul. I relish a good story of a particularly evil customer, it makes me feel like one of many victims unjustly oppressed by the public. But that's not what today is about. I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I'm going to appreciate the people that come through our door, purchase our goods and services, and allow my family to make a living by doing what we like to do.

Believe it or not there are many customers I actually do like. Not awkwardly smile and force myself through conversation with, but people I am happy to see come through the door. They aren't many in comparison to the amount of customers I dread seeing. If we look at the ratio that way, well... it's not very uplifting. But they do exist, I promise.

There's Howie, the Big Dog. My bartender's father might not really count as your typical customer, but all the same he's a very enjoyable person to talk to. He drinks like a gentleman, he can talk about things beyond the realm of usual guy talk (read: sports, boobs, beer), and he has these enormous, hammy mitts that firmly confer confidence through handshakes. He will at times find himself surrounded by all the females of his family and retreat to the bar to find me. His eyes will roll, he will plug his ears to mime shutting out the chatter, and he will request a glass of Gentleman Jack, neat. He always tips in fresh, crisp $5 bills. Where he gets them, why he has them, who knows.

There's Michael, Chocolatier of the Walrus Mustache. He provides the complimentary chocolates we have at the restaurant and will come in for dinner here and there. He also knows all about the restaurant biz having worked in pastry as a youth. We discuss kitchen ideas and general restaurant theory over a glass of Grey Goose, two ice cubes, and a twist of lemon. Any consternation I feel about culinary school he generally puts to rest. He's been working with us since I was just a kid and he likes to assure me that growing up in the restaurant business is more than ample preparation. "You should see some of the kids they send me... "

There's Mr. Miller, boyish good looks and goofball dad in one. He sneaks in early for a beer on Friday before the wife and kids latch on to his weekend. He'll order takeout for the family and watch Sportscenter while drinking a Tsing Tao. I generally appreciate anyone that is a Knicks fan but can still discuss them without Amar'e Stoudemire's dick in their mouth. We once had a conversation about the skyscraping display of flowers my mom puts at the front of the restaurant.

"How long do those things last? They're beautiful... I think?"
"Hah, about a week. Though they start looking a little sad by Wednesday, so we change them every Thursday."
"Yeah, I hear that. I always look a little sad by Wednesday..." Cue Charlie-Brown-shuffle out the door, womp womp womp trombone.

Then there's Julianna and her mother, Adrianne. Julianna is, for lack of a more couth description, a 100%, grade-A, Power M.I.L.F. Gracious, friendly but not overly-so, and elegant with a touch of soccer-mom, Sporty Spice vibe. How she manages to remain so picture-perfect after popping out five boys is beyond me. The woman's vagina might as well be Stargate but here she is in all her splendor. Her and her mother will take turns bringing the whole of their brood to the restaurant. Grandma Adrianne likes to take her time with her grandkids; eat slowly, spoil them with ice cream and cake when their mother isn't around. Julianna will often call as the dinner begins to inch past 2 hours,

"Hi Eric! This is Julianna. Where is my mother and my litter?"
"Hi Julianna! They're still here, looks like they're finishing up though, would you like to talk to her?"
"No, it's okay .. just remind her that they have camp in the morning, see you soon!"

I often find overprotective mothers serially annoying but her hovering is done with such charm and cuteness. Even a toe in the pool, a mere suggestion of flirting from her and I'm going for it. I would marry the shit out of her. Not that beautiful, white, suburban moms have adulterous fantasies about Asian boys in the linen closet. Not that I do either. Wait...

::ahem::

I always let Adrianne know that the Mama Bear is calling and I often get the same response,

"What is she so worried about? Right, like grandma didn't have any kids... we're going, we're going..."

These kinds of customers make working the restaurant a pleasure. They make me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile, connecting with other decent and interesting human beings. I don't doubt there is some kindness and zest to every person that comes in the door. It's just that people carry their personalities so differently, and I really take time to appreciate those that wear frustration and resentment on the inside, and compassion and warmth on the outside.

The other issue is, I don't always have the time to.

Nothing makes me feel worse than having someone I really like come through the door, but I don't even have time to have a brief conversation with them. My mother always prioritizes customers, stops everything she's doing to focus on them if they call her over. I'm sure this effort is not lost on them. But that doesn't mean that when my mother stops there isn't a whole shitload of traffic piling up behind her. My job is to make that traffic move along. There are still a lot of things to do. I'm just trying to give as many people a quality experience as possible. I look at it as if I can make the whole night go smoothly, zero complaints, generally happy faces on the way out; huge success. She sees it as if she can give a few tables the best Chinese meal of their life, an experience they'll never forget, that's a huge success. I guess it's big picture vs. small picture. You need to have both in perspective and balance. She really goes the extra mile for some people and she is rewarded with their loyalty. Loyalty that has spanned, in many cases, almost 30 years. But there are new customers every day, and they must be won over as well. We can't solely focus on a handful of VIPs, we must continue to grow.

