Part 1
When I got back to Chicago after leaving New York, I was having a hard time finding a job. There were a lot more cool restaurants than when I had left it seemed even though I was only gone a year. I had worked for two James Beard award winners and didn’t think I would have any issues getting work but I did. In retrospect, it was my own fault. I was being super picky and a lot of the places I went to wanted me to guarantee at least a year or more, some asked for a two-year commitment. I know nowadays this seems crazy but it was a different time. The other problem was that I just didn’t have a clear picture in my head of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go careerwise. I knew I wanted to eventually open my own restaurant but hadn’t thought much beyond that. I was really attracted to fine dining. The whole show of it was inspiring to me. Spiaggia had opened my eyes to a world different than any I had ever seen.
But my money was quickly running out and I had to find something quick. Going through the Reader I found a few hopefuls. I didn’t want to work at any corporate-owned restaurants or restaurant groups, I liked working in small independent places and there were a few that recently opened that had ads for line cooks. As I said, it was the late 90s, and applying for a job then was much different than today. There were no apps or anything, you just dropped in and filled out an application, or dropped off a resume. But to be honest, back then very few cooks had resumes. You got jobs by word of mouth or just walking in and talking to the chef. There were four restaurants I wanted to apply to figured I would try to hit them all in one day. I took the train to Halsted and Randolph. Back then Randolph was just starting to take off, and Fulton Street was still home to meatpackers and warehouses. There were a few restaurants doing really well and the area was getting a lot of attention.
The first place I stopped at the chef just happen to be sitting at the bar when I entered. The place wasn’t open yet but there was already a lot of pre-opening hype in the papers and magazines. The chef asked me to fill out an application then showed me around the space. They were still about two months away from opening, which was not ideal for me. There was no way I could wait that long to start earning a steady paycheck. When the chef looked at my application he offered me a job on the spot, starting in six weeks. I had to turn him down even though I thought that the place was going to be hugely successful. In my heart, I knew this place was going to be the next cool place but I just couldn’t do it. I was close to being broke and there was no way I could wait so long, especially since construction rarely goes the way you want it and delays are inevitable. I told the chef if I changed my mind in the next few days I would let him know.
Disappointed I went to the next two spots and filled out applications at both but the chefs weren’t around so I left both feeling very worried about the prospect of landing a job as soon as possible. I walked to the next place since it wasn’t that far. My anxiety was getting the better of me and I was starting to freak out a little about money. Being broke was nothing new for me but being broke and not having a job was too much. If I didn’t land something quick I was in trouble. I walked towards River North with my head down, tryingto keep my anxiety from overwhelming me.
The last place I was headed to was called Harvest n Huron. It was getting a lot of buzz and the chef had worked at Printers Row for a long time. I had seen some pictures in Chicago magazine and thought it looked cool and trendy. When I got there lunch service was almost over and there were only a couple of tables occupied. I told the host that I was applying for a job and she handed me an application and told me to sit at the bar and fill it out. When I turned to the bar there were four other people there filling out applications and my heart sank. Part of me wanted to just walk out the door. I figured there were probably a lot of people trying to get a job here, my application would probably get lost in the shuffle. But for whatever reason, I sat down and filled out the application even though I felt it wasn’t going to do any good. This place was cool, trendy, and very busy, I felt like I didn’t stand a chance. I filled out the application and left, handing it off to the host who wasn’t even paying attention, she was talking to one of the chefs. I left with a pit in my stomach, wondering how I was going to pay my bills and mentally going through each one and figuring out which ones I could blow off and which ones I had to actually pay.
I made it about 30 feet from the door when that chef came running out and yelled to me “Hey dude, did you really work at all these places?”
“Yea, of course.” Did this guy think I was making shit up?
“Why don’t you come in here and let’s talk”
“Ok sure”
He was one of the sous chefs there and he asked me a lot of questions about working in New York and what I did there. We talked for about a half hour and he asked me to come in the next day for a stage to see if it was a good fit. I said sure, I had nothing else to do anyway and figured even if they didn’t hire me I could get a free meal out of it at least. I remember being so broke that I had stopped buying coffee to go and only drank coffee I made at home. Not only that but I switched to drinking Maxwell House because it was so cheap. I absolutely love coffee and have been drinking it since I was very young. I had tried and drank great coffee from all over the world and I can say with confidence that drinking Maxwell House coffee was traumatic for me. it tasted like wet carpet water. So the idea of having a job where I could actually go to a coffee shop and buy a real cup of coffee was really exciting to me. That was one of the things I missed most, just the simple act of buying a coffee on my way to work. The entire train ride to Harvest the next day I fantasized about having a strong cup of coffee and buying a new cookbook, something I hadn’t done in a long time, at least it seemed like a long time.
When I got there the sous chef showed me around the kitchen and introduced me to all the other cooks, most of whom were from Mexico. They gave me odd looks but I knew that was normal especially for new cooks. When you enter a strange kitchen for the first time everyone sizes you up and tries to determine if you can handle it or not. Usually, in my case, they see a fat white guy and write me off as being too slow or whatever. That’s fine, I was used to it the sous chef introduced me to the two cooks that worked the grill station and they gave me hard looks. One of them mumbled something in Spanish and the other one snickered. The sous chef handed me a menu and said I was going to work with these two all night. I looked over the station and saw a few things that stuck out. One, they cooked a lot of their meat ahead of time, or at least seared it, so that when the time came for the pick up it was much faster. For instance, searing the skin side of the duck breasts only and finishing it when you get an order. They did this with some of the steaks and pork loins as well. This is very common in very busy restaurants, but truth be told didn’t like it. I always feel food should be cooked to order. Two, the station was huge, I was used to working in tight very cramped places. It felt good to be able to move around and have a lot fo room to plate up food. When I worked in New York I could only make two plates at a time, thta’s all the space I had. Here I could lay out about 5 or 6 plates.
