Gioco December 2003

Part 1 The Descent into Chaos

This week I wanted to share what it’s like to work in a really busy kitchen, a really busy kitchen. This is a pretty normal day at a lot of restaurants, and yes it can be intense. I even left out things, I try to keep these somewhat short. I also changed the names of the cooks, even though I haven’t seen most of them in a long time. I brought a few of them with me to Carnivale and some have friended me on Facebook. They were an extraordinary crew, one of the best I have ever worked with, there were a few painful days, but for the most part, their hard work made my job so much easier, it could have been much worse. It was definitely one of the most professional crews, even the front-of-house staff, they were really solid hard-working people. I worked the over 2 1/2 years but it went by really fast and if it hadn’t been for Carnivale I would have stayed longer. Part 2 will follow next week, where we find out what the fuck happened with the dishwasher. At the time I was stressing hard this whole day, but now when I think of this time in my life it gives me a really good feeling. I hope you enjoy and thank you for subscribing.

I was walking as fast as I could down Montrose Ave, I was headed to work and just wanted a coffee so bad I was fantasizing about it. I was thinking about how good it was going to taste, the warmth on my hands, the acidic bite of the coffee subdued by the half and half, but most important of all the life-affirming kick of caffeine. The minute I entered Starbucks and that coffee aroma hit me I almost stopped to inhale, like Scooby-Doo when he smells a pie cooling. The baristas knew me and my order and my coffee was ready by the time I reached the front of the line. I was out and on the street again in minutes. I knew I had to get to work as early as possible and started praying to the fickle gods of the CTA that everything was running smoothly this morning. I took the steps two at a time because I heard the distinctive screeching of the train approaching the station. The Brown Line train pulled into the station just as I reached the platform, although I lost a tiny bit of coffee on the way. The stars were aligned because the train was mostly empty and I was able to sit down. I put the scalding hot coffee to my lips as the train pulled out of the station, hoping for no sudden stops or I would probably be scorched by the molten coffee. Usually, the coffee was so hot at Starbucks I felt you could cook spaghetti in need if need be.

I closed my eyes and listened to Kurt Elling on my Sony Discman, trying to calm myself as much as possible, even though my mind had been racing since I got up. There were 200 reservations for lunch, plus a party of 45 in the private dining room. Work was going to be utter chaos, it wouldn’t stop until I left, about 11 pm. There were two small parties during dinner service as well, along with 250 or so reservations. Gioco was a busy restaurant normally but during the Christmas season it became a free for all of private parties, informal family dinners, and coworkers getting drunk on Barolo, it was a marathon of people gorging themselves on other people’s dimes. Today was a day I had marked on the calendar a few weeks before, it seemed destined for madness. There were going to be so many people in the building that it could become overwhelming if not properly planned for.

As I switched to the Orange Line train to take me the rest of the way, I was silently praying no one called in sick. That would turn everything to shit if one cook or dishwasher decided to call in sick because they drank too much the night before. I had cautioned everyone the day before that tonight was going to be crazy busy and it would be best to go straight home instead of hitting the bar for a beer and a shot. Of course right after I said that I went to the bar and had a beer and a shot, but I left after two, but I saw quite a few Gioco employees there, which worried me. I also was hoping that all my food deliveries would get there before lunch service, that would be amazing even though I knew it was not realistic in any way shape, or form. The meat delivery was the one that preoccupied me most of all, there were steaks on there that I needed for one of the dinner parties, which started right at 5 pm. My stomach was already starting to turn over on itself from stress and I hadn’t even entered the building.

The first thing I saw when I got there was the produce delivery waiting to get in, a beer truck and bread guy were right behind him. I pushed past everybody and opened the door for them, telling them where to go, I chugged the last of my coffee and made my way downstairs to the chef’s office. Office is really a euphemism for a tiny room with 8 milk crates with a piece of plywood on top for a desk. There were some used file cabinets where we stashed towels, new mandolins, knives, ravioli cutters, masking tape, digital scales, and all kinds of random shit. I even found a ping pong paddle in there one time when I was trying to reorganize everything. There were a few shelves with spare rolls of plastic film and aluminum foil, a few aprons, bottles of extra virgin olive oil, some cans of carnaroli risotto rice, and truffle oil ( it was a long time ago okay). There were about 5 or 6 pairs of worn kitchen shoes that other chefs had abandoned there and no one had the common sense to just throw out. The chair we had was broken, it was supposed to be one of those office chairs where you can adjust the height but it stayed forever in the bottom position, so when I sat in it the bottom of my chest was level with the desk. It reminded me of 1st grade all over again.