So I am well aware that I come off cold at times. I'm trying to be as efficient as possible, no funny business, no favoritism. A lot of hosts will prefer guests to linger at the bar, buy drinks, tip the bartender, bring in more cash. But I don't fuck around with this. From what I know of Long Islanders and our clientele, they don't like to hang around the bar boozing. They want to sit down and have their drinks there in comfort. I think the happiness derived from being able to sit down and be tended to will eventually reflect in the tip, and then back to the bartender when the waiters tip them out later. A trickle-down theory that actually works, I suppose.

This is probably why I belong in the back of the house. I'm a kitchen girl really. My stringent efficiency is better applied to venison shanks than living people. But you can't deny the results of my egalitarian governance. People rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes for their table to be ready, I almost always can accommodate a walk-in, waiters get more tables, make more money, people complain less. I think there are a lot of benefits to my method, even if it might feel like you're getting processed at some points. If my work seems mechanical, I rely on my mother to make it seem intimate and personal. It usually works out, makes people feel cared for in our own special way and as a result our dining room has that distinct personality; the young guy puts you through the motions, makes your experience technically sound and if you ever need more of that human element, the maternal figure steps in to make it right.

Every dining room has a personality. Now may be the era of the celebrity chef, the herds of hispter-foodie-sheep flocking to the next hot name so they can be the first to Yelp about them and say "We ate there when.." But in the past, it was the maitre'd who owned the floor. They were the ones who set the pace and tone, and they were the ones whose names were synonymous with the restaurant. They were the person you had to know to get in. Relevant: Bonus Reading.

Whereas now it would be a rare thing to see the eponymous celebrity chef working at his own restaurant, there was a time when you would show up and the same person would be the gatekeeper night after night. You'd have to know them, know someone, be a "member" to be let in. The exclusivity just heightened the sense of belonging and prestige I suppose. But you can't really say "Fuck you, go home" to people anymore. The economy won't allow it. The public has decided they prefer a democratic dining process to some members-only private club. But there was a time when that was the norm, and for better or worse it gave each restaurant a certain degree of panache, a definite and tangible personality from the moment you walked in the door, and it often emanated from one person.

But let's face it, and it is an unsavory truth to accept, but there is such a thing as favoritism and there are customers who we like more than others. Almost every restaurant behaves this way. It sounds unfair but if you have people who eat at your restaurant 3-4x a week, how can you not reward someone for such loyal and frequent patronage? You have to dote on your core of regulars. Sure, they each have their own sets of idiosyncrasies and requirements, but the fact of the matter is, they are the backbone of your restaurant. It's not even the money they put in, it's the word of mouth advertising, it's the powerful marketing they present simply by vouching for you as the best Chinese restaurant on the North Shore. And just as my mother and I give the dining room a personality, so do these regulars paint a certain color over the floor. They talk about you at their country clubs, golf outings, doctors' visits and the next thing you know have a veined network of connections worming its way through the area back to you. So whether we like to or not (we usually do), we treat them very well and they get priority on damn near everything.

That was a harsh lesson to learn this year. Favoritism seemed unfair to everyone else. I demanded we treat everyone equally regardless of their standing with us. I would be furious when I had turned down some people 15 minutes ago, only to have my mother sneak in some VIP behind my back and take up one of my last tables. She would tell me, "You have to give him a table, figure it out." Not only had she fucked up my entire seating chart but I don't give a fuck about Mr. and Mrs. Whoever, they should have to wait like everyone else.

But I was being naive. I came to realize, that Mr. and Mrs. Whoever did indeed have to be given preferential treatment. It was up to you, the host to recognize them, surreptitiously sneak them in and give them the gold standard treatment they come for, or they'll simply go someplace else. And from the suburban restaurant standpoint, that is unacceptable.

So what makes a VIP customer? Well, as previously mentioned it could be that they just come a whole bunch and are important sources of revenue and advertisement. It could be they are just good friends with my mom, she's acquired quite a few of those over 30 years of business. It could be they booked a big party for my mom, sent a friend her way. That's probably the quickest way to her heart. They could be important people; judges, doctors, certain business owners, professional athletes, there are many reasons. If the more plebeian customers notice, they get upset. Should they? No, we don't give out these small favors lightly. But will they feel offended anyhow? Yes, and there's little we can do about it except try our best to make everybody feel special, to feel cared for.

As frustrated as I am with people I am trying and beginning to understand. To not have my first reaction be stubbornness and resentment, and instead have it be compassion and understanding. It is an infinite test of patience, I am not perfect. But I am finding that there is more reward in winning someone's appreciation than winning them over to your point of view.

I get it, you've never worked in the restaurant business. How could you know how difficult reserving tables can be? You can't and I shouldn't expect you to. Is it frustrating? Yes, very much so, but I must be the ever-patient, ever-compassionate 1950s housewife. Do you mistreat me, abuse me? Yes, but smile, do your duty and keep it together. You know, for the kids. Instead of telling customers, "You're twenty minutes late, I had to give away your table" I only say, "Glad you could make it! Give me a moment to get your table ready." In truth, I did give it away but I always have a contingency plan for such situations. When they come early, offer them drinks, make it personally if you can. Comp them if things get hairy. Get them as comfortable as possible, update them often and specifically about their table, especially if it's their table. It's annoying when people request specific tables, as that's the most difficult thing to keep available throughout the night but .. what can you do? Maybe the table has special significance to them, maybe they had such a great night last time they're trying to recreate the magic? Who am I to tell them no?

