Trail

I certainly don’t want to paint an unfair picture of my coworkers, as I’m afraid the last piece might’ve. I am, of course, encountered with an unhealthy amount of skepticism and eye-rolls regarding my abilities, but then again, I make an unhealthy amount of errors on the job. I’ve said it before: as a stage, my job duties pretty much amount to “fucking shit up for free.” So please – I implore you – don’t think as poorly of my fellow cooks as they do of me when I put too much milk in the cauliflower cream.

Instead, I’d like to start fresh – with the story of my first day. I’d like you to meet my coworkers as I met them, so you can grow to know and love them as I do.

—

I’m supposed to begin my trail at 2 PM, so naturally I arrive in the neighborhood by 12:45. Nerves have set me on edge and while I’m relieved that I won’t be late, even neurotic me knows that 12:45 isn’t a smart time to walk into any restaurant – not during the lunch push. I swing into a bookstore and hide in a stack of personal essay collections. I thumb through them mindlessly, thinking about how much I’d rather spend the day here than there.

But at 1:40, I find myself hoisting my duffel bag over my shoulder and making the two-block trek to the restaurant. I say hello to the hostess and tell her that I’m trailing today. “Oh!” she says. “Well, then, you can just go on right back.” I walk straight into the kitchen, wondering if the diners lingering over lunch know why I’m there. Wondering if the staff knows I’m coming. The kitchen is heavy with the activity that I will later understand as the combination of service and dinner prep, but right now it just looks intimidating.

A tall twenty-something with a good amount of facial scruff acknowledges me and I introduce myself. He says his name is Michael and then just looks at me and smiles uncomfortably, so I look at the dining room and say “Sooo … restaurant week. How’s … that going?”

He looks at me oddly. “It just started today.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” I say, shifting my bag.

“Well, you can go get changed downstairs,” he says, motioning to the stairwell hidden behind the server station.

I carefully take the steps and come face-to-face with a Guatemalan man hacking away at a pile of bones with a cleaver.”Hi!” I say, as if he knew who I was. “Where do I …?” I ask, motioning toward the checkered pants in my bag.

“Oh, over there, over there,” he says, pointing toward the stairs I just descended from.

“Oh, okay.” I walk in that direction and realize that there’s nowhere to go but underneath the stairs, so that’s where I change, quickly pulling on my French Culinary uniform and cramming my hair into a hat. I gather my knife roll in my hands and walk back upstairs.

Michael’s not surprised to see me this time, but he is amused by my hat and bag. “You don’t have to wear that for prep.  Just for service. Well, unless you want to,” he says with a wicked grin.

Nope, I don’t want to. I pull it off and tuck it into my right pocket.

“And … you’re not really gonna need that bag. Just take out your chef knife.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised that I wasn’t expected to provide my own spatulas. “Well, let me just … do that.” I run my bag back down to the stairwell and take out my paring and chef knives.

Michael’s already set up a cutting board for me along the back wall, next to the pastry station. He sets a napkin on the board and writes in black Sharpie:

Oranges

Blood (7)

Mandarin (7)

Fennel Puree

Vita Prep / OJ Water

Pass

Calderada Kit

 

I have no idea what any of these things mean, but before I can ask, he begins to explain. “So you know how to segment oranges, right?” I beam inwardly. YES. Yes, I know how to do that. Thank god. This is off to a good start. He goes on to explain that he’s cooked some fennel bulbs with orange peel and spices, and that I have to puree them with orange juice and water, then pass the whole thing through a chinois. I know how to do that too. The Calderada kit, he assures me, will be explained later. “Okay, good?”

“Yep!” I say cheerily. “But … where do I find oranges?”

He looks at me like he wants to start laughing. He thankfully does not. “In the walk-in,” he says.

“Okay?”  I’m clearly not convinced.

“They’re in a bus tub.”

I’m pretty sure that’s all I’m going to get, so I thank him and trust that I’ll find the walk-in and figure out what a bus tub is. I head back downstairs and ask the butcher – Sixto, is his name – where the walk-in is.

“Um, lady, it is … right there.”  He points.

“Oh!” I flush red.  I’m standing literally half an inch from the door. I yank it open and find 9 big black tubs of clearly labeled produce to my left. The oranges are thankfully at waist level, but I worry about what’ll happen if I’m asked to fetch some scallions – they’re a good three feet above my head, and the tubs look frighteningly heavy. I run back upstairs with the oranges and put them in a bowl, grabbing another bowl for the scraps and two quart containers for the segments. I’m taking up a lot of room, and in this small kitchen, I can tell that’s not really going to fly. I attempt to consolidate and end up with a small patch of workable room on my cutting board. I breathe. Roll with it. It’s okay.

“Good?” Michael asks, watching me shave the peel and pith off a blood orange.

“Yup, cool,” I answer.

