Order Up! My Time as a Cook Part 1
In my last entry I wrote about how I felt after watching the Bourdain documentary. It brought up old memories of my years grinding it out in kitchens all across the country. So, I thought it might be interesting to share a little about my own time in the trenches of the restaurant world, its effect the culture had on me, and my thoughts about it now that I am removed from it.
This one turned out lengthy enough as to become a three-part post. So, in part one I am going to tell you a little about where I was before cooking and then speak about the culinary chaos that so lovingly embraced me as one of its own. This is in no way an exhaustive telling of over a decade of cooking. Rather, it is more just some backstory for you, a bit of the odd entertainment with perhaps something you can take away and make use of. Bon Appetit!
Prepping:
Prepping is where it’s at and a good prep area is crucial. I love cuttin’ big stuff into little stuff!
Most of my life, up to the point of becoming a travelling cook, I spent being a good little boy and living up to the expectations of my society and social surroundings. I had gone to college, got a degree, gotten the respectable jobs, the nine to fives, and found myself very unsatisfied. I was at a weird point in my life, having done what I was ‘supposed’ to do but feeling some sort of dis-ease.
When I was around 20 years old, I got my first job working in a kitchen. It was a mom-and-pop, BBQ joint in a small west Tennessee town. From the owner to the manager on down to me, none of us really had any idea what we were doing but we figured it out and put out a good product. This was my beginnings, my origin story of kitchen life. This was long before I ever knew someone like Anthony Bourdain even existed. His words and ideas about being a cook hadn’t yet reached me. What I felt was just raw feeling and excitement for a job that I didn’t previously know much about.
I was the “pit master” and pretty much every other position as well. I quickly took to the work and the mindset. I loved all of the chaos, the pressure, the fast pace, the heat and sharp steel. I would be at the restaurant around 5:30 every morning taking off the shoulders from the previous night and putting on more to cook all day. In the middle of summer, in a tiny metal out-building, I would have multiple grills going at once with different hunks of meat on each one. There would be a bed of coals always working and ready to shove into whichever grill needed them. It was a hot, smoky inferno and I felt right at home. I loved every sweaty minute! Most nights, I wouldn’t get out of there until 10pm dog tired.
I didn’t stick around very long as I went off to pursue a college degree, but in that time, I was shown a different way of life. I had been blessed by the gods and/or demons of the kitchen. They had chosen me as a disciple and anointed me with fire and pig fat. They waited patiently for my return knowing they had planted a seed within me.
Your typical line and one of many where I have sweat and bled!
Back On Shift:
A few years went by, I got my degree and had a couple of those ‘normal’ jobs I mentioned earlier. I quickly realized, though, that I didn’t give too much of a damn about the regular way of living. Somewhere in that time span I came across Bourdain, and he became pretty much the influence on my decision to return to kitchen life. I read all his books, and religiously watched his shows. I was captivated by the way he described and portrayed the world of food and travel. I think it is what I had been looking for at the time.
Then one night in New Orleans I was sitting at a bar-big surprise- with one of my very best friends who was also a chef at the time. I wasn’t happy in the job I was in and I was waxing poetic to him about my first kitchen job. I was reminiscing about how much I loved it and how right it seemed to me. He said, “It sounds like you need to get back in a kitchen.” It was a profound moment because in that instant my identity switched and I became a member of the culinary world, of this “Cosa Nostra.”
For many years I was a cook, and I took to that life with gusto. I did seasonal gigs all over the country from Louisiana to Alaska, Washington to Maine, and all points in between. There was/is a lot about it that I really enjoyed, that I really identified with. In the documentary, there is a clip of Bourdain still as a chef at Les Halles. In it he says something to the effect of how he doesn’t trust or understand the world beyond the kitchen walls, how things make sense to him within the restaurant. I understood his sentiment.
As with Bourdain, the micro universe of a kitchen seemed to make sense to me. No matter if you are fit as a fiddle or close to death, you show up early because, in a kitchen, if you are ‘on time’ then you are late. You have a clearly defined set of tasks to accomplish usually with a team of other people who are all counting on each other. You all have a shared objective each day that you hope to achieve with the least amount of screw ups possible. One of my favorite quotes from Bourdain comes from his book Medium Raw:
“There is no lying in the kitchen. And no god there, either. He couldn’t help you anyway. You either can—or can’t—make an omelet. You either can—or can’t—chop an onion, shake a pan, keep up with the other cooks, replicate again and again, perfectly, the dishes that need to be done. No credential, no amount of bullshit, no well-formed sentences or pleas for mercy will change the basic facts. The kitchen is the last meritocracy—a world of absolutes; one knows without any ambiguity at the end of each day how one did.”
Another kitchen and beautiful spot I got to cook in amid the wilds of mother nature
First Course Out!
I feel like this is a good spot to end it for now. In part 2 I will get into the deeper more psychological reasonings for my attachment to this “Cosa Nostra.” Because, even though an environment such as this definitely encourages wild behavior, it was ultimately my choice and my responsibility in how I navigated the terrain.
