Part 18: Line cook procedural
Life in a day of a fine-dining cook
To subscribers new and old, welcome back to The Recovering Line Cook.
This week’s entry in my memoir series is a bit different and gives an insight into my daily life as a line cook during my fine-dining days. Everyone’s heard of the “police procedural”, right? The kind of crime drama that focusses on the accurate detail of how the police work and solve crimes.
Well, this is my line cook procedural, featuring a life in a day at a restaurant called Esperanto in 2018.
Hope you enjoy,
Wil
9:40am
Once you’ve got over the crippling fatigue, the knowledge you won’t see sunlight again for 22 hours, and the hating yourself for not really being sure you ordered squid ink last night, there’s nothing like the carefree optimism that hits on walking into the restaurant kitchen first thing in the morning.
It is a Wednesday. The first day of the week. It’s either all down or uphill from here. It’s the first day of the week because, though we worked a 12 hour prep shift on Tuesday, today is service number 1.
9:41
I go first to the Esperanto kitchen. We have two, each separated by a wall with a large window-like opening that can be shuttered using a remote control not unlike a garage door. I tend to work alone in one of the kitchens because there are more stoves there. One of the head chef’s favourite jokes is to close the “window” when I’m in the middle of talking to everyone through it, which doesn’t make me want to cry at all, I promise.
Walking in I see large white boxes lined with blue plastic. The fish deliveries have arrived. The head chef isn’t here yet, but my colleague Janina (a very direct Swedish Finn who betrays her great talent by saying “or?” at the end of every sentence) is elegantly shaping bread rolls.
She tells me she brought cinnamon buns for everyone.
And then I see my squid ink is here.
What a morning!
9:45
The head chef arrives changed for work already with a big thing of coffee. He’s probably about 2 foot taller than me, constantly smiling, and for some reason has the nickname Fat Jesus. I should really ask about that one day. He asks me if I’m ready to push. I tell him I am for now but the look on his face suggests he doesn’t find that answer as funny as it sounded in my head.
I head to the changing room to get ready to push for the next 14 hours.
9:55
Today, only XL chef’s whites are clean.
Today I am wearing a tent.
10.15
We’ve had our quick morning meeting, I’ve necked a coffee thick enough to stand a pencil in, and I’m ready to go. The great thing about working at a fine dining, Michelin star restaurant like Esperanto (where it costs a week’s worth of my wages to eat) is we know exactly how many people we’ll be serving every evening. At the moment we are up to 15. It could go up 1 or 2 but, on a Wednesday, I don’t see it happening.
We have 7 chefs in the kitchen here. As well as me, Fat Jesus, and Janina, there’s Henrik the sous chef, another 2 line cooks called Olle and Jens, and the executive chef/owner, Sayan.
I could write a long Romantic poem about Sayan. He really is an artist. His plates of food are more like paintings than mere sustenance. He is only ever soft spoken and moves around the kitchen as gently as the hands of a watercolour painter. He is also very funny.
And, I think, a little mad.
10:25
I’ve organised my list and all set up in my little kitchen away from the others.
And then Sayan arrives. He is wearing the same black wooly hat he always wears during prep time. He comes over to me and I brace myself for what is about to happen.
“WILBER!!” he says (I lied before, when he greats me in the morning, he is something more than soft spoken). He puts his arms around me, digs his mouth into my shoulder and starts to bite down on it. This happens pretty much most mornings. It would be OK but for the fact Sayan is currently missing one of his front teeth, and his morning nibble really rather hurts because of it.
“Morning Jeff” (Calling him Jeff is an in joke I don’t understand but enjoy getting in on)
He asks me if I’m feeling good.
I tell him I am for now.
10:27
It might not sound very hard to you reading this. Just 15 guests a night? No lunch service? I promise you, the things we have to do to feed those 15 (actually, Fat Jesus just told us we are up to 17 now) is pretty intense.
Let me give you an insight into what’s on my prep list this morning.