Alright, you don't want to sit in the back room. To be honest, I get it. You want to be where the action is. Unless you really like privacy and quiet, it feels better to be part of the main dining room. There's energy, vibrancy, it makes you really feel like you went out on a Saturday night. No matter what we do, no matter how good the service was, being in the back room will always feel like you were pushed aside a bit . Some people relish that, being forgotten in some corner to be alone with their friends. But most people want to be part of the show, and I understand that. People-watching is a sport for some, after all.

Hmmm, you don't want the banquette table, eh? My gut reaction is that you're being selfish. You want a bigger table and drive down my space efficiency because of an insignificant degree of comfort. You're being annoying. But in truth, I see why the banquette can be uncomfortable. It's very intimate, you're forced to stare in to each others' eyes. If this isn't a date, that's not the ideal situation. The table is smaller, they're packed closer together, you're well-within earshot of your neighbors. People often strike up conversations across tables. I would hate that, socially awkward panda that I am. I prefer my conversation to be private, the chance for interruption minimal. If I feel that way, I'm sure many other people do to. I just wouldn't have the balls to complain about it, and you do. Who's the big man now?

So I'm beginning to understand you. I'm beginning to understand how you work as a group, and how you work as individuals. I'm beginning to empathize with your situation. I am not different from you because I'm wearing a suit and telling you where to go. Not everything is just business, and even when it is, that's a much more flexible and personal thing than it first appears. And it has to be if we ever plan to succeed in the restaurant industry, where we must constantly adjust our business model to fit the people we serve. So we learn, and we accept it. Accept that we are all human and that we all like a little eye contact, understanding, empathy, compassion and warmth. That a monetary transaction doesn't change those emotions so long as they are delivered with authenticity. So really being in the front is an exercise of sincerity. And it's pretty hard to fake being sincere about your work if you aren't.

In the words of Dr. Manhattan,

"I can change almost anything... but I can't change human nature."

So I should stop being so inflexible. Everybody's different. But most everybody likes to be treated kindly. And if they're going to pay for it, well I suppose they deserve it now, don't they?

G.I. JOOOOEEEE!!

EP6

PS - My last sentences sounded so goddamn Public Service Announcement, it was the first thing that came to mind. What kind of pussy am I becoming? What kind of man are you turning me in to? Damn you, JULIAANNNAAAAA!!

Culture & Chemistry

I took some time the other day to calculate how much time I was spending at the restaurant, and like most people who run restaurants, came to the disturbing conclusion that it was a lot of frickin' time. When I'm cranking out a full week during the busy summer season, my wages (read: allowance from my mom) plummet in hourly value.

It's just the nature of the beast. Restaurants require obsessive pruning and preening. It's often the restaurants that don't have a dedicated owner there everyday that seem to lack focus and discipline. We're all guilty of it. At some point in our careers the boss has gone out of town and things seemed to breathe easier, be a bit more slack. It's human nature. Unless there is serious, individual focus we need drill sergeants in our lives from time to time.



But if you love to instruct, to guide, to refine, then it isn't a chore to be at a restaurant working so many hours. You get a chance to really engage your passions and your senses everyday as a trade-off for not getting weekends or holidays. You get real-time results, there's little idle time, you get to work with your hands. You have the opportunity to be working and interacting with a lot of dynamic people in pressured situations. If you thrive on that teamwork, that togetherness through adversity, then you get real and exciting experiences everyday that many other industries don't.



But that's only if things are going well with the right people. Rough edges, breakdowns in team chemistry will rub your staff raw. Bitter rivalries and petty disagreements will soon become festering sores, and that adrenaline-fueled team effort through dinner rush will serve more as a pressure cooker than an energy source; compressing people's emotions to the point of bursting.



Having good chemistry is rarely an accident and is seldom an easy thing to create. Crafting a good restaurant team is probably only outdone in difficulty by crafting a good basketball team. You're constantly weighing people's personalities, their egos, what they bring to the table with their skills and how that compensates for any personal shortcomings they may have. In short, their "locker room presence." I think what makes it even harder is what I first mentioned; we spend so much time together. Don't get me wrong, professional athletes have to spend plenty of time together; on the tour bus, in practice, photo-ops, and it usually helps your on-court performance if you like one another. But there's always the asylum of the off-season, your millions of dollars and buxom wenches to whisk yourself away to if the team is becoming a bit ... much. There are no such luxuries in the restaurant. There's no where to run. In New York City there's often barely any space to get even a comfortable personal distance from one another. Most city kitchens consist of a tight hallway stacked with burners and appliances. As Bourdain puts it, "kitchens perform best like tight, touring rock bands and implode just as easily."



