Restaurant Three

This is just a tease....for fun...to let you know I AM still writing.

I’ve dreading going to Restaurant Three since the owner and I made our deal. Maybe it is because The Sous and Chef M, had been so negative about it, telling me the restaurant is slow now, and a “boys club” because no women work there at all except for the host. Regardless, I didn’t wake up excited to that first Friday in December. Actually, it was more like dread.

Restaurant Three is the restaurant that started it all in the owner's empire. It won his award for best chef in Food and Wine magazine, and it is where all of the chefs in the company, that I admire, got their start. It is more of a fine dining restaurant than any of his other establishments, with dark orange lighting throughout the dining room and linens on every table and an excess amount of plates for every dish. In its prime, there were five cooks on the line: one on protein, one on pasta and warm starters, one of the vegetable station, and two at the garde manger. There were also two dishwashers, two bussers, three waiters, a bartender, and a bar back. Not so much anymore. Seattle doesn't seem to get Restaurant Three anymore.

I walk to the restaurant, like I have with all of them, from my house downtown. I have been to Restaurant Three twice. Once for a work party when it first opened hosted by the owner’s parents, and the other time for a retirement party for the former chef du cuisine who left at the end of the summer.

I walk in to the door that leads in to the bar, praying as I pull that it is not locked, and am relieved when it gently pulls open and I step inside. I peek through the whole in the swinging brown kitchen door and see nobody in site. Male voices can be heard from a distance, and a Kelly Clarkson song is playing on the radio. A little different sound than my first moments at The Restaurant. Chef E, the sous chef at Restaurant Three, looks at me, shocked, and says, “Hi Stage. What are you doing here?” Chef E and I had met at The Restaurant a while back. I cooked a couple of dishes for him. “Didn’t the owner tell you? I am here for December. Actually just six shifts. Friday and Saturday nights. But obviously not Christmas and New Years....” I ramble. All the boys at this point, three to be exact, have their mouths slightly opened, and are staring at me.

Chef E graciously stops what he is doing and tells me to follow him as he gives me a tour of the upstairs where towels, dry storage, aprons, the office, the freezer, and the lockers are. There is no dressing room. There is no women’s bathroom. This is a boys club. For sure.

I come downstairs after finding a white bistro apron, putting on my chefs coat as they all wear to prep in, and folding my seven blue towels: one for underneath my cutting board, another to wet as a “sponge” to clean everything up, another to tie at my right hip, and the other four as extras. I head downstairs, Chef E motions me with his hand to work next to him, and gives me a huge celeriac and three giant carrots and says, “medium dice.” That is it? No question like, “Do you know what a medium dice is?” Even breaking down the vegetable to show me a trophy piece? I am obviously not going to be babied here. It’s about time! I medium dice a celeriac, a carrot, chop a deep 1/9 pan of shallots (which I have gotten down to 25 minutes from my time at Tavolata), a deep 1/9 pan of chives, and juice 15 lemons.

My knife is sharp, because I finally learned how to properly use my steel. My whole time at The Restaurant, I would have The Sous or Chef M steel my knife until Chef M showed me how to do it one afternoon. Then, I learned how to use a wet stone at Restaurant Two, which changed everything. My knife feels brand new each week, like breaking in a brand new pair of pointe shoes. Everyone in the Restaurant Three kitchen is quiet, you can hear the focus, and things seem to be going smoothly. Surprisingly, I am impressed by my work. To be honest, It is some of the best prep I have done. But, then the soup happened. The celeriac soup, to be specific.

“Sweat two white onions. Add three celeriac. Water. Drain. Puree. Cool,” is Chef E's instruction to me. Easy enough, or so I thought. I do as I am told, sweat the onions, and add the celeriac. Chef E tells me that the celeriac is probably shouldn’t get too much darker so I should add the water now. Yet, the celeriac isn’t cooked. My brain starts to malfunction. I remove the pot with the half-cooked celeriac and the translucent onion over to the area where the vita prep is located to, I assume, blend the half-cooked celeriac and onion with water to make the soup. Sometimes, I just don’t use my skills as a cook. I rely way too much on people’s instruction instead of my own natural cooking instinct. Chef E comes over to me, and tells me I need to cook the celeriac and onion with the water, so that it finishes cooking without getting brown. Yuck, I hate the feeling of humiliation. My ego shrinks a bit.

