kitchen communications. or, learning to speak ‘kitchen’
February 24th, 2010
in the course of a day a person hears a lot of words, thinks a lot of words, writes a lot of letters bunched up with each other, and reads even more.
in kitchens we mince words, speak incomplete sentences, shout orders, and make clear, sharp points quickly. the concept is: listen the first time because i don't have time to repeat myself. sometimes communication is done without words, happens without opening our mouths. our hands communicate, our gestures speak volumes, our eyes admonish, our bodies teach, our body memory saves our lives, and those we work with.
patience. it's an unknown, a foreign word. a full explanation is gold, but not the traded kind, the sort found on a sunk ship, on the sea's bottom. recipes are scarce, methods are memorized, reasons are few. why is a word regarded with resentment, at best. no time for why. why is a word you have to take to the library on your day off. why is a word for those with enough money to go to culinary school. why? why takes time. minutes you don't have. minutes you could use to go to the bathroom, breathe, take a gulp of water, pause.
and we do a lot of sinking, and more treading water, hopeful. that our feet will reach sand. soon.
kitchens are about the now. about the i needs and the whens and the now, motherfuckers. maintenant. 'can i have that today, please?' kitchens are about economy. the economy of movement. the economy of words. the economy of thought, opinion and critique. choose your battles wisely, timely.
communication in staccato.
you better be good at morse, at braille, at seeing: using both eyes. hard.
you better have your blinders off.
except when you need them strapped to your head. tight.
kitchen communications are written in invisible ink, in shorthand; spoken in slang colloquial dialect vernacular jargon. kitchenspeak. kitchen-uendo.
that said, all over the world, there's only one language: kitchen.
graffitti.
if you speak it here, you speak it there. even when you're not speaking. once you learn kitchen you can never shake it. tattooed into your skin.
you smell a cook before you see her cooking. you see a cook even before you smell his sallow skin. you see scars, you hear invisible scars. you know.
look up passion. it means tortured.
*
I'm in a kitchen right now with a lot of 'green' cooks. They need a lot of care. A lot of 'hand-holding.' Way more than I would have been able to get away with. Ever. A lot of explaining needs to happen. While we will always have to repeat ourselves, {ad infinitum, in fact– basically until a cooks gets so tired hearing us say the same thing over and over he will comply, merely out of annoyance!}, the management team (3 of us in total) find ourselves really frustrated by the simplest of basic pieces of information we barely remember learning ourselves. We're frustrated because it seems as though a lot of these cooks have been cooking for a little bit, but did not learn the universal language, kitchen, along the way.
This is not to say I don't remember learning as I was coming up: I do. More than most because I did not go to culinary school. I remember when and from whom I learned what an 'All Day' was. I was taught, the hard way, to use my towel every time I reached for a saute pan. {My partner placed a red hot cast iron plancha in the same stack as the 'cold' ones.}
But I don't remember anyone ever telling me not to call in sick. I remember a female line cook taking me aside and telling me how it was and would always be for female cooks. {"You will work twice as hard, and get 1/2 the recognition & pay."} I remember a sous chef telling me I had to choose between a lover or friends: that I would never have both and have this career.
I have seen a lot of marriages end. I have witnessed a lot of addictions flourish. I have seen a few miracles. I have tasted a lot of tears. I have talked to a lot of people from the edge of a bridge. Mine, theirs.
*
If cooking is your calling, I suggest you pick up the phone. And listen.
If no one is teaching you kitchen, allow me to school you.
~
If you're cooking in the kitchen of some famous chef's empire, but you are not learning, get the fuck out of there. You have no time to waste.
If you don't know how to properly give notice, whether as a dishwasher or a sous chef, ask someone who has been cooking longer than you. If you start burning bridges at the beginning you will have no way of getting to the next job, later. Remember: the worst reference of all is no reference. If you think you will never come across the people you are working with now, again, you are sorely mistaken. No matter how many thousands of miles you travel, I guarantee you you will work with someone who knows someone else you worked with. People talk. Reputations start getting built early.
Stick with the winners. Watch the cooks who do it better than you. Watch cooks who are more organized, work cleaner, are more efficient, have composure, can take criticism, are graceful. Watch. Hard. Study, yo. LEARN GOOD HABITS NOW. Think of it this way: it's easier to learn good habits now than get bad habits beaten out of you later.
Stop moaning, whinging, complaining, pouting. Have you ever babysat? A silent, resentful cook takes all the energy out of a room, a kitchen, team. You are no longer a child. You are not the most important person in the kitchen, even if you're the strongest. There are no cowboys in kitchens. Kitchens are teams, yo. If you're so strong, help someone who isn't. If you need so much attention that you will fuck up on purpose to get it, a good chef will weed you out and press eject. If you need help, ask for it like an adult. Passivity is annoying. Ask for what you need. Be direct. And if one cook says no one night, she might say yes the next, so keep asking. Sometimes the most noble bravery is vulnerability.