First thing I do is check the quinoa I’ve left drying overnight on several trays on the work tables. I boiled it yesterday and 20 hours later, it’s thankfully now dry. Why am I drying out boiled quinoa? It’ll become clear later.
My sheets covered in a thin layer of mashed potato mixed with seaweed powder and potato starch are also (thank god) dry. That means I didn’t spread them too thick. Why sheets of cooked mash and seaweed? Again, all will become clear. I carefully gather the dry shards of mash and place it in a large tub so it doesn’t break up too much. I put the quinoa in a container for later as well.
I almost forgot, I’m also drying out cooked jerusalem artichoke skins that I’ve carefully cut in half, scooped out the meat out from, and placed upright so they dry in perfectly formed little cups. Again, more about this later.
Finally, I take thinly mandolined parsnip slices out from the dehydrator that I’ve had them in since yesterday.
There is a theme here I guess.
10:30
I place a small pan of oil on the old electric stove I use and as the power goes up a strange, mechanical scream emanates from it telling me it’s working as usual.
Olle comes in and, with a casual “here, man”, gives me a small cup of raw quails feet. I thank him and get some water on the stove to boil them in.
Olle can’t be older than twenty and the speed at which he works puts me to shame. I’m convinced he must think I’m a total geriatric who doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s a nice kid though and hides it well if he does think that way.
You probably think I’m being neurotic, but Fat Jesus did tell me through the wall the other day that watching me work is like watching two old people fucking.
10.34
Two old people fucking or not, I always manage to get my list done in time, and today can’t be an exception. Time to talk through what the hell I’m doing with these endless cooked then dried ingredients.
In short, I’m frying them.
As the newest recruit to the cooking team, frying the many, many garnishes is my job. It is an absolute science and art and frequently very painful.
Let me explain why
Each item (parsnip, quinoa, seaweed potato chip, artichoke) needs to be fried at their respective precise temperature
They need to be fried for very specific amounts of time
As well as being fried, I need to physically mould them straight from the hot oil to see they are the perfect shape for Sayan’s dishes.
This shaping warrants examples:
The parsnip needs to be fried so it turns the golden brown of the tan bark of a tree. Once this happens and it’s still hot from the oil, I’m required to press it against the cylinder of my knife sharpening steel so it forms an almost twig-like tube appearance. This will be bejewelled with herbs to garnish a grilled reindeer dish.
I haven’t mentioned the imitation oyster shells yet. These start as thin ovals of white and grey pastry Olle makes from various flours and additives. My fry job here is to sandwich each piece of pastry between two real foil-wrapped oyster shells and hold this all with two pairs of tweezers under the hot oil until the pastry is cooked and shaped by the real oysters. It’s exhausting even typing this out. The result is a really rather realistic edible oyster shell in which we serve a lightly grilled mussel and pickled vegetables.
Edible oyster shell filled with mussel and vegetables
I could go on. I haven’t even mentioned the quails feet or the artichokes or how the boiling then drying the quinoa before frying it makes it puff up like tiny popcorn. And how could I forget about the yuba (a skin made from gently heating soy milk). Remember the squid ink? We dye the soy milk with it so we get beautiful black yuba. And, yes, I deep fry this as well and need to punch it out with a cookie cutter within 1.5 seconds of it leaving the oil or it becomes too brittle to achieve that perfect circle we require.
In fact, I’ve not mentioned a lot of things. But hopefully now you start to see why preparing dinner for just 15 people can take 7 of us such a long, long time.
15:00
One of my favourite parts of the day. I venture outside to pick fresh sorrel leaves and flowers to garnish several of our dishes with. We grow them in a small greenhouse outside the restaurant building. Like most days while doing this I picture myself as a farmer and think what a lovely existence it would be not to be locked in a basement all day before forgetting the idea completely for another 24 hours.
17:00
Guests arrive in an hour.