Oh, right. This is when I remember that I am not a professional cook, and just a Stage. I am working with amazing talent, and I have been doing this for, oh, six months. I laugh at myself, to lighten their mood, and mine, and add the water and put the soup back on the stove. Once the celeriac is cooked, I bring the large pot, now much harder to maneuver being filled with gallons and gallons of water, and bring it over to the Vita Prep. I pack the vita prep full with celeriac onion and a little bit of water so that it will blend. Chef E has told me not to use too much liquid because it is easier to add liquid then take it away. I press on the rubber lid, cover the hole with one of my spare blue towels, and turn the machine on. A wretched sound comes from the machine, and I quickly pull the plug from the socket to make it stop. “Can someone teach her how to use a Vita Prep?” the garde manger cook, J, says to nobody. I turn to him, offended, and say sarcastically, “I know how to use a Vita Prep.” “Well, first you need to turn it down to low, and on interval rather than high speed” he says after ignoring what I had just told him. He begins to take over my project, telling me to get the heavy cream from the walk in as the liquid in the soup. Chef E didn’t tell me to add cream during the blending process. I take over what J has started, slowly adding batches of white onion, white celeriac, and white cream to the vita prep, blending, and repeating. After it is all done, I begin to strain the mixture through a chinoise.

J, looks at me and says, “That is not a chinoise. That is a China man’s cap.” I look down, and he is right. I do know the difference, but honestly I couldn’t find a chinoise. I mean, we are talking about a ridiculously pureed soup here that probably doesn’t need to go through a chinoise to purify it further. He finds me a chinoise, dumps the soup into it, and lets me begin pushing it around in a circle to strain any large lumps that have not gotten perfectly blended. It is taking longer than it should. Jim looks over at me, and takes the large metal spoon from my hand and uses the tip of the spoon to chop at the center of the chinoise. The soup gently flows through. I have always swirled my spoon around the chinoise, but his method is much faster. I will be doing it that way from now on, that is for sure. I put the soup in a large metal hotel pan and season it with salt and pepper and more cream. I place it on the speed rack in the walk in and the chefs will serve it in a bowl with a sliced green apple salad and roasted chestnuts.

Again, like every other restaurant, 5:00 rolls around and everyone is frantically trying to gather up the last of their tasks for happy hour that goes from 5-7. I take my place in the back, with J who runs the garde manger. The place I am taking used to be a line cooks spot. I am told that I will toast all the breads for the bruschetta, cheese plates, shuck all the oysters, and plate all the desserts. This sounds manageable.

Mistakenly, I should have read the menu before I started working at this station. I do not know any of the sets, and because I didn’t prep for this station, I don’t even know what most of the ingredients are. I read all the tickets that are printed, but don’t know the difference between a bar bruschetta and a regular brushcetta. I just slice the bread, drizzle it with olive oil, and season it with salt and place it on the panini press. The first bruschetta got topped with a duck liver pate and a watercress and pickled shallot salad. The second bruschetta was topped with meyer lemon ricotta with the same salad set. But, which one was which?

At this point, I still have not seen the owner emerge from the upstairs office. One of the main reasons I was so eager to work here on Friday and Saturday nights was to get to learn from him on the line. Yet, I don’t even know if he is cooking tonight. Just as I am thinking that, he emerges from the upstairs office. Dressed in all white, with a light khaki pant and clear rimmed glasses, I always forget how young he is for having four restaurants. He nods at me, and takes his place in the front of the kitchen at the pasta making station.

That night, I shucked many oysters. Probably one hundred. They were topped with an apple, chili, chive, and olive oil set or a grapefruit, celery, and lemon juice set. And, my elbow did not hurt. Oh yes. I guess my elbow is in shape enough now to not be susceptible to oyster elbow.

I am also supposed to be responsible for the desserts, but there is one problem. I can’t do a quenelle for the ice cream. An order for a pecan tart comes up. J gets the plate out from his side of the station and drizzles dulce de leche in an asymmetrical line across the plate. He tops the round tart in the middle, and asks me to scoop a quenelle of whiskey gelato. I pull the quart container of gelato from the small freezer, and give it to him. “You can’t do a quenelle?” I could have made up an excuse like “I didn’t work this station at Restaurant Two” or “at The Restaurant we used a standard ice cream scoop”, but decided to say, “I’ve never tried.” He quickly pulls his spoon in a J-shape up the side of the frozen container and pulls his spoon to the lip on the side swirling the gelato until it is in a cylindrical egg shape.

