Trial by Fryer
As I rounded the corner to work on Tuesday afternoon, I saw Amanda-Lee, the Chef du Cuisine. She waved me over.
“So we were talking about how your externship is over next week. We’ve been looking over the budget and we’re going to be able to hire one of you. We’re gonna mix things up, tonight you’ll be on beets and mushrooms. Have fun.”
She grinned and I smiled back, playing along, but inside my heart had plummeted to somewhere near my knees. I kinda thought I had this job in the bag, to be honest. I thought all of us externs were getting hired. The idea that there was a 2/3 chance I’d be saying goodbye to this place in a week, and that the decision rested largely on my performance tonight, made me shaky. Just do your best, I told myself. But I thought about jiu jitsu tournaments I’d entered, back when I was practicing that. How it felt to lose fights when I knew I was stronger than my opponent but, I don’t know, I got distracted or didn’t try hard enough or something. Sometimes your best just doesn’t come out. I wanted to run home and put my face into my cat’s belly fur. Instead I strode quickly into the restaurant to the locker room to get myself as ready as I could in the ten minutes before service.
The mushroom-beets station is one of two hot stations and it has a lot going on. You get tickets for each table that have the number of guests and whether any of them are vegan or any other special notes. Amanda-Lee, working as the expeditor, keeps track of all the tables and calls out things like, “Kate, pre-fire Table 103,” which means I'd get a batch of mushrooms into their batter. On “fire mushrooms” I’d fry them and send them out, on “carrots walked” I’d get beets in the oven and make sure I had a plate set up with the beet sauces, and on “fire beets” I’d fry some chickpea fries, potentially "flash" (reheat) the beets if they’d gotten cold and put together the beet plate. The thing is, these instructions are coming rapid-fire, often when you’re in the middle of making something, so your working memory quickly becomes overloaded. If you lose track of anything, it’s easy to screw up.
I screwed up. Several times throughout the night. I lost track of where I was, of what had gone out already and what had been called but I hadn’t started. People would be sent over to help me but I couldn’t tell them what I needed, so they tried to sort it out themselves. None of the mistakes were irremediable, though sometimes things went out late, but mostly I felt flustered and disorganized and inefficient and once that took over I could never really get on top of things. I kept envisioning what I’d do with myself next week when they told me they weren’t hiring me. There were a million things I needed to keep track of but I was busy talking myself down so that the eventual disappointment would land more gently.
I packed up my things at the end of my shift and asked Amanda-Lee if I could work the station again tomorrow. She said they’d do what they could. She said not to worry, it’s hard on a new station. But wasn’t she just being nice?
That night I dreamed of being in a miles-long kitchen with tickets coming down the line, each on different colored paper with different font and different information. I couldn’t understand them but as I squinted they kept on coming.
The next day at family meal, we went over the reservations for the upcoming evening. There were over ninety people before 9:45, making it the fastest pace we’d had since opening. There was a thrum of excitement in the room, because a fast night was like a marathon, an opportunity to stretch and test yourself. I felt only despair. “Pull up your socks,” Amanda-Lee said.
I went to the station with one rule for myself: No matter what happens, keep the tickets organized. When new information came in, I would stop whatever I was doing if I could and move the ticket along. It was better for food to be 30 seconds late than for me to lose track of what needed to be done, I reasoned. Focus on the tickets, focus on the tickets, I repeated to myself like a mantra.
From the opening at 5:30, everyone was running behind. “I was hoping we’d be able to get ahead on caviar, but since we’re not, no one’s going to be able to help you if you get in trouble. We might have to switch you off,” Amanda-Lee warned. Of course, I understood. But I’d do my damndest to get as much as out while I could. I started moving and I didn’t stop. Mark the new tickets to make them easier to read, move the tickets along and get as much information onto the board and off my mind as soon as possible. In spare moments, get plates set up for beets, refill the mise, go to dishwashing and check on more plates. After a few rounds, I realized that the mushrooms sitting in batter were beginning to disintegrate and decided to skip the mushroom pre-fire step altogether. This meant fewer steps and less disruptions while I was doing something else. I made several other modifications as I worked that made me faster.
When I glanced at the clock it was 7:00. It began to dawn on me that I was making this work. I tried to keep my elation focused in the form of speed. Sometimes people came over to help and because I always knew where I was, I could tell them immediately, “three regular plates, one vegan” and they’d do as much as they could in a few minutes before hurrying back to their station, and I’d wrap their work seamlessly into my flow. 8:45. There was still a big push but the end was in sight.
The next time I looked it was almost 11pm, half an hour after my shift was supposed to end. I couldn’t believe it. I handed off the last table to my coworker and went to the locker room shaking from the adrenaline. I think I smiled at people on the way out, but it wasn’t until I was halfway over the Williamsburg Bridge on a Citibike that the real smile burst open on my face. I did it. The best I could. I still don’t know if the job is mine. But I felt at peace as I sailed down the bridge towards home.
Update: As enlightened as I'd become, I still really wanted that job. And last night they told me I’ve got it. I’ll be working mushroom-beets every night for the foreseeable future. And I think I’ll become more deeply a part of a great team.