73 Hours in Five Days

Make no mistake—we are here to work in this kitchen and do nothing else. I’m beginning to think that our living conditions are as appalling as they are in order to reinforce that notion. We work from 8:30 AM to 12:30 AM or later, depending on the number of reservations, go home, shower, sleep, and repeat the process the next day. We haven’t had hot water in the flat, so Florencia, or Flo, my bunkmate and I have had to pack a bag, trek back to the restaurant and shower in the basement bathroom. It’s a process that is not welcomed after a 16-hour work day, when somehow my unpadded mattress with exposed coils and two fake fleece (if there is such a thing) and wool blend blankets inside my cigarette smoke infested flat are calling my name.

It’s amazing how people bond under these types of conditions. Unfortunately, the cliché proves true—misery does love company. There is an enormous amount of commiserating going on (and a lot of talk about finding rental apartments or “getting the hell out of this place” altogether), which has pulled people together from all corners of the globe. Flo mentioned to me today that the first and last time she ever slept in a bunkbed was when she did volunteer work in Uganda and I (terribly, I admit, I know it was wrong, it’s sounds very unsympathetic and uneducated and awful) told her that our entire situation was probably very similar to life in Uganda anyhow.

For an environment that is utterly cutthroat and competitive (at the lowest level people will steal brooms out of each others hands in order to make it look like they are doing the most work), most of the kitchen staff is friendly and warm with each other, so long as you can exude the sense that you know what you are doing. I can’t say that I expected this, especially in a three star kitchen. I thought, perhaps, that due to the fact our chef-instructor is so incredibly demeaning (You’re so stupid! Do you even have a brain up there you SOB?!), that our group has been spared the normal kitchen hazing that might take place otherwise. There is definitely a certain amount of sympathy that is expressed for people in her group.

When our chef-instructor is out of earshot, there is a lot of translating going on. In my case, Pablo, who speaks only Spanish, will speak to Las, who speaks both Spanish and French and will speak to me in French. I then (obviously) speak to myself, translating the French into English. In some instances, it takes a village, and I am truly grateful for the effort. The amount of gesturing, the close talking and the stares that will understanding are simultaneously amusing and frustrating. I’m not sure that anyone is speaking in full sentences—there are a lot of basic words being thrown around to get the point across (so long as I am in the picture).

My brain is working overtime. If I don’t have my eyes on every demonstration, I miss out completely. I can’t passively listen or be a lazy listener; I am desperate to understand everything and at the end of the day, I understand almost nothing. It makes my brain hurt. Although a lot is translated for me, it is mostly truncated due to time, ease and making sure that our chef-instructor does not hear the translation. I end up missing a lot of the little stuff—the insights regarding method and theory—the real important tidbits. It makes me miss my chef at db. I miss his phrases that will be forever engrained in my brain—low and slow, treat the gas like a car pedal—the tweaks that make my cooking just a little bit easier and better. I think I mostly miss the time he took with me to teach me because he thought I was worth it. No hablo Espagnol and consequently, I’m not worth the time.

I don’t like constantly asking for translations because it feels like I’m a bother, but if I don’t, I’m completely left in the dark. There is a 32-year-old Portuguese man, Freddy, who speaks Portuguese, Spanish and English in our group who looked at me funny when he entered our kitchen. (A significant majority of people that pass me in the kitchen that I have never met before now greet me with some English word—I constantly feel like I have a sign plastered on my apron that says, I AM AMERICAN. I ONLY SPEAK ENGLISH UNLIKE EVERYONE ELSE HERE.) When our chef-instructor had left the kitchen, Freddy came up to me, introduced himself and explained the funny look. He had recognized me from the Institute of Culinary Education, where we were students at the same time, albeit in different classes. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember his face, but I’m glad he remembered mine. He wears very rectangular glasses and has wildly thick black hair that makes his hat shift positions on his head so that the tie or bow part that should be in the back at the base of his neck ends up on the side of his head.

Freddy is my lifeline. Maybe it’s the ICE connection, or the fact that I endlessly praised Degustation, the restaurant he worked at in the city, but he is incredibly patient with me and translates almost everything when the time permits. I would be far more lost without him.

I have a good understanding of how service works having worked through five at this point. The servers come into the center of the kitchen, post hand-written tickets, and read the entire ticket into a microphone. There is a response on the part of the kitchen, “Oido,” which acknowledges the server and the called ticket. The server then returns to the center of the kitchen and fires specific courses as the table becomes ready for them. Plates are placed on a rectangular, modern-looking, black mahogany tray and brought to the center of the kitchen for inspection and then to a small table just outside the doors that separate the kitchen from the dining room. The cook indicates to the server which table the plates are for and once the server has acknowledged this information, “Mesa cinquo, Oido,” they pick up the trays and take them to the dining room. There is never any deviation from this system.