He moves on to a meyer lemon mouse with vanilla meringue and pickled huckleberries as I try to experiment with the whiskey gelato to create a quenelle. Being a lot harder than it looks, I make two attempts, and then smash the gelato back into a smooth shape and return it to its freezing home.

The owner only speaks to me once that night. Sort of. As I am brunoising bacon for a duck confit and frisee salad, he says, “What is J making you do? A brunoise of bacon?” And then he walks away, laughing. I put my nose and eyes as close as I can to my brunoise, making sure it is as perfect as I thought it was, and it looks good to me. Phew! I know he looked right at it. Everyone looks at each person’s knife skills and mise en place. It is a resume, of sorts, of your ability and technique.

I toast bread, shuck oysters, and I can’t do a quenelle. Welcome to Restaurant. A boys club where nobody speaks to me.

The next day, I come in at 2:00 again, and who do I see? My friend Chef B, who actually spent Thanksgiving with me that year and seared of a lobe of foie gras and made an amazing stuffing, and the cook who worked with me on the first day at The Restaurant. He tells me he is helping the owner with a catering, which means another day that owner will not be there to teach me anything. Frustration starts to set in. I mean, it is not like I think the owner needs to teach me. He is a busy man. Stressed, I am sure with four restaurants to maintain. A little “stage” is not on the forefront of his mind. But, I have been there for six months. And, I have only worked with him twice!

I get ready for my day, steel my knives, and make my way to the same place I worked the day before. I start with the usual suspects: shallots, carrots, celeriac, chives. But, then I start to help the owner out. I supreme one 1/9 pan of oranges, and a deep 1/3 pan of shaved brussels sprouts. The only thing he says to me is “That’s probably enough” as I get to the top of the 1/3 pan. i almost cut my fingers off twice on the mandonline.

Then I am told to roast chestnuts. Oh wow. I am actually going to learn something today! I have never roasted chestnuts before! Unfortunately, though, I have to admit this to the chefs when they tell me to roast them. Chef E tells me to put them on the grill. Another cook tells me to put them in the oven and cover them with foil. I chose the grill. I enjoy burning my hands and arm hairs off. I am told to score each chestnut at the tip, and drop all of them all over the grill. By the time I am done, the light downy arm hair on my right arm is completely gone and my fingers ache with heat. I even used long tongs to rotate the chestnuts, but it was unsuccessful. The burning is inevitable.

That night, I do the same tasks as the night before. Toast bread. Watch J do quenelles. Shuck oyster after oyster. The only wrench in my boredom is that Chef E makes me cook family meal. At first, it is gonna be sloppy joe's, or meatloaf. But, I settle on spaghetti and meatballs in red sauce. I make my meatballs from prosciutto and beef chuck with fennel, red pepper flakes, parsley, ricotta, egg, and parmigiano reggiano. The sauce is spontaneous with San Marzano tomatoes, a load of garlic, sugar, sherry vinegar, lots of salt, and tons and tons of basil, thyme, and leftover scraps from whatever needs to be re-prepped the next day for service.

I cook five nests of spaghetti and reduce my sauce as much as I can until the spaghetti is cooked. My meatballs are baked in the oven. I toss the pasta with the sauce, that need to still be reduced, and then stir the meatballs in the mixture. I take a very large, almost unmanageable hunk of parmigiano reggiano and grate it on to a plate, struggling from the first grate on the microplane. “Want a bigger hunk of parm, Stage?” one of the cooks says to me. He peels the hunk of cheese from my hands, and shows me a more efficient way to grate the cheese. Regardless, his hands are bigger and he is stronger, so it will always be easier for him.

I plate the pasta on a large platter, and let it to be devoured by the staff. I get insecure, at first, knowing that this is not the best representation of my cooking, but at the same time, what am I supposed to do with the elements I have to work with? I am not going to plate a seared duck breast with fingerling potatoes, salsa verde, and a roasted Brussels sprouts for ten people. Pasta is perfectly suitable for family meal. Right?

After scrubbing almost everyone’s station so I could get the hell out of there, I leave at 11:45pm, fifteen minutes before everyone else. As I exited the building, and felt the crisp air on my face, I decided I would walk home instead of cab it. I needed to cool off at my waste of ten hours away from my husband and my life to toast bread and shuck oysters and make family meal for ten people who don’t say thank you, and scrub the entire kitchen. For everyone’s information, I quit my successful ballet career to learn how to cook, not to be a slave. But, I remind myself, step after step, that I am just at the beginning of my new career and I am not going to get the respect I deserve. Not yet.

