I walked into Leaf ready for the day and seeing that things just have not been done for me to be ready for the shift. My mise en place were not even close to being stocked. I mean they were cutting romaine, bok choy, tomatoes, onions and jicama on the fly, as well as there were large cambros of shoots, water chestnuts and hearts of palm on my station. Every time an order was called out, I'd have to run to the reach in to get yet another thing to stock. It was a rough start to the shift.
I read The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America, the author is a writer who spends two years at the Culinary Institute of America trying to be come a cook. It was towards the end of the book that I realized the above situation is at no fault but my own. My industry background is if you worked at night the day shift ensured you had all your mise en place. This is really a function of corporate production kitchens that are all about consistency in product across the country. My journey into the culinary world is to get away from that atmosphere, but maintaining a low tolerance for inconsistency.
The routine is simple, check to see if bread was made and is proofing, check the prep list, ask Dave if there is anything I need to do first, go over my station and check my mise en place, and have this done in about forty five minutes. I'm getting better at it, but julienne-ing jicama is the toughest thing yet, but I can us the mandolin slicer for once again, consistent product.
I'll prep at my station which is a five feet long sandwich cooler with a six feet long Metro rack as a pass trough window. Behind me is the stacked convection oven. The top one is set around three hundred and fifty degrees and the bottom is broken so we think it is five hundred degrees (who cares because it is really hot). Just to the left of that, which is towards the saute station, is a single fryer and a three by three char broiler, that acts as our sauce holding station. The saute station is ten burners with one oven set to three hundred plus degrees and the smaller one is not working well.
It gets really hot in there all day long. Chef Rachel said, "it is a challenge to keep yourself hydrated, so try to drink water as often as you can." The relief comes when you know you have to go to the basement to get something out of the cooler or freezer, but in all honesty, it really makes the heat worse. What makes our restaurant interesting, is next door is Aji. We share the heart of house area with them. Their kitchen is a show kitchen, so they have to be neat, polite and precise when they are cooking, because the guests can see in to where they are working. The do not keep much in the basement, except for what is in the freezer, but they have to come through to use the employee bathroom and head outside as well. We share all the pots, pans, trays, cambros and utensils, because we have only one dish room between us.
What is the point of all of this? The restaurant industry is intense, and it takes a little more than a willingness to work hard, you need a different kind of wiring. Ask a cook if they like their job, they'll say "no," but ask why they won't get another job, you'll find the answers vary from, "I'm working on it; I want to be the next head chef; I don't like it here, but I love what I do; It's the rush of getting swamped and making it out with pleasing others." We're just different people. I feel like my time since June to January, is my period of rebirth, into becoming a cook. I've been doing the restaurant thing now for almost seven years, and I would like to get out, but when the day is done, sweat on the brow, compost bucket full and a stack of dirty pans, I think to myself, I love this.
