My Life in Kitchens: the Grind
Roll on the day.
Morning is 6:00, 5 for prep shift. Morning preps lunch, lunch preps dinner. Night out like a flat dream on 5 cups of coffee.
I learned about the night when I worked at Veselka. First job, first principles. Fill in: move up from soup counter (I was borcht red from knees to nose the first shift) to pick up 2 night shifts. Sat and Sun, 12 to 7. Wed, Thurs, Fri, 8 to 4. Roll on the day. 6 for 7 sleep shift. It works but you got to stitch it together.
Next job, straight evening. 5 days by 8 hours (plus the odd one). OK but where's my life? Eeking it out from the corners. Home-time stretches, fills in, gains consistancy. Sleep or sense suffers. I broke out of that iron coccoon and took some time off on the money.
Then school. Short but not short enough. Students do not need to rely on each other, so nastiness is essentially unrestrained. Something happened, which I have tried to lay out faithfully in zeropride. At any rate, school has nothing to do with cooking. School has nothing to do with anything, except school.
Straight from school into the Monkey Bar. I carry a clipping from Adbusters in my wallet called How To: Sell America To People Who Don't Like America which quotes Jim Ferguson in Advertizing Age: "I would hire a guerilla marketing unit. They could have fashion shows there. The could have movies, dances. They can teach them our decadent way of living, how the infidels live over here and why it's so much fun. We could recreate the Monkey Bar over there and invite them in..."
Of course, I was only in the dining room three times when I was there: 1) when I entered the building the first time and missed the service entrance, 2) at midnight on New Years when the sous-chef Erwin demanded European right to bang pots and bowls and hoot as we line-danced through the seated guests, and 3) when my boss tried to talk me out of quitting. Entrees cost 20-30 dollars, dress, I am lead to believe, is formal. The cooks worked in the basement.
It was at the Monkey Bar that I really started to learn about the Grind.
Hard work five days a week, sometimes six, for $12/hr. Take-home barely beats 400. All evenings, in all probability both Friday and Saturday, almost certainly one or the other. 8-10 hrs/shift, depending on season and day of the week. You are responsible for your station, a responsibility ususally shared with one other person. Either of you, however, is on the hook for a full portion of shit if you run out of anything. Each Menu Item has 6-10 ingredients, each of which must be prepared throughout the week.
I started on the fish station, poissonier, under Erwin. He taught me the ropes. When I could hold down fish, I started learning Meat and filling in on Garde Manger (cold appetizer station). Soon I was picking up a few at pastry.
This was hard work, turning back and forth all night -- refrigerator to stove, stove to plate, start again. I developed a nasty limp, and a plantar wart like a stone on the ball of my right foot. I stayed on until I quit.
Then Sardine Can. New restaurant, I'm hired as brunch chef. Fill in, fill in. Two days where I set the menu, pick up one shift. New Hours, new grind. All electric kitchen I worked hard to develop new menu items and made brunch work. A few days we had people waiting out the door for a table. Ultimately, they hated me for my success. They were short of cash, and could only see that I had to spend x dollars a week at the local "C Town" Supermarket to buy my ingredients. Recipts show that my shifts are expensive, right? Cut back on brunch and save the restaurant x dollars, right? Bad business, one of three bosses leaves defending me. The grind again, from a new side. The dollar mill grinds slow, but it grinds fine...
It is at the 'Can that I first dream of the pushcart, dream of escaping the grind, or at least making it workable, of leaping out of the kitchen on a roll of surf, of floating on the sea-level, of feeding the hungry here and there...
Fired. Fill in at the Cleaver Company. New schedual, new grind. It's Catering and I'm working part-time, trying to get the pushcart together in my spare time. But the work is unsteady, and when the shifts come it's hard to turn them down. The desparation grind. It tramples my week when I let it. With help from Molly, I learn how to say "no" to shifts. Protect Mon thru Wed for the cart, and slowly it comes.
Now it is almost here.
Posted by Sam at May 15, 2003 10:13 PM