My second weekend at Restaurant Three reminded me a lot of the first, except this time I got to work the position that J worked all last weekend. It isn’t intentional at first, the Pacojet is broken and it can’t whip the ice cream. So, I take over the station making salads that have slightly changed from the week before. But, before that I have to run out in the freezing cold Seattle winter and pick up more celeriac and a 1/4 lb. of mint at Frank’s, the local restaurant purveyor. My chefs coat and my clogs are a dead giveaway that I work in a restaurant, but when I tell the man at the counter to put the produce on Restaurant Three's account, the worker looks at me like I am some kind of crazy person. “What do you do at Restaurant Three?” This is my least favorite question. I mean, how do I respond? Well, I work for free so that I do not have to pay for cooking school and can get a job as a chef fifty-five hours a week at next-to-nothing for pay. But, I keep my irritation inside, and tell him politely that I am a “stage” for Restaurant Three today. “He treating you good?” the guy says to me. I smile, “Of course!”

When I come back, J is still working on the Pacojet, and I begin to take over the tickets that come to the station. I ask J questions, and he tells me I need to get in the habit of reading the menu and knowing what is changed. “Didn’t you do that at the other restaurants?”, he says. “Yes,” I say curtly, “But at the other restaurants, I always prepped the station I was working.” The ticket read Endive Salad, and I scanned the menu to find the salad, panicking because my eyes couldn’t scan the paper fast enough. I assembled the salad with chunks of pears, crushed hazelnuts, shallots I had chopped earlier in the day, and a huge handful of freshly washed arugula. I make a dressing in the bowl and toss it with my hands, lightly, as if I am picking up egg shells. I find a stark white square plate, the only plate used for this salad, and place three endive leaves face up and two stacked on top of it, face down. Then the hazelnuts, pears, and arugula are tightly mounded in my hand, and then mounded on top of the endive platform.

J looks over and says to me, “higher and tighter.” I try to manipulate the salad with my hands, which doesn’t really work, and I decide to re-plate the entire salad. “That salad gets arugula now, not watercress, too.” I remake the entire salad, saving the large chunks of pear and the endive. Chef E comes in to help J with the Pacojet, and I continue to plate every dish that comes out of the garde manger, as they curse at the broken machine.

It is definitely more interesting than last week, that is for sure, but the garde manger at Restaurant Three is the rookie spot. I have been lucky enough to cook at both Restaurant Two and The Restaurant on the line. Most chefs at Restaurant Three don’t even get to touch a burner until after a year, or so. At least my arms will have the ability to heal this month.

The next evening is much the same. J steps to the side to let me plate salads. I can’t practice my quenelles because the Pacojet is officially broken, and J has had to whip all the ice creams in the Kitchen-aide mixer with the whisk. I feel like I am living in ground hogs day. Doing the same task, and feeling bored and underwhelmed with this restaurant. To top it all off, the owner is still not at Restaurant Three. He has another catering, which has taken him away from the line this evening as well.

As the evening slows down, my legs start to get tired. Nobody drinks at Restaurant Three, and this is about the time where I would be downing a beer to make the pain in my legs stop. I hoist myself on the mini freezer and let my legs dangle, with my clogs half off the back of my heels. One of the line cooks walks by and says to me, “Counters are for glasses, not asses.” I open up my eyes really wide, and much to my surprise, I back talk him. “He doesn’t plate anything on here,” I say. The line cook comes back around the corner, gives me an evil stare, and walks back to the line. Where did that come from? Why am I back talking chefs that I want to respect me? Stupid and snarky. What am I thinking!

Chef E comes around the corner and says, “Stage. Family meal,” as he points to me. I take it as a punishment for my back-talking explosion. I ghetto gourmet some twice baked potatoes, and again, nobody says a word.

That night, I leave at 11:20 after cleaning everyone’s station. Again. This is the one thing about being a chef. You clean just as much as you cook.

