being a line cook is insane but people do it anyway
do you want to know the secret to why line cooks stay line cooks?
We're addicted to a certain aspect of the job. A sort of combination of Pride and Power.
See, most of what is going on in that restaurant comes down to you. If the restaurant was a dairy, you'd be the cow, everything is based on what you produce; how much, how fast, and of what quality.
And it's INSANELY hard for most people to do. It requires you to keep mental track of tons of stuff while doing complicated physical creation in a dangerous environment under intense pressure
Any line cooks reading this? let me recreate a moment most of us have had many many times
For the rest of you this will be a nice window into the line cook experience
you have a rail FULL of tickets, and the printer will NOT stop printing more.
You've got a stove FULL of stuff you're cooking, and half of it is for stuff you don't even have a ticket for, because of something on a table that already went out was wrong or missing, or a server forgot to put something on a ticket and needs it in a hurry, or...
the tickets you are working on are for tables that finished their appetizers 45 minutes ago, and it could be an hour before you even get a chance to read whatever the printer is currently printing.
You have a head FULL of stuff you're tracking: how quickly the sauce is thickening in this pan, whether the garlic is about to burn in that pan, how long before you drain the pasta in that pot before it over cooks. As soon as the thing in the oven for table 31 is 5 minutes from done you gotta put the other thing on the flat top to go with it, you're putting together Something on your board and you can't finish it because you need a refill of an ingredient from the walk-in but you can't go get it because if you leave the kitchen you'll burn the thing in the salamander. And you can't plate the thing in salamander yet because the Something you're putting together on your board is taking up all the room you had left in this disaster of a kitchen
Three people have just told you complicated changes to dishes you have to organize and keep in your head. Something like
"24 needs 3 gnocchi not 4, and 2 with no rosemary; 3 needs all 4 gnocchi to have extra rosemary, 2 with no garnish; 22 needs an extra gnocchi extra garnish no rosemary, salads are almost out you can go in 3 or 4 minutes"
The manager, assistant manager, about 8 servers, and a fuckton of people at tables are all waiting on YOU with an impatience bordering on fury.
right? sound familiar? okay that's not the moment, that's just the dinner rush on a night somewhere between bad and average.
The moment happens when, during this insanity, you reach an internal place where you become completely overwhelmed. Panic and frustration and over stimulus all rise up and wipe your brain completely clean. You can't think, you have no idea what to do, you want to run away, you want to quit, you can barely think of your own name, everything feels completely impossible.
You pull it back together.
You stop being overwhelmed, you stop panicking, you insist that it IS possible, and that you are going to do it. You decide what has to happen and you start. You clear all the clutter you can from your kitchen. You pull all your tickets as far down the rail as possible and scan through the tickets on the printer so you have an idea of how things are going to go. You write down a couple of times on tickets that you would usually keep in your head but you need the brain space. You group the tickets according to not only time but what dishes they have in common so you can do batches of things. You decide if you can just get these two things out of your way you'll be in a much better position and so you concentrate on getting those two things cooked and plated. You beg the dishwasher to grab you the thing you need from the walk-in. You call your assistant manager or manager into the kitchen and you tell them you need them to start you 8 gnocchis: 3 no rosemary one extra garnish, 4 extra rosemary two no garnish, and one normal.
Right? Okay so first of all, as you can see... The job is INSANE
and second of all. Not everybody is capable of that Moment. The moment you stare already-existing catastrophic failure in the face and tell it No. That moment.
and you have to be capable of that moment if you want to be a line cook.
Which means pretty close to zero other people in that restaurant can do what you can do.
So now let me tell you a story.
I was 19 years old. I was a line cook at an italian joint. We're slammed off our ass one night, and the manager is in the little galley kitchen with me, and he's just standing there because he isn't good enough to not be in the way if he tries to help
and he's over my should about everything, telling me to drain that more or turn the heat down on this etc.
Finally, I stop completely, look him dead in the eye, and say "Tony, i'm not cooking another thing until you leave this kitchen."
I'm 19. Ive worked here six months. Tony is twice my age and married to the owner's daughter. There is a heavy pause.
Then Tony turns around and walks out of the kitchen.
What's he going to do, send me home? Zero other people in this restaurant can do the thing that makes it a restaurant. If i go home the customers are going home too.
And that's the real reason most line cooks stay line cooks even though the job feels like a war you never win.
It's that interplay of Pride and Power. For those few hours, the restaurant is happening because of you.
For the other part, try pulling a cook off the line during the rush. You can't. Even if they are in the weeds. Maybe even especially if they are in the weeds.
Once i was working with a cook who, in the middle of the dinner rush, sliced is hand open - a cut both deep and wide, pouring blood. No bandage we had was going to be a solution for it.
So he popped a latex glove on that hand, triple wrapped a rubber band around his wrist to keep the blood in, washed with soap, and went right back to cooking.
Because it was the dinner rush and no one else could do the job, and he wasn't coming off that line.
30 minutes in he had to swap gloves because it had filled with blood like a water balloon and was making it hard to cook. Leaving the line was never even a question.
