JLoeats.com

Aghh the life of a cook.
so intense,
so fascinating,
so physically boundary-less. (don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. haha)

so much drinking
so little eating
so much flirting with promiscuity (food is sex. sex is food. y’all have heard that before…)
and so much toying between what’s professional and what’s simply keeping us sane.

i’ve been coming home at 4, 5, 6 am in the last couple of days, in the last two weeks from bar hopping, pool, clubbing, karaoking, hanging out, networking, schmoozing, and simply playing with my new homies.
you know, it’s the importance of ‘happy hour’,
except our happy hours are ‘industry nights’
when everyone else is sleeping, because we have just gotten off work.
man, when you work, stress, and sweat together
get yelled at, produce great food, good food, bad food, unservable food, all together
there’s bound to be drinking, smoking, and dancing in order to balance it all out.

the adrenaline,
the hangovers,
the power throughs,
the early mornings,
the very late nights,
the VERY early early mornings / late nites that turn into one long day
from cooking for each other, to family meals, and going out for those greasy 3 am drunken snacks

there’s no wonder, we not like honey. like glue. like a PB&J.

“this lifestyle it’s hella fun, but i’m going to burn out soon”
(spoken by many, and even coming out of my mouth the other morning at 6:30 am when i finally reached my driveway…thinking to myself, ‘if i start work at 2pm, i can still get 6 hours of sleep!’ sweeet. shower time!)
and cheers to that!

i know, it’s not sustainable (we don’t get enough pay to do this for very long in order to actually financially sustain ourselves)
and it’s physically tolling on our health, on my health
of course everyday when i struggle to get up at noon, i think to myself — “mann, this is crazy… i look, TIRED.”
and d-d-damn! Look how thin i’ve gotten! i’m gaining muscles in the right places, and have slimmed down to nothing, it’s like bootcamp, and i have a 16 year old waist again! hahaha! it reminds me a lil of when i used to train in high school for dragonboat racing — holy crap, i’m fit again, skinny, and constantly hungry.
well, that doesn’t count, i guess i’m ALWAYS hungry for more ;)

which of course is always met with “you work in a kitchen, don’t you EAT all day long?!”
to which i laugh again.
- hahaha, in your dreaming glamourized version of what you think it means to work in a kitchen ratatouille stylez, yes, but in reality, when you’re spending 8-12 hours each day feeding other people, it’s ironically difficult to sneak food into your mouth when you work in an ‘open’ kitchen.

which brings me to my next point –
so everyone always asks — “have you seen anything unmentionable in the industry?? like what is it really like back there? how DIRTY is it?”
– ermm, ok, i’ve seen people’s apartments in college that are scarier than most scary nasty kitchens i’ve seen or worked in.
or people’s houses.
truth is, CHEF’s ARE HELLA CLEAN. we are OCD even.
because we’re all type A personalities that strive for perfection, and who all have a incredible sense of drive, passion, and a sense of clockwork timing.

most people ask and most people have the right to know, i get it,
but it’s not like we have so many secrets to hide. haha which i think is kind of hilarious.
well, i guess if they saw what the kitchen actually looks like during service, my question is — would they want to eat at that same restaurant again in knowing the reality of how your food is prepared and under what circumstances, conditions, and ‘terms of agreement’ they walk into? and after judging, MOST PEOPLE EAT IT ANYWAY.

well,
chances are you’ve probably had worse in your lifetime too.
and as sensitive as people can be, most people are pretty resilient, i think.
i mean it’s taken years for all the macdonalds in the world to penetrate health ripples into science journals and to obtain ‘professional’ observation and research into the diseases of the western lifestyle –
is the “FOOD” Products that you eat coming from ‘cleaner’ supermarkets with all the preservatives in it, better for you? luck of the draw no?
the other day my dad found a croissant in the kitchen in a half closed tupperware that he had forgotten about for a month, that’s been sitting out and about on the counter. he opened it and it looked perfect. i mean, EWW.
no mold, nothing. and i mean, mold ain’t picky, mold will eat anything in the right conditions… air, moisture, heat. yup. all of the above in a container sitting beside the stove for a month. (don’t get me started on how unorganized my mom’s kitchen is.. haha)
would you still eat that if mold didn’t even want it? HAHAHA — it’s like SPAM — that shit will go through natural disasters and nuclear wars! and people are worried about roaches? chances are roaches will outlive us, and that must mean they’re doing something right, no? hahaha… maybe not if they continue to eat our leftovers…hahaha, resilience! ho!!

