One Year as a Line Cook

There are large gaps in this timeline in that I told you I accepted a position as a line cook, and now—12 months later—I’m here to recount that year. It will be a large attempt to commemorate my entire year in a few posts, I’m sure with things left out, but I hope this shows how much I’ve learned and how much I love this industry. I guess that’s the takeaway: I loved this year. Even on the nights I hate my job, I walk out of the kitchen and change my shoes and meet my friends at the bar for the ends of their nights, and within 10 minutes, I’m telling someone about work. And within minutes of that, there’s a sort of glow on my face, a look of passion worn in it. People have told me, though I feel it come alive within myself.

One Saturday morning I arrived to a locked kitchen to find John, one of the bartenders, sitting in the back hallway also waiting to get let in. We chatted, quickly arriving at what has become my favorite question “What are you doing in the kitchen?” I explained to John my reasons for being there: a passion for culinary artistry, a love for writing—and hopefully some sort of skill for it, a big girl dream of traveling the world as a journalist. He responded with an understanding. The kind of look in someone’s eyes that tells you the loose ends of a story were just tied, and it all now makes more sense. He expressed some envy in the bravery, then followed with “Yeah, okay. You always have this sort of look on your face. Like you’re curious. Like you actually want to be here and you want to learn.” I felt seen. I felt like someone got it.

The beginning of the job was the most thrilling. Everything I did was new, every time I did it, and I didn’t know the people or their personalities or the way they like things done. The golden ticket in a kitchen: the one piece of knowledge that will allow you the most ease and, dare I say, cost you the least tears. Before the line, I’d never worked in an environment so unfiltered and accepting, so full of laughter, energy, profanity, honesty, and chaos, of fast-paced sometimes terrifying requirements and equipment that can kill if used just slightly incorrectly. It’s exhausting and my back has never hurt so badly for such an extended period of time. My left forefinger has an ever-growing callus from the way I hold my knife and my nails haven’t seen polish for an entire year. There’s a reason we keep doing it though, it’s an unnamable little fire that burns blindly within.

Walking out of the kitchen after a 200-cover night, full of new burns, with sushi rice stuck to my socks, and pork belly glaze gluing my arm hairs together, warrants no greater sense of pride. Then, the evening shower is one of my most essential rituals. Not because of the sauces and sweat it washes away, but the mistakes of the night it takes with them. Not in the sense that I forget them, I never will, I could recite nearly every criticism my chefs have ever given me, but in the sense that they fall from my mind, because I’d be paralyzed if they didn’t. The slip-ups and the corrections are already internalized, but to allow them to remain on the top of your skin would do yourself and your entire team a disservice.

Walking into a not yet open restaurant is incredibly different. Sometimes, on the weekends, I’m the one to turn on the lights. It sort of feels like bringing the kitchen back to life. No equipment is on, so the constant hum of machine isn’t there, making the silence scream. I love a busy night, but those mornings are some of my favorite times in the kitchen. It’s almost like it entirely forgot the night before. The line is cold and the floors are clean, no more stray dumplings or small-diced veggies from fried rice kits, no cooks or chefs rushing around, no guests in chairs. It’s a new slate with a chance to do it again. More efficiently, with more impressive looking plates, and a bit more communication. That’s some of the beauty in it, that it does start fresh everyday. The guests will be new and the tickets will be different, and there’s a chance to do it all again: swifter, cleaner, prettier, neater.

The mornings are the only time it’s anywhere near acceptable to have a mug of coffee sitting out on my station. It’s the only time I can write and prep my list without any sort of underlying anxiousness or need to move faster. This is when I became close friends with one of my chefs. Every morning, he’d make a pot of French press coffee. He’d drink a couple cups, and I’d have a few sips and we’d work efficiently, and in complete ease, side by side, for hours, just us two. It’s interesting to work next to someone for hours while cooking, you have to become okay with standing close in silence. It’s something typically uncomfortable I’ve come to find so peaceful.

That’s another thing about the kitchen: it’s one of the closest places I’ve ever been. It almost feels like my old dance studio, a place that fosters relationships raw right down to their very core. I’ll never forget the night one of my fellow cooks, after just a few months of knowing her, called out “I lave ju!” as she walked out of the kitchen. “I love you,” that is, in the English she’s learned and the accent she was born with. It made me realize what we’re doing here. We see each other in the most honest of ways and it comes through in the bonds we form. They’ve seen me work my hardest, look my most exhausted, smell my worst, and experience my deepest frustrations, and I know they’ll still always have my back in a way a chosen friend can’t. I don’t think this is normal coworker-boss behavior anywhere besides the kitchen, but I now wouldn’t want anything less. I don’t think twice before I say, “Night kids I love you all,” before I leave for the night. And I mean it, and they know that, and they say it back and mean it, and I know that.

That’s a little on my time as a cook thus far: the quiet and the chaos, the people I’ve met, things that scared me and the lessons I learned as a result. I hope it shows the love in all of it. Now here’s a little more detailed timeline of the most salient moments of the kitchen. The quotes. The smells. The times that really show what it’s like to be a line cook.