It's not all that bad for me. No one really grinds my gears and most of them view me as a "mini-boss" of sorts, so their relationship with me is quite different from their relationships with one another. Also, I'm not forced to quality control them like my mother is, so I don't have to call them out on their faults as much. In fact, I am the guy everybody loves because I am the auxiliary fireman. I put out fires, I help in whatever department needs the most help. So I spend most of my weekends saving one person or anothers' ass, and it's usually hard to resent someone after that. And I don't dislike anyone on our staff it's just that ... I would never really call any of them my friend. They are all immigrants from China, they're all well in to their 30s and 40s with families, English is not their first language. There's not a terrible amount for us to relate to with one another. I try to maintain a polite and respectful working relationship with all of them, but once we're out of the restaurant, that's it. I might not even say hello to them in the street.



For them, it's quite different. Almost all of our employees live in Flushing and they meet at Main Street to take our company bus every morning. They cram in to this 15-passenger van, they take turns buying each other coffee, and they swelter as the poor machine putt-putts its way to Manhasset without any air conditioning. Already the summer heat has caused three arguments that neared blows as short-tempered cooks argued about who should have what seat. They leave Flushing around 10:30, they get to the restaurant around 11 AM. They work in close quarters together all day, everyday, for 12-13 hours a day, and then they take the bus home together. They each take one day off a week, so during any sort of busy season for us ... you're looking at spending 60-70 hours in direct and close contact with your coworkers, and always depending on one another to perform and get through service. That's a lot to ask of any group of people, and creating a smooth team environment is a tall enough mountain to climb.



I've spent a lot of time analyzing it. The waiters think I don't care much, but I actually watch them very carefully. I don't go running to my mom when they make mistakes, I just silently fix them and amazingly enough they get the hint pretty quickly. It isn't the most efficient way to command, I don't plan on doing it in such a manner later in my career. But for now, as I awkwardly straddle the line between employer and coworker, it seems the most appropriate means of refining the performance of the team. So I watch them. A lot. In a hopefully non-creepy way, and as a consequence I have come to evaluate their personalities. I like to think I am able to read people with some adequacy. I may not be able to divine one's personal intentions, but I can sense when people are frustrated, when they're nearing their breaking point, when they're content, and when they're upset. It's actually a rather simple combination of being an emotionally sensitive person and giving a lot of attention to detail. As it turns out, very few people are truly inscrutable.



Sam, the unofficial "waiter captain," has been working with my mom for about 9 years. He advanced through the ranks from a lowly busboy to now helping my mom run the restaurant when she's not there. He usually takes the helm on the big VIP tables because he understands my mom's standards better than anyone else. He knows to time dishes so they all come out hot, to not let them sit in the window for more than a minute. He knows to keep plates wiped clean, to serve dishes to the right people without having to ask who had what. And he's good at it. But that's only when he's doing a VIP table with a fat tip awaiting him at the end. When he's forced to work Section 3, which is mainly comprised of two-top banquettes that get sat in by elderly women couples droning on about crocheting, or whatever the fuck old bitches be yappin' about, and the turnover and tips are low ... he simply stops caring. He gets a nasty look on his face, is short-tempered, seemingly forgets all of his good serving habits, and stands in the corner playing poker on his iPhone only offering occasional glances to see when he can get these women out the door. All customers are not created equal in his mind, and they're not in reality, but you must try to treat them as such. You can't pick and choose who comes through your door. It's a fault of his, but nobody's perfect. You take the good with the bad and he's simply too important to the team at this point to let him go. The other waiters don't love him, exactly because of his poor attitude, but you just hope it goes smoothly every night.

William, the unofficial "second-in-command" is probably my favorite. He started working with my mom just before I went to college and I was kind of surprised to still find him here when I came back. He is by far the most genuine of all the front staff. He is incredibly goofy and even-tempered. He has a slight stutter and when combined with his tendency to talk excitedly, often leads to words tumbling out of his mouth in a clumsy, fall-down-the-stairs kind of manner. Most of the waiters call him "Lao Tou," which kind of means "Old Man." He's not significantly older than anyone, but he is often bumbling around as if he doesn't know where he's going. No matter how busy it gets though, he never loses composure. Whereas I will get furious sometimes, throw teapots at walls and punch counter tops, he is always cool as a cucumber. But I think he can be a bit inconsistent with his serving and thus people don't request him as a waiter too often as a result. Still, most everybody likes him and having that guy in your team who holds things together a bit solely by the virtue of being likable is important. He has a goofy sense of humor and it lightens things up when shit goes bad. Once a customer left behind her baby daughter's sippy cup. My mom told William to put it in the office with a post-it note in case she came back to get it. He excitedly waved it front of Owen's face, a waiter who happens to be very short with a young appearance, exclaiming "The boss has a new cup for you!" as if it were the funniest shit anyone had ever thought of. He laughed so hard to himself I couldn't help but smile as they messed with one another.


Alan is also another long-serving waiter of my mother’s. You can get a general idea for a waiter’s competency by how little they get yelled at. That’s the most effective means of evaluation at a restaurant, how much are you not fucking up. Well, Alan seldomly gets yelled at but I can see in his work that he’s tired. He is a bit too... for lack of a better word, fertile, as his wife keeps popping out daughters. But supporting all those mouths and educations (I think he’s up to four, plus one in the oven) is taking its toll. With every step, every dish cleared and every Peking Duck pancake wrapped, his movements say “Fuck my life.” He just doesn’t really care anymore, and though he performs adequately enough, he is soul-weary; just going through the motions because duty and obligation require him to. He’s a nice guy, a lot of customers really like him, but in his slouch and his soft voice there is a distinct lack of inspiration. You don't need to believe in inspired service to be a waiter at our restaurant, but if you want to be the best you most certainly do. In the future he will perhaps be an effective measuring stick of “burn out,” that point every human can reach when their career and life goals seem exhausting and not worthwhile.

