Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line

by Gibney, Michael

  December has done something ugly to the Village. A crust of salt cakes the pavement; slush mucks up gutters; cars and trucks splash winter’s dirty porridge from potholes as they pass. People, bundled up like sausages, slip and shimmy in galoshes across frozen sidewalks up and down Sixth Avenue. You can see them from your perch, fifty paces down the alleylike side street. They don’t notice you, but you notice them. They are getting off work, getting ready to start their weekends. Some of them are on their way out to eat or to a bar for happy hour. Others rush to the train station, on their way out of town for a couple of days to go skiing. Still others are tourists, just visiting for the weekend. They’re here to Christmas shop. They’re here to see the tree at Rock Center. They’re suspiciously rosy-cheeked and healthy looking despite the wintry weather. It’s been years since you’ve had anything that resembles a vacation. You look down at your grayish naked arms. You look up and down the block. There are other cooks and chefs tucked in clusters here and there, resting on other curbs and fire hydrants, in the shadows of other back doors. Their houndstooth pants give them away. They, too, are pale and smoking—chain-smoking, trying to suck down as many as they can before service starts. They, too, observe the passersby. None of the passersby seem to notice any of them, either.

  You fire up another smoke.

  You check your cell phone for the first time all day. A text from Vera, your girlfriend, time-stamped at 1500, says that she’s going to stop by on your break to say hello. THAT’S COOL YEAH? she says. She knows the rig: you can’t answer your phone when you’re working. She understands. She works in the industry, too, at a smaller restaurant up the block. It’s how you got together in the first place, and part of the reason you’ve managed to stay together these eighteen months: you run in the same crowds, you speak the same language, you understand each other’s situation. She doesn’t cook, though, she works the floor. But on the days she works, she passes by on her way in to see you quickly before service starts.

  It’s 1649 now; she should be here any minute.

  The kitchen door swings open and Stefan saunters out. He sits down beside you on the curb and stretches his wiry legs out over the slush in the gutter. His eyes are no longer bloodshot. There’s life in his face now. He’s sweated out the toxins. He is human again. He lights up a cigarette, sends a gust of smoke skyward.

  “So …” he says, taking another pull. “Your boy Raffy? He don’t look too hot. He’s banged out, guy.”

  “Oh?” you say.

  “Yeah, he just hurled in the sink out back.”

  “Man.”

  “I thought I’d take the opportunity to step out and enjoy a quick fag. Probably the last one I’ll get the rest of the night. We’re up near three hundred, you know.”

  You pull on your smoke, look down the street, exhale through your nose.

  “Seriously,” he says. “Chef just told me to ramp up the par on the agnolotti to fifty. I’ll be back there another hour rolling that shit out.”

  “Las risas no tienen límite,” you say.

  “Anyways, listen,” he says, sucking in one last deep drag of smoke and rocketing the butt a great distance into the street. “I’m going back in. It’s probably not a good idea for you to be out here too much longer, either, the way you’re rolling today. You don’t want to piss Chef off any more than you already have.”

  “I know, I know,” you say. “I’m just gonna say what’s up to V.”

  “All right, I’m gonna go crank a yam while the bathroom is still clean,” he says. “I gotta shit like a Clydesdale right now. Then I’m back on pasta. Let me know if you need help setting up the pass.”

  Just then, you spot Vera down the block, rounding the corner of Sixth Avenue. You could pick her out a mile away. The way strands of her loosely knotted yellow hair flit in the wind behind her. The way she’s shaped, with a crane’s frame, long and taut. The way she carries herself, milky like a dancer, from a childhood in ballet followed by a decade of chasséing through dining rooms.

  With a pair of degrees (in theater and art therapy), Vera could do much more than wait tables if she wanted to. But she keeps on in the industry because it’s quick, mindless money—seven or eight hundred dollars cash for three or four drowsy nights—and it allows her a lot of free time to do as she pleases. It’s a power move on her part, the smart choice, and she knows it.