I was terrified the first time I picked up a tray from our kitchen and brought it to the small table. It took me three services until I forced myself to do it; the best way to succeed in a kitchen is to know how to do absolutely everything, especially the small stuff. It simply makes you more valuable. I was nervous that I wouldn’t properly pronounce the table number and that the server wouldn’t understand me and I would get in trouble. It’s not terribly difficult, however, and I needed to get over the mental hump that was keeping me paralyzed in our respective kitchen. The second time I took a tray out to the drop-off table, the plates were for table R3. Instead of properly rolling the R like the Spanish do, I pronounced the R with a French accent. The head server, or captain, Fillipe, looked at me funny and made me say it again and again until finally he pronounced the rolled R and made me repeat it after him. (He found this amusing and was laughing while I tried maneuvering my tongue). The next time I had to take a tray for an “R” table, I nailed the pronunciation in front of an audience of servers and they all put their arms up in the air like they were cheering and said, “Yes! Si!” A small victory.

We have been assigned to specific dishes within our group (our group, Primeras, is responsible for four total dishes) and mine is Ensalada Tibia. It is stunning and colorful but serene on the whole and I love it. The dish is presented on a white rectangular plate that has a shallow but wide indentation in its middle. A tomato consume made with Agar Agar is very carefully and slowly poured onto the dish to just fill the indentation. It must not go over the edge of this gully, so to speak. The dish is then placed in the refrigerator, where the tomato consume turns into a gelatin. Right before service, the dish is taken out of the refrigerator and two paper thin slices of Avocado, which must be perfectly green—a graduation of dark green to light from the outsides to the inside of the strip—are rolled like fruit roll-ups and placed vertically in the middle of the gelatin. Four baby lettuce leaves (two romaine, one spinach, one red leaf) are placed on top of a small scattering of yellow frisee and around the avocado. The avocado pieces then become hidden—a small surprise inside the miniature salad. On the outsides of the salad, two chive batons, exactly the same size, are placed vertically on the dish and then rested on the salad leaves. Ten fava beans, covered in an oyster aioli-like mixture, are separated into two groups of five and make small footprints on the outer edges of the gelatin. Next to each grouping of fava footprints is one spring onion (two total on the plate) that are laid on one side with the bulb facing towards the top of the plate and on the other side with the bulb facing towards the bottom of the plate. Miniature flowers with colors like violet, rose, baby blue, aubergine, mustard orange and yellow and one parsley leaf with three segments are made to look like they fell on the gelatin, scattered with no certain pattern, when in fact they are placed in precise locations with tweezers. The dish is finished with two pieces of lobster—one claw piece and one tail piece—at two and seven o’clock, seven dots of salsa verde, four dots of an oyster and lobster aioli, a parsley vinaigrette for the salad and one half sphere of tomato pulp at four o’clock topped with a chervil leaf with three segments.

The dish is tedious and time consuming. Everything is placed on the plate with long, oversized tweezers. It’s like playing a prolonged game of Operation, but instead of the buzzer going off when you hit the side, there is a crazy lady chef who screams at you when you place something incorrectly. For instance, once a component is laid and positioned on the gelatin, it cannot be moved. If it is moved, it will create tracks and disrupt the surface of the gelatin. The surface must stay completely smooth and even so that it appears like tinted glass or like very light brown lenses in sunglasses where you can still see people’s eyes clearly looking out at you.

One thing that really bugs me is having the feeling that my chef-instructor thinks I’m stupid. She seems to equate the communication barrier with stupidity and it drives me nuts and makes me feel small and inconsequential. She constantly pulls or yanks on my arm to move me out of position. We are only allowed to plate at her prompting and she will hover and stare and scream until you are finished plating. The best feeling I have had in the kitchen was during the third service, when she finally pushed me in front of the plates and allowed me to season the salad with pepper and to place the small piece of chervil on top of the tomato pulp. It was another small victory, but exhausting to achieve. I really do have to put in twice as much as everyone’s best efforts in order to earn my right to do anything and to prove that I have a functioning brain. Even though I know how to do more, I am not allowed to do anything but what she permits. It makes me want to stick my knife through my eye. This applies to everyone, however, and has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t speak Spanish.