Short of 30 mins for lunch, none of us has stopped all day. But I have my trays of many perfectly fried… things, and I’m feeling good. Other than the burned hands, that is.
Janina comes over. “Reidie,” she says. “Time to set up upstairs now, then get changed, or?”
I say that sounds good. The dining room is two floors up. For the sake of my delicate fried garnishes, we make use of the lift. I help Janina take all of my and everyone else’s prepped ingredients upstairs.
17:15
With everything in the correct place upstairs, it’s time to get dressed for service. I’m sure you’ve heard of “open kitchens”. Our upstairs kitchen is so very “open” that it really functions more like a stage the guests are angled at to watch us perform on. This sounds awkward but, to be honest, I’m such a performative tart sometimes I rather like this set up. A consequence of this is that every night before 6pm we change out of our greying chef tents whites and get into crisp, ironed white shirts and pristine navy aprons.
Since we are often called on to serve guests as well, I spend the next 5 mins cleaning my fingernails of the black squid ink that makes me look like I’ve been harvesting carrots all day with my bare hands.
18:30
The first guests have had their amuse bouche or “snacks” as we call them around here. I’ve just been to a table of two and given them a snack of marinated quail egg served on a salt cup with herb mayo for dipping. I’m standing with Sayan and Janina starting to plate for the next table when the head waiter, Maria, a brown-haired woman with eyes darker than a moonless night, comes over to us.
“Who just served, the quail egg to table 6?” she asks.
Fuckballs, I think to myself. It was me.
“Yeah, I think that was me, the table in the corner.”
She nods. “Did you remember to tell them not to eat the salt cup, Wil?”
I didn’t remember. I absolutely didn’t remember. I think I made some joke about British people that they enjoyed but I didn’t mention not to eat the tiny cup of solid salt their egg was served on.
“I’m sure I mentioned it, Maria,” I tell her.
“Well, they’ve both eaten the salt cup.”
She looks more heartbroken than angry. I look to Sayan.
He’s laughing.
I think I love him.
23:00
It’s getting late. All but one table have left. They are dragging out their desserts (there are 3 desserts on the Esperanto tasting menu). We have all but finished cleaning the kitchen, which we do discreetly so the guests don’t notice. It’s only me and Sayan upstairs, the others having retreated down to get on with more cleaning or some final prep.
I go and help Maria clear the last table’s dessert plates. It was a dessert of potato ice cream formed perfectly into the shape of an apple. It even has a little twig of sorrel poking out of it. I think it’s Sayan’s play on the French word for potato pomme de terre (apple of the earth). The guest stops me and asks how the apple is so perfectly formed and I realise in that moment I have no idea. I want to tell him sorry and that the job isn’t on my list. But knowing that wouldn’t make any sense to him, I go and quickly ask Sayan instead.
23:45
It’s almost another hour before we leave. We all chipped in to help Janina with a few prep jobs that couldn’t wait until morning. It means I’ve missed the last train home, which means it’s the night bus for me. I won’t be in bed much before 2am.
So it goes.
On the bus, accompanied by the occasional drunk, what looks like a few hospital workers, and a suited gent who looks even more tired than me, I think about that question I didn’t know the answer of again.
Between the food and the guest, it’s an odd relationship we cooks, or at least I, have with what I do. Cooking at a restaurant like Esperanto means you remain distanced from the food you serve. You are never responsible for the whole thing, only ever a small part of what happens on the plate.
But I know I’m proud of something that I’ve done tonight. And it’s not just the food. It’s the process as well. Getting those bloody things fried properly, helping this team of cooks do enough to leave our guests happy. Even the performance of service in our clean shirts for the guests to stare at on stage.
There’s a lot more to love there than just the food or just the cooking.
It’s definitely worth a few burned hands, a pitiful amount of rest until the next day begins, and yes, it might even be worth a small bite mark from a very talented artist called Sayan.
This was so interesting Wil, I'm exhausted just reading.
That made me gasp, laugh out loud and shake my head multiple times Wil. WTAF.