On moving on

I recently made a move from Tilth to Boat Street in an effort to regain some sanity, friends and appetite.  I'm happy to report the effort was not in vain, although leaving Tilth proved bittersweet.  Tilth made me a much better cook.  Not only in terms of food, but in terms of what it means to be a line cook.  I still believe there are many home cooks out there that can make a better apple pie or puttanesca sauce than some line cooks working high demand jobs, but fact is most would break down and cry within two hours of service starting.  I'm not saying that because I think it's what might happen, I'm saying that because I've seen the lip start to quiver, tears held back in fear, only to have them come pouring out in frustration.

My first night at Tilth was trailing on fish station.  It was the top line station at Tilth reserved for those that had earned their stripes working pantry and meat.  I believe they do this to really gauge a cooks worth.  I mostly watched that first night and received instruction from the station cook.  I cooked a little, it seemed easy and I went home feeling good about myself.  Not because I owned it because I didn't, but because I didn't fall flat on my face.  I got a call to come back in and trail a second time.  The job was still up for grabs and I think they wanted to see me one more time before taking a chance on someone right out of culinary school. 

The second time I came in was again to trail on fish, but the person working the station that night would become the Sous Chef in title only a couple months later.  This man was intense, with a mind moving a mile a minute and wiry body hardly able to keep up with his thought process.  He was also able to teach at a mile a minute.  I've never really seen anything like it before.  Generally I find instruction during the heat of battle to be useless.  Either the person can't properly convey their thoughts or I can't properly comprehend them.  With this guy I got it and everything was going well.  Then Chef Maria Hines showed up.  My back tensed, my right eye twitched and I started to sweat a little more than anyone should.  She took over the ticket board and called out the orders.  One particularly large fish order stumped me.  I couldn't call it back for the life of me.  Something as simple as "Large salmon, 2 salmon, halibut, 2 tasting mussels" came out of my mouth as "Large sallibut.....fuck.  Large salmon, 2 halibut, 4 mussels.....shit".  A look of hopelessness must of exuded from my face and she walked closer to me and asked me if I understood the words she was saying.  Finally I got the call back right.  I didn't give up, didn't give in, and most importantly I didn't cry or get kicked off the line.

My back never did unwind.  I lost weight in the beginning because I lost my appetite.  I wasn't scared of Maria, I just didn't want to let anyone around me down by not being the best cook I could be.  Everyday I arrived a half hour early to get my prep started.  I often skipped family meal in order to get the last of my prep done before the doors opened.  Eventually the Sous Chef made family meal mandatory.  I ate like a bird and returned minutes later to get everything ready for service.  Beyond that I almost never saw Jill, didn't have time to see any friends, culinary or not.  My days off coincided with nothing of interest unless day time TV is your best friend.  The only things that helped seemed to be flying a kite or blogging.  The blog was born of more than that, but it did prove therapeutic.

I decided to look for a new job, a daytime gig for the sake of getting ready for a wedding.  Enter Boat Street.  There is still a lot of work to be done at the new job, but the prep and plating being less demanding makes the job more fun.  They want rustic to the point where I have to pull back and try to make things look more like I wasn't trying to make it look that way.  I had to learn not to make a powder out my parsley, and not to mind the exact placement of a lettuce leaf.  It's not laziness really, it's just a style that demands you plate a dish the way your arthritic grandmother might, without making it look like a mess of course.  I can live with this.  I feel good again, I eat three five square meals a day, I have time for friends.  That said, I miss the chaos of Tilth, I know this because during a brunch shift at Boat Street last Saturday that got a little out of hand given the amount of tickets building up and the prep that still had to be done on the fly, I found myself enjoying the insanity.