Stories From Napa Part 10: A Relaxed Environment
I cant believe Im still working here. Ive been working here for a year and a
halfthats a really long time for this place. These were two separate comments
made by two separate chefs on two separate nights at the French Laundry. Both
statements paint a picture of a difficult working environment, but why is it so
hard? What makes the French Laundry such a notoriously intense kitchen to work
in? I can tell you from just a month of working there that it is plain and
simply the stress level.
Any person in the restaurant industry can tell you that it is a lot more
stressful job than your average nine to five office work. The speed and
intensity of service creates a high stress environment naturally. When lots of
plates are being cooked at once on a busy Saturday night, there is a lot more
multi-tasking going on than what you would see in a normal job atmosphere.
Along with this, all of the multi-tasking has to be done really fast and really
well or else food gets cold and diners get upset. The big difference between a
restaurant and another job is that there is no such thing as no, or there
shouldnt be. If a diner wants something you do everything you can to get it to
them. When food needs to go out, it has to go out. It isnt no chef, I dont have
anymore of that, I cant cook you that plate. If you dont have anymore of some
item you find out how to get more of that item and you get it without skipping
a beat. If you dont, you get yelled at, plain and simply.
This type of environment is common place in a professional kitchen, and yet the
French Laundry carries even more impact because of one more aspect: perfection.
Take all of those things in a regular restaurant, the speed, the multi-tasking,
the have to get it done mentality, and add perfection to every aspect of it,
and you come up with the most stressful day any of you have probably hadbut
that is everyday at the French Laundry. To get food worthy of being served at
the countries best restaurant (according to the James Beard Foundation), every
component has to be perfect. That is why if my brunoise isnt a perfect
sixteenth of an inch dice, it is thrown out and made again. That is why if my
topped eggs dont have a perfectly smooth edge, they are thrown out and made
again. That is why if a lobster tail is overcooked and it isnt realized until
right before the plate goes out, it will be thrown out and the entire plate
will be re-made. Nothing leaves the kitchen unless it is perfect, and yet the
same speed and intensity is still applied as any other kitchen. If something
you were working on is thrown out because it wasnt good enough, it will be made
again good enough, and it will still be done in time because thats how it is.
There is no other way to explain it than it will be done on time and it will be
done perfectly. If it doesnt seem physically possible to meet these
specifications and this time limit, you find a way to make it physically
possible, and you do it at a speed that meets that time limit.
At school they force you to write out a timeline of what you are going to do
during class everyday. You are actually graded on whether or not you have a
timeline and how accurate the timeline is. This is so that you can manage your
time and all of the multi-tasking going on. Running around in my head is a
constant timeline. I have actually reached the point where I timeline out even
my days off to about the half hour. Ok, it will take me ten minutes to get to
the grocery store, then Ill be shopping for a half an hour. Ill take another
twenty minutes to get to the bakery, sit around there for forty-five minutes,
drive back home in twenty minutes, which will get me back around 11:30. Then
Ill give myself an hour to watch TV and Ill probably start lunch and so on. Now
this timeline isnt set in stone, I am probably modifying it every twenty
minutes and running through it every five minutes. Then when I get into work my
mind goes into overdrive.
The one thing you quickly learn at work is not to rely on your mental timeline
much because no matter how well you think you have your night organized you
will always have something disrupt it. One of the chefs will need asparagus
brunoised right in the middle of the hour you have set aside for egg shells.
Then as soon as you get done with that and get back to the egg shells another
chef needs cabbage chopped and blanched and after that lobster tails cryo
-vaced. All of a sudden you are an hour behind your timeline because of jobs
you have had to do for other people and, oh yeah, you didnt have an extra hour
to be behind because you had already knowingly short- changed yourself on time
for eggs because you needed extra time to shuck fava beans.
At every restaurant you have a night where you for some reason are just always
behind schedule (in the weeds or in the shit would be the industry term). I can
vividly remember a night at JoPa when I was working the salad station last
year. I was completely slammed the entire night and it just so happened that an
article had come out about me in the Oregonian so none of the chefs felt like
helping me out while their stations were relatively calm, but instead enjoyed
watching me suffer. Now this was one night I can really remember being behind
while at JoPa. If you asked me whether I have had a night like that at the
French Laundry I would quickly tell you, oh yeah, about twenty-four of them
(thats the number of nights I have worked there). So basically every night you
are working stressed and behind, and on top of that, every day when you arent
at work, you are running through all of the things you were supposed to do
yesterday, trying to remember if you did all of them. No matter how confident
you are in whether you did them all or not you have this sick, anxious feeling
that you forgot something and are going to get railed for it as soon as you
step into work. As Tony, one of the chefs de partie put it, when youre working
in a restaurant youre always working against the clock. I cant even get a day
off where Im not checking the clock every fifteen minutes. To this Jason, one
of the sous chefs replied, if you work at it hard enough you can forget about
timeor at least I think I can remember a time when I
didnt pay attention to it.
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