The cooks asked me where I worked before and I told them but they had never heard of those restaurants. They warned me it was going to get very busy and that I should just step aside and they would take over. I just nodded and said sure. I asked them what a busy night looked like and they said about 400 covers. That’s pretty busy I told them, the kitchen must get slammed hard. That’s the reason they told me for cooking the meat ahead of time, it just took too long otherwise. I asked them if they did that every day and if they ever tried getting through service without precooking the meat. They laughed at me and called me a derogatory name in Spanish. I really needed this job, so I let it go and didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag that I spoke and understood a great deal of Spanish. So i just nodded and smiled.
Once service started I saw how it flowed. One cook prepared the garnish and finished the plating, the other just cooked the proteins and sliced them. A lot of restaurants use this system, especially if they are very busy. In the last restaurant, I worked at I did everything myself, and did about 300-400 covers a night. As the orders started coming in I asked if I could work the grill and they nodded and let me take over. The first thing I did was throw more wood on the fire, I liked to work with a very hot grill. They exchanged looks but I was undeterred. Next, I moved the wood around under the grill so there were zones. One zone was super hot for searing and getting nice hatch marks on the meat, another zone that was medium, and another zone that was very low. When I got orders I started the meat on the hot zone and then moved it around depending on how busy I was and the temperature desired. For instance, If I had a medium-rare steak I seared it in the hot zone and moved it to the medium zone until done. But if I had a medium well, I seared it in the hot zone and moved it into the slower zone so it had more time to cook without burning the steak to a cinder. I had a lot of grill experience and it’s something that came naturally to me. Getting the doneness accurate is a difficult skill as well. Most often chefs have told me to feel the palm of my hand, that the feel of the meat of your hand feels like a medium-rare steak. Or that a balled-up fist feels like well done. To be honest, I have never done any of that. I just learned through a LOT of trial and error by feeling the bounciness of the meat and figuring it out. It takes a long time to perfect this skill but by this time I had about three years of experience just working on grills. I had it down.
I breezed through service that night and I didn’t have any steaks sent back either which they didn’t think possible. It felt easy to me. One of the things I learned from a cook at Spiaggia was a zen master outlook on movement. Don’t waste any movement when working the line. Every movement should have a reason and should be thought out ahead of time. If I moved through my station for any reason then it was a waste to do only one thing, if possible I should combine movements for efficiency. For instance, there were times I turned my back away from the grill, to help make a plate or grab something out of the cooler. If I did, I had to consider everything I could do while in that position before I turned around to the grill again. No wasted movement, economy of motion. It’s what allowed me to seemingly go faster than the next cook who was spinning in circles. I’m a big guy, people always assume I’m slow, so being smart about how I move through the kitchen is really important. I also try to do things only once, so that I don thave to keep going back and readjusting. This allows me to get more done in less time. I can’t physically be as fast as some other cooks but I was able to work much smarter and waste less time allowing me to keep up despite my size. I had one chef tell me I was light on my feet and called me Twinkle Toes ( He got it from the Flinstones).
There is something else that I noticed. When things get really crazy busy and there are so many orders coming in the kitchen that it has erupted into chaos, then I tend to work of feel. Instead of checking each and every steak for doneness, I will get a feel for how its cooked, simply by looking at it and knowing how long it has been cooking. In fact I have noticed that some of the best food I have ever made has been when I am in the tall weeds and trying hard to just keep up. I don’t know if this is because I am not overthinking or because I am listening to my instincts more. Also, the idea of being in a flow state might be at work here.
Either way, I crushed service that night. The cooks even shook my hand after and told me I was pretty good. The sous chef came and got me and walked me out to the bar. I had seen the executive chef hanging around in the kitchen and he was waiting at the bar. He asked me if I wanted a beer which of course I did and then he told me I did a good job but wanted me to come back the next day. But this time he wanted me to prepare three dishes and they would try my food and let me know. Now I have to say this was very confusing to me. I had rocked the grill that night and he still wanted me to come back and cook for him which is unusual for a line cook job. It’s not unusual for a sous chef job though. But I saw that there were two sous chefs and a chef de cuisine, so I doubted they wanted to add another chef to the payroll. It seemed odd to me but I needed a job so I said sure, I’d be there tomorrow. I walked to the train that night trying to figure out what was going on, and more importantly what was I going to cook for these people? The chef asked me if I wanted anything special and I told him I would just cook with whatever I found in the cooler that day which he absolutely loved but the more I thought about it the dumber that decision seemed. Sitting on the train my brain was going a mile a minute, sorting through ideas, trying to figure out what I could make for them. When I stepped off the train I had a few ideas of what I could do for them but wasn’t 100%. As I walked home I couldn’t help thinking that this was a lot of drama for a line cook job. By the time I walked in my door I had decided to worry about it tomorrow. Fuck it I figured, I got this.
PART 2 next week….
love these!