I have always felt most at home in restaurant kitchens. No matter how glossy the paint or how shiny the brass door handle on the imposing front door to the dining room, there is always a dinged up, unmarked back door that leads to the real heart of the beast. It took a few weeks into my first cooking job at The Olema Inn to get used to the complete lack of glamour of it all. Only now do I see how the paucity of it helped to form our psyches, ordained us cooks with the chips on our shoulders and the swagger in our steps. We’re here to do the real work. We don’t need no fancy door.
Once inside the always too warm or too cold kitchen, the sensory assault begins. On a good day there is bread pudding baking in the convection oven or buttery croutons being toasted in a pan. On a bad day ten pounds of squid are being cleaned in the prep sink or the grease trap just got pumped that morning and the stench has yet to subside. At my station the smell level depends on if the oil in the fryer is fresh or the towel lining the oyster bin has been changed recently. While nestled in the cocoon of the kitchen the cacophony of smells distills into a single, solitary, relatively unoffensive note. It wasn’t until hours after service, just before my head hit the pillow, that I noticed the overwhelming odors that had taken up residence in my curls.
Moving around in a commercial kitchen took some getting used to. At first it felt silly and awkward to announce my every movement to those around me. Behind you. Knife. Corner. Now I can’t imagine maneuvering a blazing sheet tray of toasted hazelnuts near anyone without yelling: Hot! Hot! Behind you! ad infinitum. My soft spoken, polite girl ways struggled to be heard against the ear sucking hood fans and pot clanging from the dish pit. That version of me was quickly booted out the back door and was replaced by a tougher, louder, slightly more irreverent one.
Shoe wear is another issue in restaurants. There is the slip factor – some bozo new kid spills oil on the floor or the owner is “baking” aka throwing flour all over the place and leaving us to clean up after him. Then there is the comfort problem – I still do not think a single shoe ever made could be comfortable after standing in essentially the same spot for 10 hours straight. Even if your chef believes in floor mats (which shockingly many do not), you are lucky to finish a shift without your dogs barking. Howling even. And finally there is the scum factor. Those life-saving mats are black, and unless scrubbed daily (most are given a little hose down every week or so) they scuff up your shoes so badly you forget what color they were to begin with.
And yet. The stench and the yelling and the slipping all form the rules and laws that govern our daily life, and soon you forget how to act outside of kitchens. You step out into the dining room and everything is too precious, the lights too dim and the talk too hushed. You start to get hot under your white coat and itch to run back through the swinging door, back to your home, back to the place where everything is neatly labeled with name and date on a piece of masking tape, back where no one will try to sneak by you without announcing themselves.