  “There’s my girl,” you say to yourself. She signals you with a tiny wave of the hand.

  Stefan notices her on his way in and waves back with sham cheer.

  “Three hundred tonight, Vera, how ’bout that!” he yells down. “Yeah. Fuck my life,” he grumbles, flipping the door open and ducking back inside.

  “What’s up, baby,” she says, planting a juicy one on your lips. “Having a little smoky treat?”

  “You know, baby,” you say with an exhale. “Same shit.”

  You pull her in to you. Her hair smells of the yuzu shampoo she uses. She says you always smell of garlic. Right now you know you smell of cigarettes. She hates the smell on you, but she understands that they’re your way out when you’re at work, they’re your escape. Your cigarette is burned down to the filter. You flick it away. Never have you wanted to quit more than you do right now.

  You twist your limbs with hers like loose shoelaces. The skin of her hands is silken beneath your calloused fingers. For just this very moment you begin to forget about the burned hazelnuts and the monkfish roulades. You lean together against the hood of a parked car looking back toward Sixth.

  “So, three hundred covers?” she says.

  You don’t want to talk about numbers. You kiss her on the soft bottom part of her earlobe. You press your philtrum to the familiar freckle on her thumb; exhale.

  “Yeah,” you say. “But I should still be able to get out around ten o’clock. Wanna meet up and grab some drinks with me afterward?”

  “Ten o’clock?” she says. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” you say. “I opened today, babe. I’ve been here since nine, remember.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean—”

  Just then, the kitchen door flies open and a trio of back waiters storms out, led by a noticeably consternated Hussein. They are all carrying empty plates, heading straight for you and Vera. The two of you rise to meet them.

  “Chef,” Hussein says. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, Hussein?”

  “It’s almost five o’clock and still no family meal,” he says, brandishing the empty plate for dramatic effect. All this work on the specials has distracted you from one of the essential daily tasks: staff meal.

  You steal an apologetic look at Vera. “Hussein, can’t you see I’m in the middle of someth—”

  “We pay for this, Chef,” he says. “It comes out of our paycheck, you know.”

  “I know, Hussein, I know. Is there literally nothing?”

  “Rice and bean,” he says. “No meat, no vegetable. Only rice and bean. We cannot live on rice and bean. We are supposed to have fish and vegetable, too.”

  “You ask any of the cooks? Julio? Juan?”

  “They say talk to you,” he says. “They say you are boss.”

  You instinctively pull out another smoke and fire it up. You cast a glance across the street and lock eyes with a cook who has been out smoking this whole time. He smiles and shakes his head in acknowledgment.

  “Okay, Hussein. Listen,” you say. Your tone is professional, clean. “It’s been a very busy afternoon—”

  “Busy? I’m busy, too! And you! Outside smoking cigarette!” His voice is getting louder, more confrontational. The other back waiters stare wooden-faced at you. Vera averts her eyes, looks down the block. You sigh.

  “Listen, Huss—”

  “We need to eat! It comes out of our paycheck!”

  The insolence reaches its crescendo and the two other back waiters inch forward menacingly. Vera backpedals a step or two, just enough for you to notice. A switch flips in you.

&nbs
p; “All right, enough!” you say. “I understand your dilemma, and I apologize. Nobody means any disrespect. It has been a very busy afternoon and we simply haven’t had time to prepare an abundant staff meal. But I assure you, you will not starve. Somebody will fix you something more to eat before the night is out. Until then you’re going to have to be patient and show some fucking respect!”

  Hussein lets go an exaggerated sigh. “It better!” he says, and the three storm back into the kitchen, the door slamming behind them.

  You look at your watch: 1700 on the nose.

  “It looks like you need to get back in there, huh, babe?” Vera says, eyes cast downward.

