There is a common misconception. Some choose to believe that the upscale dining business is run by an upscale workforce; a highly coordinated team of Johnson and Wales graduates with pristine knife skills, starched chef's coats and metal briefcases containing professional grade cutlery straight out of Bavaria… (pause for laughter).
Lets be honest, inside Tampa's most revered restaurant, the majority of the chef coats you see are those belonging to overzealous interns that have yet to be broken— sous chefs and chefs excluded. More common are tattoos, piercings, and proudly flaunted burn marks, the majority of which are not even incurred through cooking.
The drugs flow like wine in and through the back doors of these establishments. Why call your brothers old roommate when you can just float between stations during your next shift until you find what you need?
They say cocaine died in the 80's, but I have about two servers and one cook that would readily disagree, and the prices aren't half bad if you aren't making cook's wages.
Visiting the salad station is like visiting a different country, as is the dish pit, and I can't remember the last Sunday that I didn't sit through at least four "I was so fucked up last night" stories (one of which is always mine, which I admittedly reiterate far too many times any given Sunday.)
As I slowly gain more and more background to gain some footing on the greater culinary ladder, I am also gaining the valuable knowledge necessary to survive in prison. For example, the health department had written us up for use of a homemade Oyster Shucker, which bared striking resemblance to a shank. The tool we use to crack stone crabs to order: a piece of a broken whisk with a masking-tape grip.
"Last night I grinded my teeth so much that I feel like Wilford Brimley"
"Dude, how does that even make sense?"
"He's old, his teeth have probably fallen out by now… you see where I'm goin with this…"
I am not pretentious, and I don't even say I oppose the lifestyle lived by back-of-house employees, its just time that consumers put things in perspective. Don't think that because you made a reservation, or you have consulted a weathered sommelier that you aren't eating food prepared by a guy on work-release from jail with a pocket full of painkillers and a killer hangover.
There are exceptions to this, and I don't want to oversee them. Food on larger tickets that require several items from several different stations in a kitchen are usually looked over and coordinated by an expediter. These are usually chefs and sous'. That means that if there is some visible fault, it will be corrected, and the responsible party will be chewed out; non-visible faults excluded… need I say more about those…
Ironically, these are the best suited for these positions anyway, but the conservative upper-echelon diners who order their caviar traditional and who need not the suggestions of a sommelier— do they really know? Could they? Is it blissful ignorance?
I am a proud cook, and I take pride in my work. I am sanitary, I wash my hands, but I undoubtedly fall under 2-3 categories listed in this title… Scared?
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.