Luo Shi-fu is probably the employee I know best. Months of standing next to him every morning, rolling out dumplings and chopping scallions will teach you quite a bit about a person. He is genuinely one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met. He’s an all-star player that any kitchen would be happy to have; bright attitude, infinite patience, expansive skill-set and tireless work ethic. He started out as a dishwasher when he was 18, and a Cantonese chef saw the promise in him and trained him to be a dim sum chef. He can work the hot line, he can carve beautifully, has extremely deft hands, and just that … general kitchen mastery. When you’ve worked with food for so long and so intensely you just know things. You know when a cut of steak is medium-rare, you figure out how foie gras works even though you’ve never seen it in your life. And he is aware of his own talents and yet humble all the same. But I can sense resentment and frustration. He has left my mother a few times in the past to try to open up his own place. He tried doing cheap take-out joints out on the ass-end of Long Island. He tried opening up a restaurant with his brother-in-law in upstate New York. He’s tried being an executive chef at some huge dim sum houses in Chinatown. None of it ever worked out. My mom takes great care of him, she recognizes his importance to the restaurant and to her kitchen. He is well-compensated and well-treated. But he wants to strike out on his own. He lacks the funding and restaurant know-how to do so though. It takes more than just being able to cook to succeed in this business, and he knows that, but all the same he isn’t able to change it. His anger will flash ever so rarely, and it is terrifying to behold, to see someone so gentle even have a flicker of rage. But it’s usually only reserved for one person… the head chef.

Ah Gau is my mother’s longest standing employee. He has worked as her head chef for 15 years. The peculiarity of it is that she absolutely can’t stand him. His shoddy work ethic, complete lack of organization, inability to manage people or control the quality of the dishes that leave his kitchen frustrate her to no end. He is less of a chef and more of a cook. He rarely if ever teaches, corrects or inspects his own cooks. Whereas most chefs I have worked with stand dutifully by the window, scrutinizing every dish that is coming and going, he will sit on a bucket at any idle chance until called upon by my mother to cook something. He is yelled at more than anyone else in the restaurant. If he doesn’t already, I’m sure his inevitable retirement will be haunted by my mother’s shrill cries of “Ah Gau! Ni zai na li!? (Ah Gau! Where the fuck are you?!)” Food cost is estimated to go up by a few percentage points when he is at the helm because he is sloppy and wasteful. Cooks come and go because no one can seem to get along with him. So the question must be asked, why the fuck is he still here? Well, he is an exceptional cook. Though Luo Shi-fu controls all of the dim sum, everything else that comes out of our kitchen is influenced by him. He has a razor sharp palate and a nigh-mystical ability to prepare some wonderful food. He is always called upon to personally cook VIP tables because he just knows. He knows how to make something delicious. And there's something to be said for familiarity. Like many relationships teetering on the brink of failure, people chicken out of taking that plunge and saying goodbye because you don't know if you'll find something better. They've become comfortable right now, and though it's not perfect they fear that change might not bring improvement. Do I like him? I actually really do, he’s always very kind to me. He likes to speak kitchen Spanish with me (though his is nearly unintelligible coupled with his thick Hong Kong accent). He is by all respects, a fairly agreeable person. But like Alan, his life has not gone the way he has planned. You can tell he is defeated on the inside. My mother claims his wife is bat-shit, extra-strength crazy and has effectively stubbed out the embers of his soul on her heel. But a man’s life at home must do exactly that … stay there. We all have our personal demons. Though these demons as materialized by menacing women seems to be a reoccurring theme at our restaurant.

So that's just a few of the key players, and yet it seems no more a powder keg than any other place of employ. But something about our company culture makes the gears grate against one another. I think it has something to do with us being a Chinese restaurant and it having a general trickle-down effect from the head honcho; Mom. As to the former, I mainly highlight this in contrast to the predominantly Hispanic kitchens I've worked in. It would be an egregious and ignorant generalization to say something like "all Mexican people get along," but I feel there's more a sense of camaraderie amongst them than with Chinese people. They got here via similar routes and a lot of them work the same path from dishwasher to cook, to maybe one day a chef. That would be a huge success for a Mexican immigrant, in my opinion. My old sous-chef, Chuy was pullin' down good cash, more than enough to support his family of four. He owned a house, a car, and he was able to bring his kids up in a good school district. You gotta have respect for that, someone who came over and started washing dishes at a corrupt racetrack when he was 17, not speaking any English. The lower-tier cooks knew not to fuck with him.

