"You get all kinds of sex drama in the restaurant. Love triangles, love quandrangles, and assorted other types of parallelagrams."

--Waiter at Craft

......

As I've been posting on other occasions, the kitchen is NOT the place you wanna' work. Not unless you enjoy long hours, hard work, and little pay.

It's one of the things that I think is misleading about Food Network. I do love the channel and I do love cooking, but cooking is not glamorous. It sucks. The last place in the world I would want to be is in the kitchen. The customer, of course, doesn't see any of this craziness, shit being thrown up against walls when people get pissed off.

But then there are exceptions. And that seems to be the case with the restaurant where D. works. His place is down in the Village and he has a slight accent since he comes from Asia.

*************

The chef is the owner and he works in the afternoon to make sure everything is there. The sous chef is legal. He's an American. A citizen, but he's originally from Belgium. Our other sous chef is Mexican, but he's legal too. Then we have a couple of kids--dishwashers, young kids who are probably not legal. But I can't tell 'cause it's not my business, so I don't ask.

But they get paid, get vacation, and they are treated well. The kitchen is run well by the owner. They are untouchable.

The bartender is the best position to have. Next is manager, but the manager works his tail off. It's hard, hard work. Many hours.

None of the kitchens work like this one 'cause usually the kitchen is screaming at the waiter. The last job I had you could be in the dining room and you could hear them screaming back in the kitchen. Customers would come and complain to me.

But no other kitchen is like this one. I think it's because the owner is a chef so he runs the kitchen like it should be run. Nobody screaming and yelling. Like if you have the kitchen do something for you and it's reasonable and he's yelling a little bit, but nobody's cursing at each other.

It's a good environment. And most of the waiters are well educated, so the way the communicate is very different. Like other places it's usually, "Fuck you!"

But here it's relaxed.

5:10:25 PM     comment []