“Okay, let’s start planning the kitchen layout for this project,” I announce to my sleepy Management by Menu class. Though they’re all culinary students, this kind of assignment leaves them cold. They’d rather be cooking or baking or just about anything but sitting in my classroom on a frigid Minnesota morning. I can’t say I blame them for that, but these days I make my living teaching, and though they don’t realize it now, many of these kids will someday use this information. Thankfully, most of them at least pay polite attention.
“First of all, you need to start with your menu. What are you going to serve and how are you going to serve it?” These students have been watching food porn on TV all their lives. They’re smart and creative, even passionate, but most are pretty unaware of the realities of working in a professional kitchen. I see foie gras mousses and handmade squid ink pastas in their eyes. That may come, but along the way they’re sure to be spending a lot more time in the cooler scrounging for leftovers to be turned into employee meals. That will test their creativity.
“Obviously, if you’re going to serve broiled steaks, you’re going to need a broiler.” And a broiler cook. Somebody who can stand over a 1,500-degree grate all night shuffling charred meat around, keeping orders and doneness straight, staying composed through the stress, and even speaking a little English. It won’t be too surprising if this cook is a bit of a flake, an eccentric, even giddy at times. It goes with the territory. I hope this broiler cook won’t be like the one I remember from Schiek’s, who got third-degree burns on his hand when he casually leaned against the grate after ingesting two marijuana-laced brownies before his shift. Good shit.
But that broiler cook, regardless of legal status or state of mind, was also creative and passionate, albeit in different directions. Restaurant cooking was something he did in order to earn the money he needed for paints, brushes, and canvases for his real creative outlet. His paintings still show up in galleries around town. He regarded his ability to throw down, to superbly handle his station, as a sort of passport. Cooking in a restaurant allowed him to remain outside the mainstream and nurture his status as a free agent. For generations of restaurant workers, their employment allowed them to maintain a romantic, even heroic, independence. They sold their services but never their souls.
Until the price was right, that is. That price varied with the individual: weekends off, health insurance, relief for sore knees. Any or all could prompt them to change harnesses. Life intervenes. Compromises have to be made. Generally attitude, in its winsome fierceness, is all that remains.
Do I see attitude in my culinary students? Undoubtedly, but it is attitude mainly fueled by desire and professionalism. They have chosen life in the milieu. They know that in a nation where the vast majority cannot, or cares not to, feed itself, their calling is valued, even venerated, and, incidentally, immune to being outsourced to India.
Some show extraordinary courage. Jessica, one of my students from a couple of years ago, headed for Northern California after graduation. She wanted to be as far away from rural Wisconsin as an old Toyota would take her. She pounded on doors, worked for free in Napa Valley restaurants, and was eventually hired by a Michelin one-star establishment with a movie mogul clientele. In 2005, Jessica was the first woman ever hired as a line cook at this mountainside spa, and she had to prove her worth daily in order to keep her job and her sanity. She was hazed mercilessly but survived. The people she works with come from all over this country and Mexico and view their time in this elite establishment as a valuable résumé builder. Their careers are planned, and they fully intend to be the next generation of culinary lions. There is no reason to believe that some of them won’t do exactly that. After all, they are working for a renowned chef who has already achieved such an exalted status.
Needless to say, this kind of single-minded dedication is outside my experience. The restaurant world that I grew up in was far less professional and much more haphazard. In my own mind (admittedly softened by the passing decades), I imagine that things today are also a lot less fun. I forget the daily effort and emotion it took to harness the diverse energies of a revolving-door cast of renegades and reprobates and somehow feed an indifferent public. The product may not have always been the best, but the process was fascinating.
But when I visited Jessica last summer and dined at her restaurant, it was all about the product. On a terrace overlooking a Napa Valley sunset, we were fed course after superb course until we begged the servers to stop. Each succeeding plate carried its own universe of taste, texture, and presentation. Jessica had told her boss that “her chef—the only one who’s ever seen me cry” was coming to dinner, and the kitchen pulled out all the stops. By the time it was over, my wife, son, and I had sampled fourteen incredible courses and hadn’t even spied dessert. It was the best meal I’ve ever had or am likely to have. I actually teared up at the end because it seemed, with that meal, the last word had been written in a long saga.