But Chinese cooks and restaurant employees come from all sorts of walks of life. Our expediter, Chen Shi-fu, was a teacher in China. William and Sam used to be cubicle rats. Owen used to be some kind of stocks trader in Fuzhou, whatever that means. Annie used to work as a receptionist. This diverse compilation of careers and skills, paired with the fact that many Chinese people speak a vast array of dialects incomprehensible to one another, seems to serve as a means of dividing us. They may have had better careers in China, they may have had better lives, very few of them seem to enjoy restaurant work. That is no fault of their own, it isn't for everybody. But when you're forced to do something, with people who share more than a little animosity between them, that makes for unhappy and strained situations. People just can't get along at our restaurant, they're always arguing, and I think it has plenty to do with the fact that they either don't want to be there, or are tired of being there.

A restaurant's personality will be a reflection of the owner's personality. Not just the face we show customers, but the face we show one another, day in and day out as coworkers. I think this is another source of tension in that our company culture doesn't foster any sense of togetherness or teamwork. I draw so many parallels between restaurants and sports because I think there is a lot of teamwork required to perform well. After reading Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness, seeing the work environment as a "tribe" seems to allow people to do amazing work. When people show up everyday to not just coworkers, but friends, who are passionate about their work, they will naturally work together to innovate and inspire. You must protect the tribe, promote its growth and ensure it is a healthy entity, inside and out. A lot of restaurants don't do that because restaurant work is seen as a pursuit of necessity rather than as a pursuit of fulfillment. People do this work because they have to, not because they want to, and as a result you get careless, uninspired results. To be sure, the best restaurants are not like this, but we are not one of the "best" restaurants. We're a pretty good restaurant held together by the vision of one person, who cracks whips rather than melds people. All employees in my mother's eyes are replaceable. Do what I say, or get the fuck out is the attitude. She thinks all of her employees are out to ruin her at any chance they get. To be fair, that is what the old school restaurant attitude is; this "fuck you" kind of attitude where you rule by fear. And she's had plenty of employees screw her over in her 30-odd-year career; people splitting and stealing her menu ideas and dishes, people forging papers and getting her in trouble with immigration, people stealing customer's credit card info and smearing her name with fraud, etc. So I think it will be difficult to change her perceptions. But I plan on doing it much differently...

It might be idealistic, but if I am going to work in a kitchen, a restaurant with a ton of people I want them to be people I get along with. People I'd get a beer with, people I like to hang out with. Not to say that we would be friends first, coworkers second, but I just think liking one another is really important. I've worked in places where there was just those few guys who made my life hell and I had zero respect for. It was awful, I feared walking in the door every morning. People often write of the city kitchen crew as a pirate crew; a motley band of rogues and brigands who didn't really fit neatly in other niches of society, but paired together like port and cheese. An overly romantic interpretation perhaps, but the point remains. Have I ever wanted to go out and hang with my coworkers? Rarely if ever. Have we ever gotten together over the holidays, or discussed means of improving the restaurant together? Certainly not. I think the team atmosphere is important, and it may be my life's work to refine it but here I am saying that it is my white whale.

I think I can do it. I like to consider myself a likable person, more because I have this incessant desire to be liked than because of any inherent charm or charisma. And it can be a bit neurotic if I ever encounter someone who doesn't really vibe with me; What the fuck do you mean you don't like me?! Fucking like me, damn it! I'm fucking likable, asshole! But what it all really boils down to is empathy. Having respect and awareness for one another's feelings, and creating an environment where they can thrive and feel comfortable, rather than live in constant fear or apprehension of each other, for their job, whatever it may be.

Like I said, it could be a bit idealistic now. Such an idyllic place may not exist. But when faced with the alternative...

"Ta men you zai cao le... zou kai, zou kai... (They're arguing again. Get out of here...)"

I look to see what he means. Our restaurant is generally a sausage fest, only four women work here; my mother, a manager, a waitress and the packing girl who packs all the take-out orders. Jenny, the packing girl and Annie, the waitress fucking despise one another. I have no idea why, my mom mentions something about an argument over what Miso Black Cod was a long time ago .. but regardless when they're near each other, the hormonal tension and resentment is so palpable I fear I might menstruate when standing between them.

Jenny's station is by the kitchen window so she can grab take-outs quickly. There's a steam table full of soup and sauces in front of her. Not so carelessly she drops the ladle in the soup with a sploosh, getting egg drop soup all over Annie's apron as she reaches up to garnish a dish with peanuts. There are death stares shared. Claws flash out, plates are slammed down and passive-aggression is building at an alarming rate. We are at 12,000 psi of female-engendered bitterness and every man in the room knows to shut the fuck up.

"Ni gan shi ma?! (The fuck's wrong with you?!)" says Annie.
"Ni de lian xiang ge hou zi. (Your face looks like a fucking monkey's!)" curses Jenny.
"Ah, ni zen me piao liang ma? (Oh, and you're so fucking pretty?)"
(cue bad kung-fu movie-esque Chinese yelling that I don't understand, and we are an inch away from someone getting slapped and getting their hair yanked in to a steaming bowl of soup)

Everyone else is silent. William pulls a walks-in-to-kitchen-immediately-walks-out-of-kitchen kind of deal. Only my mother's battlefield voice is sufficient to stop them from arguing. I run outside to Dorothy, who is probably the most sane female in the house. I tell her I always run the fuck away when women start arguing. Michael, the sushi chef is chuckling about it. He, like a neanderthal-ish male, finds it oddly sexual when women fight. I don't know how this always happens but we always find ourselves a pervy bastard of a sushi chef. He changes the subject and observes that I have a few pimples running around my temple. He always takes note of when I break out, oddly enough, saying that I should have more sex as that will alleviate any acne. Thank you, Michael, you're not the only person who thinks I should be having more sex. All the boys make sure to stay out of the girls' wake, no one wants to get burned. Like a pro, Annie immediately puts on a happy face for the customers, but she has threatened to quit if Jenny remains. There are dark looks on their faces for the rest of the night. We stay out of their path of destruction.