The next day doesn’t get much better. Ice explodes all over the kitchen when the top flew off of a broken food processor as I am grinding it for the oyster platers. I drop a 1/3 pan of watercress all over the ground after I explicitly remember closing the refrigerator door. It must have not closed all the way, and the 1/3 pan slipped out, cascading the frilly lettuces all over the hole marked brown kitchen map. It is almost worst than wearing a blue finger condom after you cut yourself. Almost. We have tons of dishes to go, and I can’t sweep my area. So, I am just stepping on watercress repeatedly, reminding me of my klutziness. But the worst mishap is when I heat up two hot chocolate desserts on two of the burners on the line in two small eight ounce copper All-clad pans. To get them hot enough, you have to turn the flame on high. Well, the flames are not even in heat, I learn. One of the pans starts to bubble over and the smell of burnt chocolate starts to permeate the room. Instinctively I grab it from the flame without a prep towel in my hand. Oh. My. Gosh.

It is as if I had stuffed my hand in a fireplace and closed the latch. It burned and burned and burned. Long past when the server came to pick up the warm hot chocolate with the vanilla bean marshmallows bobbing in the thick chocolate. Long after I scrubbed the burner that night where crusted burnt chocolate lingered from my mistake. That night, after I was home, as I brushed my teeth, my hand still burned from the hot metal handle, reminding me that I should hold on to humility, and be receptive of what Restaurant Three has to teach me, no matter how disappointed I feel that I am not working intimately with the owner and getting to work on the line.

Maybe I should just stick to the cold station for now. It might be safer for me, more at my speed, and can help me heal my poor little arms and hands that are slowly starting to look like my former wounded dancer feet.

The Groove

I am feeling irresolute as this summer Staging is coming to an end. As I start work today, I feel empty, wishing that I could dance all day and then go to The Restaurant and cook all night. There are just not enough hours in my day. I stop by to pick up my knives that I left at The Restaurant over the weekend, and The Sous asks me if I am going to suit up and help them today, or “am I over it?” Ha! Yeah right. I am so tempted to stay. But, I know that staying up until 12:30 on a “school” night will not serve me well tomorrow at my real job. 

My former artistic directors from the ballet came into The Restaurant this weekend to finally watch me in action. Any time someone comes into The Restaurant that I know (which has happened countless times this summer), I have this weird feeling like I am not being the person that they think they know. Sometimes, like I have told you before, I feel like I am living a double life. I am not quite sure how to handle people observing that I have this other love that is not ballet; A love I have only ever felt while cooking. I feel weird as I walk out to greet them from behind the Boos Block in my Chef’s jacket and apron, exposed and uneasy, which, if you know me, is not my personality at all. I feel the most confident when I am in my kitchen cocoon, having my own personal experience as I cook food for married couples, best friends, the uncomfortable diners, and first dates. It is the same feeling I have being on stage with the ballet. I don’t have to talk, but just move my body and produce art for people who are watching me, without interaction. 

On Saturday, The Sous calls me to tell me he will be late, and to start a couple of tasks like putting the Russets in the oven for the gnocchi, taking the butter out of the walk-in for the biscotti, and defrosting the prawns that had just been delivered that day from the East Coast. When I get to The Restaurant, there is only one potato so I can’t start the roasting, I cut up the butter to soften it but I am blanking on the amount of sugar that goes into the biscotti recipe itself, and my drip system to defrost the prawns is a little precarious. 

So, the only tasks I have left are to just chop, and chop, and chop, and chop. I am horrified and alone with just my knife skills to keep me company. And let me tell you, I don't like their company. This leaves me quiet, and irritated as 5pm rolls around and I begin to cook.  

I had been working with Chef M on Thursday and Friday of that week. He works much differently with me than The Sous.  He always has a lesson to teach me, and he likes to work with me on many of the projects, rather than letting me fend for myself. The Sous is different. He lets me flounder a bit, and then comes in for the rescue, having probably watched me struggle the entire time. I love these two juxtapositions at The Restaurant. They work together beautifully teaching me how to be independent, but also allowing me to know I have some support when I feel like I am sinking. I am disappointed, though, because Chef M has Saturday nights off, which means because I am working only Saturdays this coming year, this past Friday night was probably the last time I will cook with him. He is a brilliant teacher that will be missed. 

Overall, I feel like I really took a huge turn in my cooking this past weekend, though. On Saturday night, after quickly getting out of my quiet mood,  I basically ran the whole pasta station by myself. The Sous is observing and coaching, and helping me out by warming my plates in the salamander, or completing a finished plate of pasta with a drizzle of olive oil and pangrattato. 

