ONCE A CHEF, ALWAYS A CHEF
Always a social misfit, non neurotypical, or just a plain garden variety ADHD creative. Stories from the pass.
ONCE A CHEF, ALWAYS A CHEF
You may have worked out, if you are following my socials, that I am in Australia now. I’m here for family reasons; some exciting, some not so much. Anyway, I have been recipe developing and catching up with all my specialists. The best part is seeing everyone again.
Why am I looking at trauma as a cause for my ills? This little story is a big contributor and raison d'état.
Once an artist, always an artist.
Once a creative, always a creative.
How I got here.
Everyone has their version of this story. It was this way for me. And remember, I started in the kitchen in the 80s! This, for a young blonde female, was a version of being the only girl at a marine boot camp (in the 80s) The timeline is always important for context. There was little respect for women then, and kitchen people were not there to be polite. Many people in restaurants were there for their own reasons of maladjustment to society. Some were there because it was a calling, and they were rare indeed.
I must add, I worked for a larger part of my life in Australia, which does not have the staffing levels of the US and UK system which has lower wages. This means that kitchens, in general, unless you worked in the very high end, were always understaffed and run tighter than anyone can imagine. There were no busboys, individual prep people, no few dishes to a person. You did a whole section for up to and over 100 covers (seats). Plus, you had extra sections, like cold room, stock rotation, etc.
For example, for a 300-seat restaurant in Sydney, I had to do cold larder (cold entrees, sides, garnishes, desserts). This included all fresh cold garnishes for all the mains, all cold entrees, all salads and cold sides. I started at 3 pm. I would have started earlier to get it all done but the door was locked, and the manager was lazy, and they would not pay for the extra hours. There were always extra hours worked for free.
To start the day, there were usually three or four pallets of food delivered, stacked to the top. I would pull all the existing stock out of the cool room to be used by each section to the front. Then, I would, at 5.2 inches and about 54 kg, lift four pallets of food into neat, orderly shelves by date.
Then I would run with heart palpitations, I only had an hour and a half to get all my prep done for service. The head chef would arrive at service start, open anyone's random fridge, pull out a container of prep from the back, taste it, and hopefully not yell at you and send your wispy loose hair back from your scalp.
Often there would be a service drama, a waiter fight with the chef, a fryer chef who often nodded off into the fryer. A drug deal in the change room, and all the missorders, misunderstandings, egos, tempers, romances, betrayals and everything that went with the territory they call the kitchen.
At about 10 pm the high would get you through clean up, prep sheet production, post service review and off to your best friend, the barman! With the high of adrenaline and your third knock-off drink, you went out to the bars till the sun came up. You slept till as late as possible, hoped you had a clean jacket, and did it all again, six days a week. Hey was 22 !
THE BEAR
So, I hope you find this insight enlightening. After watching THE BEAR, I can relate and have PTSD. I do wonder who is doing all the cooking while they are having meltdowns. I had my meltdowns while plating up 8 dishes at a time for 5 different tables, asking the waiter what table they were going to, and arguing with a stove that could fit not one more pan at one time.
ONCE A CHEF, ALWAYS A CHEF
As you know, I have been a chef for as many years as one cares to remember. You never lose the muscle memory of something you have done for your whole life. Yes, I'm counting when I cook at home, even for only me. A chef moves a certain way.
The kitchen is a dance. It’s a dance between the earth and the table.
THE DANCE
When you are in this dance, it's a trance. It can and did take over my very existence throughout my life. Beyond the warm-up of prep, the ballet of service, and cool down clean down; you wake thinking of prep lists, staff, and worrying if a dish will work. You eventually sleep (pass out), thinking of stock left low on the gas, who is on prep, and did you forget to order something. You wake startled at some ungodly hour with exactly the right combination for the side to the main that has bothered you for the last few days. Then while you are up, you think of at least 10 dishes you want to try in the morning! If you are lucky, just as you pass out again, the alarm goes off, and you feel like you have been shot. Then there are at least two coffees as strong as you can make them to shock your tired heart into function and kick your adrenal glands into action.
STAFF
The first words you hear when you walk into the kitchen are, "Hey, can I have this Saturday night off?" You look grey and crushed and say, "NO," then follow with a weak "why?" Then you cave and give them the night off and know that it's going to be hell’s kitchen with all the bookings and walk-ins. And you are already down a staff member, a good one!
You spend all week arranging for hell night (the only night you make the partner predicted margins) to avoid as many issues as possible, and the manager puts two new people on the floor who cannot seem to tell the difference between a raw piece of steak and a grilled one. These waiters squirm when you ask them what table they are going to. They say you are too hard on them. This perception is then floated through the outer community, who you don’t engage with because YOU ARE IN A KITCHEN. Then eventually the rumors and whispers find their way back in some casual conversation out of the blue that you are this person.
By then, you never cared because the food on the table had your name on it and not theirs. When they served the wrong dish or made it less in any way, it was your heart on the plate that was being stepped on. But you were too hard on them, as you were running at least a thousand things from orders to each dish and oh yes, not being pretty about it. More like a military operation twice a day, with no furlough.
Why did I do it for so long?
I was a chef in a kitchen for so many years, before that, I cooked at home from the tender age of about 9. I had two restaurants and worked in about 30; I lost count over the years, in the USA and London. I had a baby at 30 years. At about the tenth year of kitchens, I decided I will have to use my brain, not my body, as it was falling apart. It took me another 9 years to wiggle out of the kitchen to do basically everything else in the restaurant, which I learned was just as much a performance and socially demanding, and you had to SMILE! This, in a way, was even worse. It used muscles I had that had never worked that hard before. Plus, it was a way of being that was new and seemed fake. Nothing makes you more unwell than a façade of all being well.
I had my first of many collapses at about 22, in the USA. I had so many more. I mean the collapse that I now know as Chronic fatigue. Because I was young, on my own for the most part, and the leader of most expeditions (as in it was usually my idea), I kept going anyway. Usually until I passed out and had to quit that employment for a while, or at the very least, be bedridden until I had to go back and keep going.
Why did I do it for so long? Because I loved it, I loved it all, the art of food on the plate, the dance in the kitchen, the service high is addictive! The white linen, the stacks of flatware, the uniform, the menu font, the ethereal pleasure of making that perfect stock. I didn't have to smile, but I did when it was good or funny. I didn't have to go out into the world. The kitchen was my safe place.
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