A common topic of conversation between us cooks is how there are just too many people in this kitchen. At the lowest level, when people fight for mops and brooms, it is both infuriating and asinine. Compared to a typical restaurant kitchen, we might be overstaffed by three (times).
But this is not a typical kitchen—it is ranked 33rd in the world on San Pellegrino’s 50 Best List and has three Michelin stars. I’ve often wondered how it is that a restaurant of this caliber can maintain the quality and consistency at an extraordinarily competitive level with such an inane amount of people in the kitchen. Where’s the give? What is compromised? Clearly, from the perspective of a Michelin inspector—nothing.
When it gets down to it, there are a select group of people from each partida—pastry, fish, meat, primeras—that have generally just one task to focus on during service. If a dish has six different components, it is common that six people will work together to plate that dish. And being awarded that one task—at this level, in the midst of such competition—feels like gold. It's like the freaking Olympics. Being charged with just one duty and job during service allows for the necessary repetition that evolves into perfection. People are intent, focused and borderline obsessed with nailing their one task over and over again. Consistency, in this respect, is maintained. Or so the logic goes—I’ve been doing the canelon foam for two weeks now and I made a huge error in the middle of plating for a table of 15 during the lunch service.
We set up the trays, the plates, the micro-herbs, the spatulas, plate wipes, pimenton oil, paintbrushes in the central kitchen (where we plate big tables) with rhythmic perfection. I had three back up sauce pots of foam ready to go and my foam partner stationed across the island from me. Once the canelon was laid and the pulpo placed at its ends, we started dropping perfect spheres of foam. When I reached the ninth dish or so, I was nearing the end of the foam in my pot and dropped an enormous amount of liquid on the plate. It pooled alongside the canelon, leaking evil-like from the foam’s underbelly. My heart stopped, but my hands kept plating, my brain conscious of time that I didn’t have. My chef instructor walked behind me, screaming at me while I continued to drop spheres of foam on the remaining plates, effectively maintaining a shadow-like distance until I had finished. And when I finished, the verbal beating only intensified. It’s not that I didn’t know that I had made an error. It’s not that I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. It’s not that I hadn’t heard her say these things one hundred times before. But she needed to scream at me—it’s part of the shtick, the performance, the training.
The most important thing we learn here is not necessarily about food, technique, or method. What we learn here is confidence and how to execute under pressure. Had I looked up at any one of the 120 eyeballs that were intently staring at me during that moment, I might have lost it. It’s about staying calm, collected and graceful. It’s about moving fluidly and deliberately with controlled movements. It’s about learning how to perform in front of an audience. It’s about saying, “Oido,” (I hear you, I understand) and projecting confidence. Without it, there are two extraneous staffs of passionately hungry individuals to do what it is that you have been assigned to do.
In the beginning, the chefs tear us down, shred us to pieces and wipe us clean. They turn us into canvases as blank as every white dish we plate on. When they feel we are ready, they give us one task at a time, one component at a time, adding to us, layering on us, shaping us, perfecting us until we become fully functioning—a chef de parti, a composed dish.
I won’t be here long enough for that to happen, but I’m happy and proud that I’ve worked hard enough to be given the opportunity to at least start down that path. Perhaps the amount of people in this kitchen is not inane. Without them, the pressure wouldn’t be as great. Perhaps there is a method to this madness. When I watch the unparalleled cool and precision of the current chef de parties, I don’t doubt that we could use even more cooks in this kitchen.
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