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

guests—the back waiters do their jobs in relative anonymity.
    But the most important role the back waiters play is informant to the kitchen. They are our eyes and ears out front. They tell us which tables are ready for their next courses and which ones we should slow down on. They let us know what sections and servers are slammed and whom we can expect big tickets from soon. They notify us when important guests arrive and they remind us where they are sitting. They have the presence of mind to alert us when the dining room is filling up so we can be ready, and thekindness of heart to inform us when it is emptying out so we can begin breaking down. And, unlike most other FOH staff, who can sometimes get caught up coddling customers, back waiters always have time throughout service (and usually make it a point) to update us on how people seem to be enjoying their meals. Which is why, even though they are technically a constituent of the waitstaff, we often regard the back waiters as members of the kitchen team—an affiliation they readily accept. They are back here with us most of the night, working out of the limelight, so their allegiance lies with us.
    With all these individuals scampering around during service, much can go wrong very quickly. It’s a plate-spinning act, which could topple over in pieces at any moment. A chef’s goal during any given meal period is to prevent this from happening—to sustain a fusion of all the moving parts, to keep the team together, to keep the bus driving straight. There will always be the clatter of pots and pans, the din of voices—professional cooking is a loud racket—but when service is performed fluidly, artfully, all the noise can be mistaken for silence. There’s a certain harmony to the sound, and it’s almost as though you don’t even hear it.



PLATS DU JOUR

    O F ALL THE CONDITIONS THAT CAN DISRUPT A KITCHEN ’ S harmony, anger is probably the most dangerous. There are many different types of anger in the kitchen, and each one manifests itself in a different way. Mistakes during service, for example, will always arouse immediate attack. If you break a plate, you will be called an idiot; if you drag on a pickup, you will be called a
tortuga;
if you overcook a piece of meat, you will be called a shoemaker. An especially charged service might aggravate the situation. When the dining room is full, say, or when a food critic is in the house, the stakes are high, and everyone tries very hard to make service perfect. At such moments, an error on your part might create an unnecessary emergency for someone else, and tempers may flare to even violent dimensions. Chef might throw a plate at you or trash your mise en place. He might drag you from the line by the scruff of your neck and throw you outside on the street. A line cook might shove past you in a huff, perhaps grazing your arm with a sizzle platter. A dishwasher might threaten to kill you. When the heat is on, everyone is at each other’s throat.
    But anger that arises during service is short-lived. It is the result of frenzy, and it’s often forgotten before the last guest is served. Anger that arises before service, however, is a different beast. It is the slow burn, a wicked seed that sprouts like pea tendrils and strangles you until the end of the night.
    When
you
are made angry before service—during your morning walk-through, say, or your afternoon prep—it is as though a small fire has been started somewhere in you that swells by the minute. A sense of increasing urgency accompanies each new task you take on, and before long you find yourself erupting vulgarly at the most insignificant things. You bump your head in the walk-in box and curse out the vegetables; your peeler slips and you rocket a handful of turnips into the trash. It’s very easy, when you’re busy and irritable, to begin believing that the whole world is against you. But it is critical at these moments to rein in your aggression, or else