Originally, last week, they told me I would be running the whole station by myself without someone their to assist me. I knew I would not ready for this. At all. It is not the cooking that I have anxiety about, but the Mise en Place that would take me hours and hours. I would probably have to bring my sleeping bag, and sleep on The Restaurant's floor the night before so that I could wake up at the crack of dawn, and start my prep work. I would probably still be prepping at 9pm that evening, thinly slicing garlic and dicing anchovy filets to order. 

But, luckily I have had two days of Chef M’s pasta training to prepare me for Saturday. Besides one of my dishes being slightly too lemony, and everything always needing just a pinch more of Kosher salt, I thought I did a pretty good job for my first Saturday night almost alone. At around 10, there is an order for gnocchi, and The Sous asks me if he can cook the dish to see if he “still has it in him.” 

Ha! I have this odd feeling that he still does. 

Their is this sensation that Chefs get, The Sous calls it The Groove, when you mindlessly, yet passionately, cook and create food for hours and hours. I finally experience this on Saturday night, as sweat pours down my temples and I create dish after dish as if I am dancing choreography that is only known in my muscle memory. It is a rush; An addiction. I have only ever known this feeling while performing on stage. 

After this summer, I have decided I am probably not going to go to cooking school. I hear mixed reviews, and I have asked EVERY Chef their opinion that I have met over the summer. But after a conversation late Saturday night, after The Restaurant closes, the Chefs tell me to just work with as many Chefs as I can and learn everything possible from each one. I won’t learn how to butcher a Hamachi at cooking school, or be quizzed on how to wipe cheese off a knife I have borrowed. Yes. I actually forgot to wipe off a Chef’s knife after I cut a soft cheese for a cheese plate, and then they used it to cut into a sashimi grade Ahi Tuna. He was not happy with me. 

I won't learn those kinds of lessons in cooking school. I will learn, however, how to perfect my brunoise, and julienne, and know the recipes to hundreds of sauces, stocks, and reductions. But, is this not also something I can learn on the job? 

Some Chef’s will teach you to clean your station as you go, while others will want you to clean your station after you finish a dish. Some Chef’s will want you to bring your pot you are cooking with to your 1/9 pans, while other’s will want you to keep the hot pan away from their Mise en Place so that it doesn't get spattered with olive oil and butter. Some Chef’s believe you are the artist, while others want you to do exactly as they tell you, word for word.  

The most important part about being a Chef, and learning from a Chef, is humility paired with hard work. All of the Chefs that I have met this summer are the most humble, brilliant men, who work harder than anyone I know. I am honored to have gotten to know them, and watch them get into The Groove. 

I want to thank everyone at Anchovies & Olives, "The Restaurant" for the most amazing, life changing summer: Especially Head Chef Charles, The Sous Chef Manu, Chef Matt, Chef Brandin, and Ethan Stowell, The Owner. Thank you for teaching me this foreign language that I now feel like I can communicate with just a little better. I am elated that my stark white Chef's coat now has stains of olive oil, blood, and parsley. 

I will be Staging there on Saturday nights throughout the year when I am not performing with Pacific Northwest Ballet. 

And Readers, Thank you so much for going on this journey with me of Summer Spoon.

Rules at The Restaurant

As I reflected about my first weeks of Staging on my recent vacation in Hawaii, here are some conclusions I have come to my attention that are just known facts about working at The Restaurant. 

When asked to organize the "sub-zero-like" refrigerator after a huge delivery of produce from Frank's, do not put any green vegetables, especially celery, under the 1 1/2 foot space where the cold blowing fan dwells above the top shelf. The vegetables will freeze. Then, those vegetables that were just ordered, are ruined for anything other than vegetable stock, and have to be reordered again. 

Do not walk in front of the commercial dishwasher on Saturday Nights. The floor is sodden with soapy dishwater. Watching Chef M and The Head Chef reach for you, with panic in their eyes as you are slipping, holding on to the metal sink for dear life, and running on the dishwater like Fred Flintstone in his stone wood car, is slightly humiliating. 

Never throw anything away: be it the butts (or in my case, crumbly and burnt pieces) of the pistachio biscotti, the rounded edges of a crisp-green apple that are unsuitable for a bruinoise, the picked stems from Italian flat-leaf parsley, or the unservable pieces of escolar, hamachi, or fluke that are just not quite big enough for a portion of crudo. These items could be a snack for a server (or yourself), part of a family meal, a component of some sort of stock, or the one ingredient that is added to a dish that gives it that extra "oomph!". Oh! And, if they do accidentally end up in the garbage, don't think that you can pull them out. 