  You look up and down the block. The cook from across the street has vanished. It’s already begun for him, you imagine. He’s in the paint, running around inside, starting to sweat. Lifting and flipping, searing and sizzling. Suddenly all three hundred of tonight’s covers begin to creep back into your consciousness. And now staff meal is a bust. Friday night is about to get real.

  “Yeah, I gotta go,” you say.

  “It’s cool,” she says. “I just wanted to say hi. I have to get to work myself.” She gives you one more long kiss on the lips. “Just give me a buzz when you get out and we’ll see what we can do about those drinks.”

  “I love you, Vera,” you say.

  “I love you, too, sweet pea,” she says.

  “Thanks for coming to see me,” you say.

  She winks and takes off.

  Watching her leave, you’re taken anew by her grace. How deftly she negotiates the wedge that is your work. Right then you begin to wonder how stupid you must look, standing alone in the cold with nothing but this chef’s outfit on.

  This sucks, you think.

  You chuck your butt into the slush and duck back into the kitchen.

  Every day, when the clock strikes five, excitement takes you. It’s a feeling in your belly that tickles you and jumps around: the awareness that something significant is about to happen, the upshot of which is only marginally predictable.

  For the line cooks, this sensation is often very uncomfortable, because it’s usually accompanied by a fierce sense of doom. Every line cook secretly wonders whether he has enough mise en place for the night; he worries that he might not. He wonders which station will get hit the hardest; will it be his? There is no telling what the guests will favor on any given night, and on the chance that the orders are lopsided to one side or the other, the line cook on the victim station could be in serious trouble. When it’s busy, sometimes you run out of things. Whole chickens, beef skirts, specials—it’s impossible to purchase perfectly all the time. But running short on prep is unacceptable. To eighty-six a menu item for lack of proper foresight during the day is a radical violation of kitchen dogma. People have lost their jobs for less. And cooks all bear this in mind the closer it gets to showtime. Do I have enough backup? they wonder. Is there time to make more?

  For the sous chefs and chef, it’s different. The day for you is like dragging a toboggan up to the top of the hill—once it’s there, you sit back and let it ride.

  You put on a crisp jacket and a fresh apron, gather some side-towels, and begin to ready the pass.

  Just as in any other section, there is a place for everything on the pass, and everything is to remain in its place. All the surfaces must be spotlessly clean, and everything must be neat and organized. While cleanliness and order are the watchwords for all areas of the kitchen, it is especially important to live by them at the pass, because everything that leaves the kitchen does so by way of the pass. It is the food’s last contact with the kitchen. Everything that arrives at it or issues from it must be perfect, so it must be perfect, too.

  You mop it down with sanitizing water, squeegee it clean, and buff it dry with a clean towel. You turn on the telescoping heat lamps and retract them to their highest position. You check the snipped herbs and garnishes for quality. You make sure the pepper mill is full. You make sure there are plenty of spoons.

  You’re neatly folding the side-towels when Chef makes his approach. You can feel his presence behind you. He’s taping up the seating forecast—a bar graph spat out by the reservationist’s software that predicts the big pushes in fifteen-minute chunks—and a copy of the menu.

  “We’re up around three hundred,” he says. “But it’s all pushed to the second seating. Check it out.”

  He directs your attention to the eight o’clock region on the graph, where the bars are extremely tall. Beginning at eight, you will do nearly thirty covers every half hour for three hours. This translates to approximately one hundred eighty plates of appetizer, one hundred eighty plates of entrée, and about one hundred twenty plates of dessert, give or take, all passing through your hands over the course of about two hundred minutes.

  “Madness,” you say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Fucking massacre.”

  You almost want to hide the news from the cooks. They’re already worried enough.

  “Listen,” Chef says. “How are we looking? We got spoons? Towels? The whole rig, yeah?”

  “Oui, Chef. Everything.”

  “All right, then,” he says. “Why don’t you roll me up some tampons. I’ll take the pass if anything comes in. Party don’t start for a few anyways.”

  “Oui, Chef,” you say.