so it’s been really interesting in the last 5 weeks in observing the way a high volume kitchen runs -
sometimes, when there’s just so much food to be prepped, cooked, and served,
there simply is no time to do all those little nitpicky things you have time to do at home when you cook for others.
so we cut corners on certain things, naturally…
cuz cooking in a restaurant kitchen and serving about 1000 people a day (at max capacity with two services) is definitely different than cooking for yourself, a family of four, and so forth, etc, etc…

so there’s no big secret really.
maybe that’s the aww of having an open kitchen where the guests can look into the kitchen and actually see the cooks prepare the food.
i wonder if they can hear us swearing and eff-ing off everyone else when certain orders come in…
and is the dinning room really that loud that they don’t here our often crude and sexually charged remarks to each other?
what do our guests think when they see a cook, aka me, EAT something, or quickly shove something into my mouth and chew like a horse cuz that bite is supposed to sustain me for another erm, hour of work??
yes, we’re technically not “allowed” to eat in that open kitchen area, so we all squat down like the asians and eat anyway cuz i’m usually starving, and sometimes i just don’t even bother to squat (omg i’m such a rebel, i know! — or am i human? haha)
and the fact that i feel like a goldfish, is enough to make me nervous about my itchy nose or sweaty sweaty forehead when anyone, let alone kids, run up to the edge and stand there and watch us make their food.

this is where that thin thin “professional” line comes into play,
most people who go out to eat at restaurants are ok customers, they tip ok, and they can be appreciative.
and most people walk into the restaurant like they’re owed the treatment of their lives, because they are paying for something and we have to gain it, like the magical disney threshold point i learned about in college (– that being, when after you pay an admissions fee, do you start to relax and have fun and feel like it’s all ‘worth’ the price?)

isn’t it funny that people who are skeptical about what happens behind the kitchen doors, are often the ones that think the restaurant owes them shit when they walk in and instantly aren’t satisfied already?? hmm, what goes around comes around??

i mean, do you stare at your mom when she prepares your dinner to watch if she’s doing anything wrong or messed up?
HAHAHA, can you imagine?! — she’ll smack you in the back of your head! and then make you cook it yourself, AND THEN make you clean up after your mess and the whole family’s afterwards!

and thus is the service industry –

it is full of people who bust their asses and work their behinds off,
to cook,
to serve,
to clean,
and to make sure you’re getting everything in a timely manner – (that’s for you to judge if you saw what actually goes on in the back and the speed at which we do work)
who don’t get paid enough to have time to change the system or speak up about it until they believe they have more “power” to do it their way, when they become an executive chef… one day…
but i guess this is where i come in. ;)

HAHAHA!
the company has all these policies that fit their mold of what they want their guests to be experiencing when they walk into the “buzz, sparkle, and magic” of it all…
and it’s actually interesting,
to see that
really, in the end of it all –
it’s all for YOU.
everything this industry does,
all the insane devoted hours to cooking, prepping, buying, making, cleaning, over and over and over again
is all so YOU can eat.
so you can have variety in your life
so you can have an option, as to what YOU want for dinner tonight
so you don’t have to farm it, grow it, pick it, wash it, clean it, chop it, mix it, cook it, store it, and clean up yourself.

i guess that’s the bigger secret here.
so why have we all become so blind to the process of where our food comes from?

hrmm.
think about it next time you go out to eat ;)
xoxo J xoxo

ps- i have lived through my word and have started my tipping revolution, have you join in yet?? :)
tip ya cooks darlings ;)
happy eating*