What can you do? At the restaurant you arguably see your coworkers more than your family, and you are at least obligated to like your family. Shit gets bad from time to time. Though the bus usually runs smoothly, the wheels fall off here and there. You patch the wounds, you sail the ship you've got. I think the only way to really fix things would be a complete overhaul, but we're past the point of no return. Hence even more important that I start things off on the right foot, be extremely rigorous in your hiring and firing of people. They just gotta pass the douche bag test, simplest of all, right?

Ask yourself...

"Is he being that guy? You know... that guy. Does he have potential to be that guy. Don't be that guy."
"He is definitely that guy."
"Okay, let's not hire that guy."

Yep, I'm pretty sure all major decisions will be played out as such in my brain from now on. Northwestern did a pretty good job of honing my douche-radar, recognizing "that guy" has gotten me pretty far in life avoiding unsavory people. And so it will be...

Everyday I'm shufflin', have a nice weekend.

EP6

After the Pride

What happens when it's 4 AM and you just had a most harrowing experience in the front...?

----

I don't feel proud of myself.

The concept of pride had always seemed intangible to me. It wasn't something predefined, it wasn't a neat bundle of emotions one felt after completing or achieving something. To me, it had always been something that went along with a general sense of well-being. If I was doing well, keeping busy, doing the things I wanted to do, and treating people well, then I felt good. I felt proud of myself. I'd stand tall, look customers in the eye, shrug off their attempts to bully me and remain unflinching. I'd smile, do my job and perform admirably. I used wellness and stability as a shield. So long as that bulwark stood firm I could face anything.

But people aren't rocks. They are disappointingly human; fallible and subject to fluctuations. There have been plenty of lows and highs this year, and I've managed to pull myself out of the proverbial ditch a few times. But as culinary school looms on the horizon, it becomes necessary to look inward. The time has come to be judge, jury and potential executioner of myself. And when people give themselves an honest look-over, they aren't always happy with what they find.

I haven't cooked in almost a month. Haven't even stepped in to the kitchen. It's something I didn't want to admit as the days off began to accumulate. My friends were too polite or too busy with their own busyness to question, "Hey, you been on chat an awful lot... no lunch service today?" This is something I have a tendency to do. It happened all the time at school. I cut a few classes, fall behind and can't muster up the courage to face the professor... I'd go weeks missing class that way. And then I would reach desperation, grow some fucking balls, face the class and make a grind to pull it out in the end. It always ended up costing me more time; I'd have to pull more all-nighters and more extra credit. I'm woe to admit that I've emotionally manipulated a few professors in my time. I always took the gamble that a professor's empathy would overcome their rigidity on academic honor. I always took the gamble that they didn't want to fail a student on their attendance policy, that that was more of a scare tactic than anything else. I was always right.

So my Northwestern failures were happening all over again. One day I drove to the restaurant, parked my car and stared at the kitchen's back door. The workers bees were beginning to buzz; refreshing sauces, sweeping, stocking take-out containers. I could hear the clang of cast iron woks on carbon-scored burners, the rattle of a dishwasher hose through the screen door. Their grind had begun for the X-th day, with X being an almost unforgivably large number. Every year, every week, six days a week, twelve hours a day for practically nothing. I had both a great deal of respect and more than a little pity for our employees. They truly were salt of the earth, carved from stone kinds of people. I suppose something about the crucible of immigration really makes you a fighter. Something about having a family gives you motivation. And I wanted to call myself a fighter too. A bulldog, someone who if lacking talent at least never gave up.

But that day, I did not want to fight.

I didn't have it. Not anymore. I didn't and don't want to fight anymore. What's the point of working that hard? To raise a family that you barely know, maybe doesn't even really like you? What merit is there in that kind of life? Why show up here everyday, give it your all and have customers treat you like garbage for their $9.95? Why keep doing this when there seems to be a complete shortage of any helpful results?

Maybe that was a different kind of pride. Not the self-confidence one used to face the challenges of the world, but the eggshell one cast around their insecurities. When inevitably broken, claws lashed out to the defend one's yellow, runny insides.

I was and remain plenty yellow.

I can't do it anymore. I can't hear another customer call me on the phone with a take-out order and hum along as they decide what to eat for 15 minutes while three other lines blare with urgency. I can't have another customer get mad at me because their table isn't ready ten minutes before their reservation, talk shit about my mom's restaurant within earshot. I can't hear these terrible Long Island accents anymore. It's that pitch, that cadence, that diction, that snobbish drawl that haunted me in high school, that weakens my soul now. To me it has the effect of screwing in a light bulb; cheap metal parts connecting to one another. It makes my teeth grind and leaves this palpable chalkiness in my mouth.