Thou shall not wipe thy hands on ANY apron that thou is wearing; Not even the white bistro prep apron that gets washed each day. That is what the blue kitchen towel that you tie to on the right side of your apron is for. Even if the blue towel has fallen on the floor, as it frequently does because you have not learned how to adequately tie it to your apron, and you thought it was there when you were wiping, you will still get barked at. 

Always, Always, Always use those blue kitchen towels to pick up any pot, or pan. Unless, of course, you want to rock a burnt and swollen left hand all night long. Although it could be sexy, it is not a recommendation of mine. 

When slicing a peach (or anything for that matter), at 9pm on a Thursday night for Chef B (in a panic, of course), curl your fingers under your palm while slicing, for goodness sake. You do not want to have a bleed-out all over your Chef's coat, the hostess, the kitchen, and the peach. I am just saying...

As you are cooking a dish with your favorite giant silver spoon, tasting the dish for seasoning, and finding that it needs a touch more Kosher salt (it always needs more salt), do not stir it, again, with that same giant silver spoon you just had in your mouth, and re-taste the dish, again with the same spoon. The food will be contaminated, and is supposedly called double-dipping. 

After drinking until 2:30 in the morning on your first day, do not, under any circumstances, use the tall garbage can in the kitchen to prop your weary body up the next day while you are observing. Although your brain is convinced it is the latest version of a La-Z-Boy chair, and you can hardly stand on your gold Adidas sneakers, The Sous will admonish you, tell you to wash your hands, and say it is unsanitary. The  embarrassment is not worth the minimal appeasement between you, and your hangover. 

And lastly, wear pants that are high enough to cover your butt-crack when you reach down to get cold ingredients from the lower fridge at the crudo station. The Restaurant customers (and staff) do not need to see your hot-pink-cheetah-print thong hanging out of the back of your low-rise True Religion Jeans right before your shuck four Kushi oysters. This is NOT sexy. 

At The End of The Night

I make a prep list on the back of an old menu from the previous day. Items like aioli, blanched cauliflower, and avocado puree frequent the list, and comfort me. The Chefs trusts me enough to not be babysat, but don’t worry, I am still on a constant running video surveillance, as I should be. 

I start the day by making aioli which I know is egg yolks, lemon juice, a garlic clove, a splash of water, and finished by a constant stream of vegetable oil. I am planning to use three egg yolks, cracking each yolk in my prep bowl, and straining the white protein through my hands. The Sous enters the walk-in, looks over at me, and says, “Whoa, Stage. Easy on the egg yolks.” I take the one I am presently perfectly straining in my hand, dump it in my prep bowl and begin making the aioli with two egg yolks. 

The aioli breaks. 

The Sous smirks, and gets me another egg from the fridge. I pour the broken mixture back into the empty oil pitcher, add the yolk he gets for me into the empty Robot Coupe, pour the broken mixture back as if it were the vegetable oil, and it forms into a fluffy cream mixture. First task complete. 

Tonight, I am working with Chef B, The Thursday Chef, at the same station I was working at last Thursday: The day I cut myself. My goal today is NOT to repeat the mistakes of seven days ago. He asks me to cut a peach for the same recipe, in the same way. That dreaded peach. I figure, hell, why not? At least I can redeem to myself, and to others, that I am not always full of blunders. I learn from my mistakes this time, square off the peach for stability, REMOVE the pit, make sure my hands are curled and protected, and slice thinly. Success. 

After all of those improved knife skills, that peach ends up becoming a puree. 

Chef B and I are working in tandem, like a dance, sharing a cutting board and knives, and as always at this station, fighting for ineffectual light and limited square footage. He lets me slice some fish with his beautiful Japanese sushi knife. As I am salting the fish after my mediocre attempts at cutting, he stops me, and tells me that I ALWAYS have to put His knives back to where I got them from, on a blue prep towel folded to the right of the cutting board. Chef B, tongue in cheek, says that when the knife is not in its place, It will either cut me because it is not in a safe place just laying on the cutting board, or He will “cut me” (if his knife happens to drop on the ground). That knife goes back to its place the entire night, as if a magnet is pulling it there. 