  By “tampons” he means plate wipes—lengths of cheesecloth that have been rolled up into tight, finger-size bundles and sprayed lightly with an alcohol solution, meant to clean, degrease, and sanitize the plates. They are the perfect size and shape for moving nimbly around rims, removing any errant drips or spatters without touching any of the food. Towels and napkins tend to be too cumbersome for this kind of detail work. The wipes just happen to look like tampons.

  As you’re rolling them up, you notice that the line has gone suspiciously quiet. Quiet like the inside of a soldiers’ boat bound for Omaha Beach. The cooks have finished stocking their stations and now they’re arranging the finishing touches on their mise en place, slicing, chopping, turning, worrying. You feel compelled to march around and inspect their work.

  You can tell a lot about a cook by the state of his station just prior to service. If it is neat and well organized you know he is in good shape. You can see he’s had the self-control to work clean to begin with, the discipline to put right any messes he’s made in the process, and the agility and efficiency to complete all his projects on schedule, while still leaving time to codify his workspace. That his station is free of clutter also suggests he has the mental clarity required to accommodate whatever toil service holds for him. In short, a clean station allows you to assume that a cook is ready, that he is there.

  A dirty station, however, paints an ominous picture. If a cook hasn’t had a chance to stop and regroup—to change out his board, to wipe down the tabletop, to refresh his spoon water—you know he is in a bad way. You know he probably still has a lot of work to do, which means he might not be ready by the time the first order comes in. And if he’s not ready when the first order comes in, there’s a chance he never will be. He’ll be playing catch-up all night and he might go down in flames.

  Fortunately for us, Warren and VinDog are completely dialed in. Their stations are ultratight and well supplied: towels folded, surfaces spotless, saltshakers, pepper mills, and fat and acid bottles full to the brim—their mise is truly en place. But no matter how nice things look on the surface, as their sous chef you still need to ask the question.

  “Big night tonight, Don Juan,” you say sternly. “Are you ready to roll?”

  “Oui, Chef,” Warren says. “Always ready.”

  “What about you, VinDog? You going to be able to handle this push?”

  “Tu sabes,” he says. “Never scared.”

  They’re so accustomed to being busy on the station that getting there, for them, is the easy part. You just give them the number and they will get done whatever they need to do in order to be prepared. Their ability to accommodate
these massive numbers has yet to be determined, but they will certainly have all the mise en place they need for it.

  Garde manger is also fully set. Catalina is rock-steady there. She’s been cooking almost as long as you’ve been alive. She is never unprepared. She always overpreps in large batches. It’s not the ideal way of going about it, but you know as well as she does that she’s always thinking a day or two out, so she’s always ready for even the busiest night. And her station is never, ever messy.

  “¿Que onda, gringo?” she says with familiar braggadocio, as you look over her rig.

  “Nada,” you say. “Sólo digo hola.”

  Julio is there as well. His first round of meats have been pulled out to temper, his sous vide baths are rolling at retherm temperatures, and his squeaky-clean cutting board awaits cooked cuts for slicing. As usual, his face is stoically emotionless. But he does express some concerns about the reservationist.

  “What’s with the second seating?” he says. “Who booked that shit?”

  “I know,” you say, checking the temperature on the pork in the circulator. “It’s gonna get ugly. Can you handle it, baby?”

  “We shall see,” he says.

  This brings you around to Raffy on fish roast. Unlike the rest of the cooks, his station seems uncommonly sloppy. It’s not dirty, it’s not terribly disorganized, it’s not even understocked. It’s just not tight. He usually has a fresh box of gloves on the station; the box he’s got now is half empty. He usually has a stack of C-folds; now there are none in sight. He usually folds his side-towels meticulously; now they’re in a heap. The bag in his slim-jim is askew; his spoon water is dirty; his pepper mill is nowhere to be found. His station looks the way it usually does midway through service. But we haven’t even started yet. It’s uncharacteristic in an unsettling way. You expect more of him. Your brow furrows.