Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line by Michael Gibney Read Free Book Online Page A

prep cook, Brianne; and
madre
to our favorite dishwasher, Kiko. They make a nice little family, the four of them, and they contribute a significant amount to our operation’s skeletal system.
    Rogelio, or Don Rojas, as we often refer to him, is indispensable. In addition to his duties receiving and unpacking deliveries, he’s also responsible for the bulk of our production work. He takes care of the daily basics such as sliced garlic, peeled vegetables, and snipped herbs, which need to be ready by the time the cooks arrive. But his main area of focus is the large-format projects. We have him doing all our pickling and preserving, making all our stocks and bouillons, and, probably most important, maintaining many of our sous vide systems. He is responsible for most of the ROP and HACCP logging, for monitoring the pars on our compression and infusion projects, and for executing all our multiday braises. Without him, our sous vide output would be a fraction of what it is. Suffice it to say, we get to cook the way we do in large part because of the work that Rogelio does.
    Brianne is equally vital. She arrives in the afternoon and carries us through to the bitter end. Her strength isbatch work—the foodstuffs that get made every couple of days: aiolis, sofritos, vinaigrettes, etcetera—and she devotes most of her time to working on projects of this sort. She’s possessed by a certain spirit of inquiry, so working with recipes and learning to perfect them is a main goal of hers. She is also ambitious to ascend the ranks, and it shows in her performance. Tireless, punctual (if not early), determined, eager, curious, never failing to lend a hand—these are only a few of the ways that Brie could be described. And it comes in handy, this work ethic of hers, especially on busy nights when the linesmen need to re-up on mise en place throughout service. Brie is the queen of ancillary prep work. She is always there to fill the gaps.
    And then there is Kiko—our
chef plongeur
. The word “exhaustion” doesn’t appear to be part of this man’s lexicon. This is not uncommon among dishwashers—a steadfast devotion to hard, mindless labor, an appetite for constant activity. Kiko works basically around the clock washing dishes, putting in doubles most of the week. On top of that, he never turns down overtime. As a result, his paychecks are huge, which is probably why he is generally pleasant with everybody (except Raffy, whose insouciance toward the dish team seems to boil Kiko’s blood). He’s also the acting ambassador for the rest of the dish crew, which consists of an overnight steward, a weekend pot washer, and a pair of P.M. dish men, all of whom are seldom seen and even less frequently heard from.
    Outside this core group of cooks and dishwashers, a few others join our team intermittently. We have the part-timepastry faction, consisting of a consulting pastry chef and baker, who come in extremely early on Mondays and Thursdays to set up the batters, doughs, and sauces for our dessert program; we have the
stagiaire
set, a regular rotation of cooking school externs who come in for a day or two at a time to study our technique; and we have the back waiters, a trio of low-ranking floor staffers led by Hussein, our Bengali
chef de rang
.
    Back waiters are the unhailed linchpins of the dining experience. They are the people who run the food to the dining room and the people who bring back the empty plates. They are the ones who set the tables and the ones who clear them as well. They deliver glassware, light candles, refresh waters, and fetch sides of ketchup. And when a group of guests has left a table, they move quickly and efficiently to ready it for the next set. Simply put, they perform all the unobserved graces that diners have come to expect from restaurants. And whereas servers and bartenders and managers and maître d’s represent the face of the restaurant—taking orders, fielding questions, explaining things to