“Okay, ask me or Carl if you have any questions,” he says, pointing to a blur of motion that hasn’t seemed to stand still since I entered the kitchen.

“Okay, I will,” I say with what I hope is a brilliant smile.

“Oh, and -” he’s walking away but turns his head back to me. “Work fast.”

I work as fast as I can on that given day – though in the coming weeks, I will bang out oranges with much greater speed and efficiency – and then get started on the fennel puree.  There’s just one problem. I don’t know where the Vita Prep is. I’m torn. Do I act independent and look for it myself, potentially wasting precious time, or do I swallow my pride and ask someone? I decide to flag down Carl, who’s whipping from cutting board to oven to flattop, working on what looks like eight things at once.

“Yeeeees?” he says.

“Where … can I find the blender?”

“The Vita?”

“Uhm, yes.”

“In dish!”  And just like that, he’s gone, whizzing through a pile of carrots.

In dish? Dish … washing station? I duck in and take a survey of the pots and pans. I guess I’m looking a little hopeless, because Roy, the newest hire and rough-around-the-edges but talented as all-get-out guy manning the sauté station asks me what I’m looking for. I tell him and he hands me the plastic base and top.

“The motor?” I ask tentatively.

“Server station,” he says before tossing his rondeau under the sink with a clatter.

I find it there and set up at my corner, working the fennel and orange to a pulpy mess. I add the liquid and then slop it into a chinois set over a large bain. It’s thick and definitely won’t pass without the help of a ladle and a little elbow grease. I pick a ladle that is, I learn later, way too big for the job, and proceed to spend the next eleven minutes trying to pass the puree with it. Eleven minutes! It feels like a lifetime, and I imagine my coworkers agree.

“Come on, muscles,” Michael says on a trip past me to grab a stack of nine pans. I look up, my bangs in my eyes.

“Hey, I’m wicked strong,” I say with a bit of sass and keep pumping.

By 4:30 I’m working on the Calderada kit – which amounts, basically, to cutting mirepoix and measuring spices.

“Hey, familia,” Roy says to me over his shoulder.

“Okay,” I say, not knowing exactly what he means.

I keep slicing onions, my back to the counter where family meal is set up until Carl takes pity on me and taps my shoulder with his whole palm. “Family meal timeeee!” he says, somehow drawing out the last, silent syllable of the word.

“Oh, okay!” I say, but keep chopping because I don’t want to leave a half-finished onion on my board. “Yo, done son? Take a break,” Michael says, carrying a plate full of stew and salad back to his.

“Yeah, get there before the servers,” Caitlin, the sous chef, says with a quietly naughty grin.

“Ha-ha!” I laugh, unsure of whether or not to make fun of the waitstaff in order to endear myself to the cooks.

I stuff some salad and stew in a quart and take a few large bites before continuing to work. And just as I’m cleaning my board of debris, Chef appears, looking calm and unsullied in a sea of frenzied workers.

“Hi Rochelle,” he says.

“Hi!” I answer, adjusting the ties on my apron.

“How are you doing?  We’ll talk a few minutes before service,” he says.

“Good.  Okay, we’ll talk,” I answer, relieved of the promise to do something that I’m confident at – something that doesn’t require so much precision and intricacy as it does banter and well-placed grins.

In the meantime, though, Carl calls me over with a yell and a hooked index finger.

“You are working with me tonight,” he says, “here, on garde manger station.”

“I’m your bitch tonight?” I say with a smile.

“Heh, heh, yes, you are my gato.”

He explains what goes into each of the 18 nine-pans at the station, then moves on to talk about the contents of the eight squeeze bottles. I should be taking notes, but I’m flustered and foolishly try to commit it all to memory. (A week later, he will grow tired of my questions and mandate that I draw labeled diagrams of the entire kitchen.) “Uh huh, okay, yep, okay,” I just keep murmuring, trying to repeat his words in my head: seabeans, wasabi, pickled mustard, cauliflower cream, apples, diced apples with skin, pears, cooked pears without skin …

“Rochelle?” Chef calls me and then bounds up the stairs to the second dining room.

“Do I?” I ask Michael, pointing above.

He nods vigorously, so I run up after Chef.

We’re seated at a table across each other, and he leans over.  ”So,” he says. “What do you know about this place?” I know a lot – the entire menu, a good chunk of the wine list, Adam Platt’s praise, the GQ honor, Bruni’s 2-star review, but of course I instead mumble some incoherent mess about having eaten there and REALLY, REALLY liking the foie gras.

We chat as amicably as possible – he’s warm and friendly but I’m nervous and making it uncomfortable for the both of us – before he sends me down to the kitchen. “Just jump in there,” he says, giving some last-ditch advice. “The last thing I want to see is you standing with your arms crossed.”

“That’s the last thing I want to be doing,” I promise. And with that, I walk back into the ethereal glow of Aldea at dinnertime, where I’ve made many a mistake but have not once stood still.

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