When I knew I wanted to turn a lifelong obsession with food into a career, I decided that I needed to start by learning more about the restaurant industry from the inside out. So I began working in them. At my first kitchen job, after my nightly shift had ended, most of my co-workers would go out in search of food and drink. Exhausted, I usually went home to nurse my wounds and my ego. After a shower, which was never quite enough to get my cuticles to stop smelling of fried shallots, I often found myself fully awake, my mind and body humming from the evening's work.
To cope, to vent and to help wind myself down, I started a blog whose raison d'être was "to serve as a forum for rants, raves and the general documentation of my transition into the restaurant industry. Gratuitous quantities of cathartic self-flagellation and the announcement of minor kitchen victories with sophomoric gusto can be expected (Look, Ma: No stitches!)." With no small amount of tongue-in-cheek geniality, I referred to the first two restaurants in which I worked as Equinox and Fling (as in "spring equinox" and "spring fling"). Both were established and esteemed institutions vying for the position of the ultimate fine dining experience in town.
The names of the restaurants and their staff were changed to protect everyone involved, and all details involving my identity and location were altered. On my second day at Equinox, I was given the task of transforming 15 pounds of shallots into translucent slices. The thing about this thankless task is that mandolins are sharp, and shallots are small and awkward to grasp. Personally, I prefer knives to mandolins, but I wanted to keep the peace. I should have been more worried about keeping my fingertips.
About 10 pounds in, I tried to get one more swipe out of a pretty pink sliver of shallot that turned out to be a part of my hand. This was a huge nuisance, since the Equinox version of a First Aid kit featured a drawer in a filing cabinet containing 11 alcohol swabs and a few paper clips. I settled for duct tape and a sponge. Though not always painful, knife cuts can bleed like it's going out of style. And whereas most bleeding wounds can be assuaged by pressure, the same treatment only exacerbates cuts in precarious locations such as these, causing the tender skin to split forth and flow. Not that this is an excuse to stop working.
That night, the restaurant was hosting a dinner attended by notable members of the media and the local culinary cognoscenti. At one point, after delivering a dish to a table, I instinctively picked up bottle of water, refilled a diner's glass, and returned to the kitchen. Moments later, I sailed back into the dining room to find the occupants of the same table staring at me, mouths agape. My stomach flip-flopped. I immediately glanced down at my bandaged hand, and realised what had happened. Balling it into a fist, I headed towards the table to survey the damage. Evidently, as I had been pouring, a steady stream of blood had been lapping through the duct tape and trickling down the palm of my hand, directly into the water glass, staining it a painfully unmistakable shade of red. As I had moved my hand away, more blood had dripped onto the table's bread service.
Needless, to say, it was an unlovely sight. On the bright side, at least I didn't spill on the tablecloth. Here is some of what I learnt from my experiences: ? Well-fed staff are happy staff. Feed your staff. ? As with acting or modelling, a disproportionate number of people think they would be able to handle running a restaurant. But the odds of being a successful restaurateur are just as low as the chances of making it big in Hollywood, only auditioning for parts won't leave you a bankrupt, divorced insomniac.
* When you work in a restaurant, your schedule is reversed from those around you. You're on the job while they are at play. If this seems like too much to grasp, get a desk job. * If you own a restaurant and you're on holiday, you're not working hard enough. * If you think there's any task involved in running a restaurant that you're too good to do - and that includes cleaning grease traps, plunging toilets, and expediting food - you're in the wrong industry.
* A love of food is not a good reason to open a restaurant. Misguided idealists do that. That said, if you don't love food, don't open a restaurant. * Serving good food is not enough to make a restaurant thrive. * If you think the customer is always right, consider how you'll cope with someone calling in and claiming to have contracted food poisoning at your establishment. Restaurants are lawsuit landmines, and litigious people are everywhere.
* If your restaurant is staffed with people who share your vision, genuinely like the food and feel good about serving it, are interested in providing great service and don't steal from you you're very lucky. * A chef-owned restaurant is not necessarily in better shape, though the kitchen may be a tighter-run ship. Far more important is good communication between the "front" and "back" of house - the kitchen and the dining room.
* A negative or unpleasant kitchen environment will be reflected in the food. Even if the kitchen itself is spotless. There is nothing glamorous about the mechanics of running a restaurant. Still, some people choose to swallow terrible hours and demoralising wages in return for an education that is unlike any other, and if you're cut out for the work, it can be one of the most rewarding feelings imaginable.
Fuelled by testosterone, elbow grease and adrenalin, the kitchen is, for me, an improbable nirvana. But despite how much I love food, dining, restaurants, and the restaurant industry, for now, I also like my life just the way it is.