Diary of a Line Cook: Part 4

A health test, being a culinary Van Gogh, and brioche-crusted salmon

Hello dear reader, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Recovering Line Cook, a newsletter of recipes, memoir and food writing by me, Wil Reidie.

My Diary posts give a look into my ongoing adventures as a restaurant cook. They are a bonus extra for paid subscribers, so if you read my newsletter often and can afford to support my work, please click below to upgrade. It’s only a few $/£/etc a month, you’ll get extra posts like these (they normally include cooking tips/recipes such as this week’s lovely brioche and herb crusted salmon) and you’ll be making all the difference to the success of this newsletter.

Thanks for being here and for reading.

Wil

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Monday - Days off

Like a lot of restaurant cooks, I don’t work Mondays. I don’t work Mondays because the restaurant is shut on Mondays. A lot of restaurants do this. They’ll have run the numbers and figured out the best way of making money without turning their staff into over-worked, drug-fueled zombies is not to open on the quietest days. Those days are Sundays and Mondays, aka, the line cook’s weekend.

I thought this would be a joyous opportunity when I started my current job a few months back, my first cooking job here in Finland. I’ll have the kids at home an extra day, I thought, we’ll visit the museums and galleries and zoos and all manner of shit when it’s less busy. Beautiful.

It was then I learned that the museum and gallery workers, and zoo keepers, too, share the same Sunday/Monday weekend with us line cooks.

I don’t think there’s many more trips to the library my 5 year old will put up with before he starts some kind of protest.