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I Was A Middle-Aged Kitchen Slave

Tribune photo by KATHY MOORE

Tribune food writer Jeff Houck, left, cleans sprigs of cilantro in the kitchen of SideBern's restaurant as chef de cuisine Courtney Orwig puts together a catering menu.

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By JEFF HOUCK

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 22, 2008

TAMPA - The first real job I ever had was cooking on the line at Steak 'n Shake.

That lasted about six hours. At 15, I lacked the necessary skills to memorize a binder of recipes so that I could convert shouted orders into edible hamburgers in a timely manner. Even with two other people helping man the spatula.

Then I got moved to the shake machine. That lasted 120 minutes. Much of what I blended found its way onto the surface of a nearby window. (Who knew that strawberry ice cream could look like stained glass?)

Eventually I was moved to dishwasher. Two days, several forearm burns and many unwashed dishpans later, I moved myself to unemployment. Steak 'n Shake was not sad to see me go.

So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I accepted an offer recently to work for a day in the kitchen at SideBern's in South Tampa.

The idea was simple: get to know new executive chef Chad Johnson and chef de cuisine Courtney Orwig. Both were elevated after Jeannie Pierola left SideBern's and Bern's Steak House in November and were in the process of revamping the menu and installing their own system.

I would spend an entire day doing whatever they asked. I jumped at the chance.

After all, I'm a food writer. It could only help my base of knowledge to get back into a professional setting. And this was far from Steak 'n Shake. I couldn't ruin one of the Bay area's landmark restaurants in one night, could I?

No. Not as long as I stayed away from actual cooking. I was going to be a kitchen slave. Slaves never cook on their first day. That's a privilege you earn. It can take months. It can take years. It might never happen.

Still, it didn't take long for me to relearn some important universal lessons that I had forgotten. Here's how it went:

LESSON 1: Wasted moves, no matter how small, add up.

One of my first assignments in the kitchen is to strip fresh thyme and cilantro leaves off their stems. Cilantro leaves are small. Thyme leaves are even smaller. My fingers are the size of bratwurst and have all the dexterity of welders' gloves.

This is no big deal if you're only doing a few sprigs in your home kitchen. In a professional kitchen, two bowling-ball piles of sprigs take me almost a half-hour to clean. Tying quail legs together so that they can season while hanging upside-down in the walk-in cooler was like coiling jumper cables.

This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Later, I'm asked to help dip my pinkie into some freshly made pasta called orecchiette. In Italian, that means "little ears," and their shape resembles that anatomy. The shape is perfect on a dish for pooling creamy sauce in the middle.

One by one, tiny balls of handmade dough are transformed into little potential sauce reservoirs with a floured dab of my finger. This is fun, I say to myself. Then I realize that there are hundreds to do. And I'm not doing it the way the other cooks with experience are doing it. This, I realize, is going to take forever.

It does.

LESSON 2: Faster does not mean better.

Johnson brings me two heaping bowls of potatoes to peel. I can do this, I think. I've peeled more potatoes at family Thanksgivings than I care to remember.

I take the hand peeler and start whacking away. The faster I do this, the better, I think to myself. Tisk-tisk-tisk-tisk. Peel goes flying everywhere.

A minute later, Johnson stops me. He shows that by going slower and being more accurate, I can actually clean the potato faster than acting as if I'm a human food processor. Plus, less potato will be wasted.

I follow his instructions. The next potato takes me 30 seconds to peel. The previous one took about a minute.

I am humbled.

LESSON 3: Words are not as important as you think they are.

The kitchen staff rolls in slowly throughout the day. Usually Johnson and Orwig are first at around 10 or 11 a.m., then other cooks appear just before noon. Others drift in to do prep work for their respective stations at the salad counter, the dessert aisle or the saute stove. There are no hellos, for the most part, only nods and grunts. With 12- to 14-hour days the norm, why bother greeting someone you saw only a few hours earlier?

At one point Asbel Reyes, a cook described by Johnson and Orwig as the resident "crazy genius," walks up to me with a large flat tray containing a swollen pile of mushrooms. He picks one up, looks me in the eye, says nothing, then twists the mushroom so that the cap detaches from the stem. The cap, he puts in one pile. The stem, he puts in another.

He looks me in the eyes again, does that thing SWAT teams do in movies when they silently point at their eyes with two fingers to communicate which direction they're going to move. He then points to me, points at the mushrooms and then walks back to his prep table.

Message conveyed. Mushrooms capped. Words saved.

LESSON 4: Give a wide berth to the guy who quit smoking that day.

Word that Reyes quit smoking that day filters through the staff. One by one, their facial expressions go from "Ha, ha, ha!" to "Oh, no!"

Already a somewhat manic personality, Reyes is chewing gum with the gnawing force that speed beavers use to fell trees. He starts the day by doing prep work, including making pasta and filleting fresh monkfish. During service later that night, he's whipping out dishes like a machine.

Stress triggers a need for nicotine. This is one of the most stressful working environments on the planet. There are knives everywhere. And open flames. It's a recipe for disaster.

Still, Reyes channels it into his work. His mood holds steady. His colleagues cushion the blow by staying away from him.

LESSON 5: Communal events hold significance.

Playing music during prep was taboo in the kitchen before Johnson took over. Some executive chefs see it as a distraction. Others use it to get through the repetition of menial kitchen tasks. At SideBern's, music helps the staff bond as they see who can play the best tunes. As I work, a steady stream of Audioslave dominates the playlist. This is no place for Michael Bolton.

Another key moment: the dispensing of Red Bull. Just before services, a staff member walks through the back entrance with a white plastic bag full of the energy drink and begins handing out cans one by one.

Reyes shotguns his. A nicotine-starved smile breaks out on his face.

"Chad, I need something to chase!" he yells. "A small animal. Something. Now!"

This elicits giggles from co-workers, who then go back to sipping their drinks as if nothing happened.

LESSON 6: Quality control is crucial.

During service later that evening, Johnson and Orwig act as expediters. They manage the flow of orders that come in from the dining room, inspect each dish and then ask for a server to deliver the meals.

My job? To stand out of the way. After about 4 p.m., when all the preparation work is done, my role is to observe. A short while later, I take off my apron. Wearing it makes me feel like an imposter.

At one point in the middle of the night's service, Johnson sees three orders of grilled elk loin that aren't up to his standards. He jumps behind the grill to fix the situation and cook them himself. When each elk portion costs $39.91, it has to be right. It's one of the few moments of noticeable crisis that night.

Within about 15 minutes, the situation is resolved. New orders are made and the customers are only told that the dish is taking longer than planned. To keep them happy, orders of complimentary dim sum are sent to the table.

It's an infrequent event when orders are sent back to the kitchen by patrons.

"These customers never knew," he says. "We won't say to them, 'We messed up.' We try instead to make everything perfect in the meantime until it is."

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 or jhouck@tampatrib.com.

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