I could hear the Spanish of the prep cooks teasing each other, I grabbed a chef coat and headed into the prep kitchen a few feet from the chef’s office. It was a small room but it was organized well and they were able to get quite a bit done without bumping into each other all day. One of the pasta ladies had brought donuts and I grabbed one checked their prep lists, making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I told them the produce guy was here and a few of them headed upstairs to put it away. Gioco was a typical restaurant in that kitchen design wasn’t the first priority. The walk-in was on the first floor next to the hotline, which was great, but the prep kitchen was downstairs, so all the produce had to be brought downstairs to be prepped then brought back upstairs and placed in the walk-in, it was a lot of work. The lead prep cook grabbed the case of artichokes and told his brother, also a prep cook, to start cleaning them. These guys by the way were incredible, they could clean a whole case of artichokes in 20 minutes, it was nuts. I had ordered a huge amount of calamari for fried calamari, and they asked me how many orders I wanted by the end of the day. I replied at least 90 and they whistled, then laughed. They loved when it was busy, the busier the better. They told me they felt it must mean the food was good if we were so busy, their positive energy kept me going on many chaotic days.

I went over everything with the pasta ladies and made sure we would have tons of fresh pasta, I told them they could stay late if they wanted, which made them happy, they loved overtime. I knew overtime was a serious forbidden thing to the powers that be, but this time of year all the rules went out the window, we had to be prepared. I made my way upstairs to check on the lunch line cooks. If there was a weak link it would be these guys. They weren’t bad cooks, they just weren’t use to being so busy, typical lunches were 30 or 40 people, not 200. I poured myself a coffee and checked with the daytime manager, she told me we were still at 200 resos and had closed them for the day. We went over how many big parties there were ( a lot) and talked about putting up counts on things I was worried might sell out. When I got to the line the cooks were literally running up and down the line trying to get as much stuff in their station as possible. I checked in with Theo, the lead line cook, and asked him how it was going. I think he said something like “fucked”. Awesome. I asked him how I could help and he said he was fine even though he seemed a few minutes away from cardiac arrest, his face was red and he was sweating like crazy. When I asked him what was for staff meal he told me “Fuck that, I’m busy”. Now I know he was very busy, but that was the wrong answer. I figured he would do something like this and had bought frozen burgers a few days before. I sent one of the other cooks downstairs to get them and I told him I would take care of it, just concentrate on his station. He walked away as I was still talking, such a nice guy.

Unknown to him I scheduled one of the night line cooks to work a double today and he was my ace in the hole. I had another rock star dishwasher coming in as well, over time be damned. The lunch preshift meeting was painful, the servers all had huge dollar signs in their eyes and didn’t really listen to anything I said, which annoyed me but I didn’t have time to obsess about it, there were already people outside at 11 o’clock. The other sous chef was coming in at noon, right when it was going to start getting nutty, so I felt good about where we were. The only thing that worried me was all those big tables, it seemed like every table was a 6 top or bigger. I stood at the kitchen pass mentally going through everything I ordered and hoping I was going to have enough food to feed the hordes. When the ticket machine started spitting out tickets I yelled to the line cooks.

“Hey, we all ready? Are we running low on anything?"

They just looked at me with blank stares.

“OK, awesome, good talk.”

There were just a few orders here and there for a while, the cooks were still prepping their stations, trying to max out all the space in their coolers. The nature of lunch is quite different than dinner. Lunch is more of a wham bam thank you ma’am kind of service versus dinner where there is usually more time. Usually at lunch you get absolutely destroyed between noon and 1:30, then it’s all over. Today we were going to do two full turns of the dining room in two hours, it was going to be intense. I figured that the front of house would get behind at some point taking pressure off the kitchen but it all depends on what people order. Most everybody gets pasta, or a salad or both. I had asked the cook that worked the pasta station at night, Manolo, to come in early. Manolo was a rock star cook in every sense of the word. He wore jet black bandanas, painted his fingernails black, and often played air guitar when he had down time. He was also one of the fastest cooks I have ever seen, not only fast but good. I used to watch him sometimes during busy nights, he was like a shaolin monk. He wasted no movement, there were no panic or alarm, it was all deliberate, he tasted every pasta before he plated it, and would make a frowny face when he wasn’t happy with it. Manolo was the eye of the hurricane, peaceful amid the chaos, he would even pause to look up at me and smile, laughing, finding joy in the movement of cooking pasta after pasta. I used to tell the other sous chef Ralph, if we had four more like him I could conquer the world.

By the time Ralph got there, the kitchen was bombarded with tickets, he was late of course but I expected that, as long as he was there, that’s all that mattered. He ran by me giggling, telling me he was sorry, I barely heard him over the static of the angry kitchen printer spitting out tickets. I called out the orders to the cooks, except the pizza cook who had his own printer.

“Pasta, listen up, 3 gnocchi all day, 2 garganelli all day one no peas or ham, 4 spaghetti, 1 tortelli. Saute, 3 salmon, 1 sauce on the side, 2 branzino, 1 just spinach and lemon. Grill, 4 chicken, 1 ribeye all day”

The cooks nodded and started taking things out of coolers and getting pans hot. The pizza cook was slammed, I walked up to him and asked him if he was ok and he nodded yes, but looked like he was about to cry. I turned around because the noise of the diners was becoming a roar and I saw about twenty people standing near the host stand, the manager and host trying to grab their coast so they could be seated, and there was a line of people behind them. This was going to be bad for a few minutes. I felt calm though, we were ready. I told the cooks not to look up though, it might freak them out to see how many people were waiting to be seated. Of course, they all looked up, Manolo uttered “Shit”. Yes indeed.