Even though Superman is a broken superhero concept, the analogy of Kryptonite remains relevant. That fucking accent is my weakness. The way they say "sauce" as "suawse," that stupid Valley Girl meets Brooklyn-Italian equals Long Island pronunciation are like hollow point bullets to my soul. Is that melodramatic? I don't know. I had a buddy who worked at Home Depot and told me every piece of lumber he scanned made him want to commit seppuku with the plastic scan gun in front of every customer, spilling his bloody entrails over pressure-treated chestnut planks, which would remain untarnished by such a display I might add. I guess we just have to realize when we've given up.

It's just such an absurd lack of empathy that it doesn't make sense to me. It's trite at this point as every girly magazine-reading, Cosmo-praising, vapid hoe has read by now that the best way to figure out if your man is "ohmygosh, a keeper!" is how he treats the wait staff. It's always in the dating advice section lost among the 37 different ways to please your man (read: sucking dick), how to let him pay for dinner while remaining your own woman, and some treatise from a failed gender studies major about the changing dynamics of feminism in the modern world. Yes, just continue to lose count of how much dick you've taken, you're a sexy, independent woman, you're not bound by archaic ideas of sexuality, you're making a difference, believe in yourself.

But it is true. How you treat service industry people is very indicative of the kind of person you are. In my opinion, it should be mandatory that every teenager work retail, or stand behind the counter of a McDonald's, or host at a busy restaurant for a year. I promise you, after a year of that harrowing bullshit, having your emotional fortitude tested every night, you will never, ever be a dick to someone again. You will have fucking empathy for your fellow humans. At least the ones who suffered as you did. If you come through all of that still acting like an asshole, then perhaps you enact Darwinian justice on yourself and remove yourself from the gene pool.

It's immature and unrealistic of me to expect better from humanity than a lack of empathy and a total immersion in ignorance, with unwillingness to expand one's mind piled on top.

I won't get in to it anymore. I always rant angrily and I'm tired of it. Tired of hearing myself say it, not caring what you think has gone wrong with my wiring. Inside of me, deep within my cold, improperly cooked, runny yolk I knew this going in. A restaurant was about dealing with people, and people were at best volatile, and at worst venomous. I just didn't expect to handle it so poorly.

It just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

That pride returns; why do these people deserve my heart and soul? Why do they deserve the product of my sweat and tears? Because they're giving me ten bucks? A sum so insignificant to them, these undeservedly rich second-generation inherited wealth motherfuckers. Ten bucks hasn't meant anything to them their whole lives. But I have to care about every fucking dollar that comes in this place, and treat it as if it were our last? Is that what this all is for? Must I sacrifice my pride and beg, and compromise my integrity for ten dollars?

If the answer is yes, then I'm not sure what I'm going to do now.

My life has been a highlight reel of failures. What makes it worse, in my opinion, is that I always had the potential for success, but I squandered it. I was given a lot of gifts, given a lot of opportunity but didn't have the wherewithal or awareness to seize it.

People had a lot of faith in my ability to play cello. They told me I had a nice professional career ahead of me. I threw it away, I didn't want it, practicing was too hard and I didn't enjoy it. Now the fingers are soft and clumsy, unable to produce what they once did. It's gone and not just to rust.

People had zero faith in my ability to play sports. I have no athletic background, a sports resume more Kobayashi than Ichiro, and nearly a decade's worth of cold-smoked lungs. Though I had the motivation for a time, I never could prove them wrong. I never had the talent and now my ultimate history will be forever colored with mediocrity.

People had little faith in my academic prowess and they were right. I have a quarter-of-a-million dollar degree, but it'd be more useful as a contraceptive than a diploma, so flimsy is the substance that backs it.

People thought I was crazy to want to learn how to cook. I deemed it to be a natural human skill though, and something I couldn't possibly fuck up too bad. But after a year in a Chinese kitchen, all I've proven is that I can still only kind of cook Italian food. A pork fucking fried rice eludes me.

And here we are, finally at a crossroads of sorts. What was once, I believed, to be a harmonious juncture of what talents I had and my life's motivation wrapped in to one. What was once, I believed, to be the evolutionary niche carved out for me in modern society. What was once, I believed, to be something I really enjoyed and deemed worthy of a life's passion and work.

Well, you destroyed that. I thank you. Now I need to spend the next few month's putting it back together. If I can do so at all. But it was your thankless attitude, not just your ignorance of the restaurant industry but your lack of any desire to show empathy for it, your hollow, depressing lives that seek to drag mine down with it, and your nasty remarks that finally did me in.

I'm immature, I realize. I shouldn't let it hurt me, they're not trying to hurt you either. It's a false sense of entitlement that comes with their generation. There is still hope. It gets better. You're a rough-hewn product, Eric... misshapen rock at best. You're not sturdy yet, but you should plant your feet right now because the tide's coming in.

But I don't want to. I used to want to. I miss wanting to. But if for all my efforts this is my reward then I say "No thank you, not right now."