Watch, listen, learn. TASTE. I can't stress watching enough. Memorize your station, and the station next to you. Inventory, taste EVERY PIECE OF YOUR MIS EN PLACE EVERY DAY, every night, every service. Even if you are the only one on your station. Even if you don't want to. Some ingredients/components just take a few hours to go off. If you serve bad food it's on you. Have INTEGRITY. And if you hate your job/menu/chef so much that you don't care to taste your m.e.p., leave. Please. You have no time to waste.
Read. Read the restaurant reviews in your town. Do Google searches on your place of work. Read what people are saying. Read about the cuisine you're serving. Read food magazines, cookbooks, food blogs, industry magazines. Just read. Please. Look up ingredients. Read about how ingredients are used in their native foods/cuisines/dishes/ceremonies.
If you're allowed: eat where you work. Get perspective. Try eating something you serve, start to finish, with the utensil your front of house serve it with. If you don't want to eat the whole thing/a certain component, then it's a good bet your diners don't want to either.
Stage. If you have a day off, go to another kitchen. Go to another kitchen to watch, to look, to see something else, to hear something else, to smell something else. Use your days off well. The first day is for laundry & sleeping, but if you have another: study. Even if you don't have money to eat out, look at other menus. Surf the web and look at restaurant websites. I'm not the only chef blogging… Read, look, comment, ask questions.
Shut up. Shut up and listen. "Yes Chef," or "Oui Chef" should be your only response to critique. You have another opinion? Save it for the bar after work. Save it for someone who cares.
Someone I worked with recently thanked me for my patience, my teaching, my explaining. She said she had none of these attributes. She told me how she 'teaches' in her kitchens.
"I say, 'This is unacceptable. This is how you do it. Any questions?'"
Remember that your response to critique/instruction informs your chef about how to talk to you the next time. If you don't respond to thoughtful instruction, but you change after being screamed at, you will surely be screamed at from then on out. If you're in a kitchen where the chef only screams and you can't learn in that environment, find another kitchen. But I warn you: this industry isn't nice and patient. If that's all you can handle, there will be a lot of kitchens you'll never be able to work in. Learn from.
Clean clean clean and then clean some more. You can never be too clean, too organized, too efficient. Learn how to use 2 side towels. Yes, I said two. Not twenty. Try keeping your whites white. Whether butchering or making chocolates. It comes back to integrity. It comes back to sticking with the winners. You want to be fast? Be good first. Work clean, work efficiently, move with purpose, with grace. Look up the word INTENTIONAL if you don't know what it means. If you don't know how to practice it. Speed will come. I promise you. But if you're moving really fast, and you're a fucking mess, then you're not doing a very good job. You're no one I want to promote. You're no one I look up to. You're no one to judge.
Pay attention. Look beyond yourself, your station, your job. Attempt to see yourself as part of the whole. I know it's hard. It's impossible when you're first starting out.
Be ACCOUNTABLE. Learn the word accountability. Take responsibility for your actions, your inactions, your lies, your mistakes, your commis' mistakes, your cooks' mistakes, your achievements, your fears, your strengths, your weaknesses. You didn't order enough? Say sorry but do more than sorry. You think only about yourself? Open your eyes and pay attention to/support the cooks you work with/for/next to. Your station is never set up? You can't figure out how to keep it clean or leave it clean for the next cook? Stay late. be receptive to learning.
Ask questions. Ask how to be better. Ask questions silently. Go to work every day with a question and get it answered at the end of every shift, even if you can not utter it aloud.
Be better today than you were yesterday.
Every day.
Become versatile. Think you're great on saute? Grill? Come in on your day off and work in pastry. learn your voids. Fill your gaps. Dive into what you're afraid of. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MOST SKILLED PEOPLE IN YOUR KITCHEN. Volunteer to butcher. Apprentice the gnocchi making sous chef. CHALLENGE YOURSELF.
~
In the kitchen where I work now the chef is bringing in whole animals. You know what the crime is? NOT A SINGLE COOK HAS ASKED TO LEARN TO BREAK THESE ANIMALS DOWN. What the fuck are they waiting for? A formal invitation? Come on now. Are you serious? I can count on one hand the kitchens I've worked in that have brought in whole animals.
What else?
What 'schooling' have you received?
What am I forgetting?
What did you learn that has stayed with you through the days, the hours, the years, the grueling jobs, the awful kitchens, the shoe-maker chefs?
What do you teach your cooks?
What do you pass on?
What do you wish you never learned?
What's indispensable?
*
I'll leave you with these words, which I recently submitted & collected from my friends & colleagues on Facebook ~
Urgency,
Communication, Responsibility, Finesse, Listening, Accountability,
Organization, Humility, Mindful, Efficient, Receptive, Critical,
Questioning, Curiosity, Taste, Common Sense, Empathy, Resourcefulness, Creativity, Consistency, Fearlessness, Self-Critical, Levity, Focus, Grounded, Preparedness {aka Mental mis-en-place}, Humor, Taste Memory…
*
If you're in the wrong kitchen, I urge you to leave. If you're not learning, I urge you to find a kitchen, a city, a cuisine you can learn in/from. If you can't afford culinary school, don't go. You have a myriad of options.
I can't possibly be the only chef passionate about teaching, about apprenticing, about sharing.
I can't possibly be the only chef who believes these words with all her might.
Remember, know this:
we can only keep what we have, by giving it away.
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