Ralph ran up to me with a pint glass of what looked like iced coffee.

“What’s this?”
”Four shots of espresso on ice with a little milk, I call it Brown Death, bottoms up. You have to drink the whole thing in one gulp, no stopping, it will get you going.”
Ralph then chugged his and when he finished just stood there laughing.

“Let’s go, dude”

I swallowed the whole thing, it wasn’t that bad. I was a little worried since I’d already had three coffees but hey, it was busy.

The kitchen at Gioco is open to the dining room. Actually, it’s in the dining room. The spot where you stand to expedite is only a few feet from the customers. You had to be careful what you said, just in case you offend someone. Ralph and I had code words or sometimes we would talk in limited Spanish if we didn’t want customers to know what we were saying. There was also a prep table located at the end of the kitchen line, practically in the dining room. We tried not to use it during service but there were times we had no choice. So when Ralph asked me what needed to be done I told him I didn’t have time to butcher salmon for the party tonight and that he should jump on that, I was ok expediting by myself for now. Ralph literally jumped and bolted, running down the hallway to the dish room to grab cutting boards and hotel pans.

With Ralph occupied I focused on the line and making sure we didn’t fall too far behind. The tickets were really spewing out of the printer now and I could see the salad station cook, Noriberto, getting crushed. I called out the orders to the hot line and made my way over to Noriberto and asked him what he needed.

“A lot of fucking salads chef”

He didn’t say in an angry or disrespectful tone, he really just needed a lot of fucking salads. I grabbed all the tickets and starting arranging them on his rail, I started telling him what we needed and how many. The good thing was there were ony three salads on the menu, which made everything a lot easier. I told him to concentrate on making Caesar salads and I took the other two. I was plating salads when I looked over to the hot line. Ralph was telling the food runners to expedite, pointing at them with a butcher knife covered in salmon guts, telling them to hurry up. The cooks were blurs, their movements hard to follow, the sizzle of food htting hot saute pans cut through the air, and the grill guy was scraping the grill with a brush trying to get it clean before overloading it with chicken, lamb and beef. The poor pizza cook, Bernardo, was getting decimated. His station picked up pizzas but also fried calamari. Each and every table was having pizza and/or fried calamari. He was spinning in circles, something you do when you’re in the weeds so bad you feel like crying.
” Ralph! Help Bernard!”

Ralph dropped the knife and went behind the line without even looking back at me, he understood. I saw him place his hand on Bernard’s shoulder and said something that made him smile, then took the pizza peel out of his hand. Ralph would cook the pizzas and the calamari and Bernard would prep them, setting up a mini assembly line. Meanwhile, I was bringing about twenty salads to the pass for the food runners to take, they were waiting along with a few servers, which meant the food was probably taking a long time. As I set the salads down the manager walked by with a tray of dirty dishes and glasses in her hands shouting out commands in Spanish to the busboys as she walked. I asked her how it was going.

“It’s a little backed up, but people are cool, it’s the holidays. How are you guys doing?”

“Weeds.”

“It’s good to be busy”

I heard that a lot at Gioco. It was a bit unusual to me. There were restaurants I worked where it wasn’t very busy and if you got busy for any reason, employees got pissed off. They would complain and berate everyone and everything. But not here, everyone was genuinely happy to be running around with their pants on fire. It was inspiring to me how hard everyone worked. The dishwashers there would get absolutely crushed on busy nights. There were nights dirty plates were stacked so high you couldn’t see them, and they would still be singing along in Spanish to Norteño music blaring from a shitty radio. There were times they would come and get me and tell me they needed help, but more often than not they rocked it out by themselves. On days like today, Ralph or I would let them have a ribeye after their shift. We weren’t really supposed to give food away but we figured fuck it.

When lunch began to calm down a bit, I talked to Ralph about a game plan for dinner service. We had two parties at the same time plus a couple of hundred reservations. We both walked behind the line and gave all the cooks a high five and asked them how their statins looked for tonight. We then walked downstairs and checked on the prep crew, who were in the weeds but assured us would be ready by 5 o’clock. There was so much calamari marinated and prepped that I told Ralph if we run out I was going to quit, there was so much. We called it a quit count. We came up with the idea that if you sell an insanely high number of an item, a number that defies logic or belief, then we would quit. We had about 100 orders of calamari, up to that night the most we ever sold in a day was 70, so I felt confident in my quit count.

When I got upstairs Ralph told me to chill out for a minute, and he would run things while I could sit down for a while. I took him up on the offer and slumped into an empty booth in the corner. I put my head back and closed my eyes for a minute, wondering when I was going to get to go home, probably late. I wanted to order a pizza and play video games until I passed out. That was when the dishwasher walked over to Ralph and I saw them talking. They then walked off in the direction of the dish pit. I wondered what was going on so I got up and walked over there myself. When I entered the dish pit there were still plates stacked up from lunch as well as hotel pans, sheet trays, tongs, spoons, bowls, all kinds of stuff.

“What’s going on?”

Ralph was fiddling with the machine and he turned around to look at me.

“The machine won’t fill up with water, we’ve tried everything, it’s not working”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…”