I got my first real job when I was 14, washing dishes and bussing tables at a restaurant down the street from our house. I’d been working for my dad before, but it didn’t take long to figure out that living under the same roof as your boss has some distinct disadvantages. As kids, having a job off the farm had a certain cachet.
It also exposed me to life in the restaurant industry for the first time in my life. Restaurant life is like being part of a small, albeit dysfunctional family. My job was to wash dishes, which required me to constantly be at the beck and call of the line cooks. In the back of the house, everyone spoke what we called “kitchen Spanish.” I learned to constantly have one ear cocked to hear the distinctive bellow of “platos por favor!”
At first glance, washing dishes seems pretty simple. Bussers brought in tubs of dirty dishes, my job was to quickly sort through the tub, separating dishes, glassware and silverware from the muck of uneaten food. It’s not a job for the squeamish. With one hand on the industrial sprayer, I’d give everything a quick rinse as I pulled it out of the tub, glasses went into the glass rack, plates another rack and silverware into a soaking tub.
When I’d pull the finished rack out of the Hobart, the plates were still hot to the touch, the line cooks could not have cared less. By the time I’d been on the job for a month, my hands had gotten used to the heat. I could pull full racks of plates and carry them down the line in a few minutes.
As fast as I got at my station, it never seemed to be fast enough to satisfy the line cooks. Every one of the line cooks I worked for was straight out of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, a swaggering buccaneer in a dirty shirt with a digital thermometer clipped to the sleeve. Even at the height of our nightly rush, the line cooks kept up constant stream of trash talk and dirty jokes.
Lording over all this enterprise was Mike, the executive chef. A tall man with a carefully clipped mustache, he cut an imposing figure as he stalked the expo window, preparing orders for the servers to take out. Even in rural Iowa Mike imposed discipline that wouldn’t have been out of place at Michelin starred restaurant in France. For starters, no one, except his wife, called him Mike. We addressed him as Chef. In the restaurant, his word was absolute, his orders were met with a simple, “Yes, Chef.”
On Sundays, we served a modified brunch at the restaurant. A regular brunch, with old folks shuffling down a line of banquet tables was far too gauche for Chef, so instead we had customers order off a menu, and we substituted a plate of pastries for the table bread. We’d close the restaurant down sometime around 2 p.m. Once the last customer had left and the door was safely locked behind them, we’d push the tables in the bar together to make one long table. Bussers brought out plates of pastries that had gone uneaten, and we all sat down for family meal.
The family meal is long, deeply held restaurant tradition. You won’t find it at the Red Robin, but it’s a staple of nearly every high end restaurant where you’ve ever eaten. At some point, either before service begins or at the close of the day, the line cooks will prepare a meal, and the whole staff stops what they’re doing to sit down and eat. Chef Mike had only one rule at his table; there was no smoking until you’d finished eating. It ruins the taste of the food he’d say.
We all came from different backgrounds, but for one hour we sat together and ate. I wasn’t at the first Thanksgiving, but I imagine it must have been a little like family meal. Hard to imagine these days isn’t it? Folks from different backgrounds, sitting down, having a meal. Maybe we all need a little more family meals in our lives.
Contact David Dolmage at
ddolmage@newtondailynews.com