I do my best cooking on a stomach full of Fried almonds, sips of Kombucha, and Peronis. But at 6:00p.m., I have none of these in my belly. The Restaurant is still kind of dead and the sound of the ticket printing out to my right can only mean one thing: an order for Gelato or Sorbet. Hmm. Did I mention I need a beer? 

I know it sounds trivial, yes. But I can’t scoop freaking ice cream to save my life. It either ends up consistent to a "7-11" Slurpee, or in the Gelato’s case, a minefield after it has been detonated. Tonight, there is a brand new Hazelnut Gelato, just delivered, and never been scooped. The perfect victim. As I am creating my first curls into the Gelato, it is crumbling into my scoop like sand. The spoon is not hot enough, and the Gelato is too hard. I know. Excuses, excuses. The Gelato should scoop smooth, like a long river, and look even and calm, when you are finished with it. 

By the end of my torturous experience, I have The Sous and The Head Chef watching me, as they sometimes do when The Restaurant is not busy. This flusters me even more. They observe as I butcher out ridges in the Gelato like I am some force of nature. The Sous looks over and says, “Wow, Stage. Are you trying to go for the Grand Canyon?” I respond, “Well, I was thinking more of the Sierra Nevada Range.” Chef B gives me a tip after I completely destroy the untainted Gelato: Use steaming water from the espresso machine to heat the scoop. This man is brilliant. 

The funny thing is they want me to be able to run this station by myself someday. I would get stuck at the first Gelato order, every time. By 6:00 p.m., I would probably have a toddler's temper tantrum, stomp out of The Restaurant, and throw my apron down on the pavement.  

This damn Gelato is not getting the best of me. 

I love that The Chefs don’t let me get away with anything. Well, almost anything. The Sous and Chef B keep testing my food every forty-five minutes, or so, like a required emissions test; Only letting me serve the food if I "pass". I get a correction from Chef B to not put a small mixing bowl, filled with Kumamotos, on the ground by the mini- fridge. The bottom of the bowl sits on the floor, and the dirt from the floor gets on the cutting board. Oh, yes. Common sense would benefit me in this profession. 

Later, The Sous looks over from his station and asks me if I salted the soft-cooked eggs? Have I put aioli individually on each one? 

I show him how I am salting the eggs, delicate and snug, so that the salt only touches the top of the egg. He shows me that I need to salt from ABOVE, and on the cutting board, not on my plate. He takes his hand, filled with Kosher salt, and puts it almost even with his ear, and in a circular motion, salts a prep plate to show me the technique. I look over and there is a perfect coating of salt all over the silver disk.  “Even, Stage. Even.”, he repeats. 

At the end of the night, Peroni in hand, I begin wrapping the stations 1/9 pans and changing deli-containers filled with pickled radishes and mint puree. I have already overturned a 1/9 pan of toasted pistachios all inside the mini fridge, and I accidentally break 3 out of 10 grissini Chef M made yesterday. (His were better, by the way. He ends up using more yeast, and rolling them smaller and shorter.) They are obviously more delicate than mine were. Shut! 

I see The Sous efficient method for wrapping his 1/9 pans. He rolls out the plastic wrap still in the box, covers the container airtight, and then with a swift movement with the side of his right wrist and forearm, he swipes to loosen the plastic. He quickly seals the the edges, and moves on to the next. I would say it takes three seconds, maximum, and as he says, with pride: “airtight and stackable”. Easy enough. I try to attempt this technique with a small bowl of ground black pepper. I take the plastic out, and wrap one side of the small bowl. As I go to loosen it from the container with “my version” of the swipe, the small container of black pepper tips and spills all over my clean cutting board and the floor. Classic. I look around, subtly, nobody sees, and I laugh: OUT LOUD. I will be putting that item on my prep list tomorrow. And, while I am at it, I’ll add the grissini, too. 

At the end of the night, while listening to P.Y.T and Billie Jean to honor the late M.J., I have a conversation with another intern at another reputable restaurant down the street. He is fresh out of culinary school, and in the same position as I am; Just a Stage. I realize, right then and there, I am one lucky Bitch. I have been working at The Restaurant for six and a half days (remember, cut finger). I get to watch, and learn, from one of the most talented, and humble, Head Chefs in Seattle, and work with his amazing team of Chefs who are willing to teach me. I have worked two stations, not gone to culinary school, and the best part: I am not auditioning for the job like the other Stage. 

I’m just here to learn.