The Dish Gone Awry

We all have our favorite restaurants — the secret haunts that we keep tucked in our pocket just in case somebody special drops into town. When the time arrives to peacock to your guests, the experience falls flat. Either the petite filet is prepared medium well rather than medium rare, or the crab frittata you ordered became a tilapia frittata. You've been there dozens of times before without an issue like this. Humbled by your overconfidence, you apologize to your guests. "I really don't know what is going on back there today," you say as your eyes circle the room in search of a server. But what is actually going on back there?

At five o'clock sharp, the fishmonger arrives with the day's order. Rough weather in Seattle halted delivery for two days, and some of the delivery has turned sour. The food is refused and out of the gate, the kitchen is scrambling to catch up. At seven o' clock, the cooks that decided to show up start shuffling in the doors, dead-eyed and hungover. As reality begins to wash over them, they realize that it is Saturday morning. Dread and regret for not calling out that day immediately replace the formerly insurmountable fatigue. Three separate menus to navigate over the next eight hours: breakfast, brunch, lunch. The unholy trinity.

Tensions begin to rise as the cooks are assembling that day's mise en place. It's the slow season, meaning money is scarce and out-of-stock issues are bountiful. Members of the line resign to the day's already doomed fate and begin slugging orange juice (with vodka) and Coke (with bourbon), a menu that will last through the end of service. At nine o'clock, the breakfast rush picks up. Smoke breaks are forbidden and desires for nicotine are repressed for the next several hours. The end-of-shift smoke is the only totemic reward on the horizon.

As the line finds itself deeper in the weeds, the chef de cuisine emerges from the swing door, still buttoning up his coat. Already aware of the day's issues, his attempt to quell the stress in the kitchen by screaming obscenities, slamming pots and pans, and throwing plates is surprisingly inadequate. Weighed down by a hangover and drowned out by the clamor of metal kissing metal and cries of "Runner!," the chef's presence does nothing to interrupt the flow.

In order to appease him, the line makes an unspoken agreement to work faster, not harder. Special orders and substitutions become requests that may or may not be fulfilled. Tickets pile up on the rail in an endless stream. Each ticket is now a message in a bottle and written in a coded shorthand. Among them is your order, a ticket that simply reads, "CR FR W/ SPN."

Dishes are sent back to the kitchen to be refired. The guy on sauté nearly severs his thumb slicing a baguette and scorches the remaining saucepot of beurre blanc amidst the confusion. "Dan's out for the week," mutters the adjacent white coat, "That lucky bastard." While the rest of the cooks fantasize about injuring themselves as a way out, the chef rearranges the line. "You! On fry! Fry, move to sauté!  F#cking move! I'm saving your asses from this burning mess right f#cking now!" The chef, having been off of the line for at least two years, is as rusty as he is arrogant.

Everybody on the line is now miserable and mimicking the chef's previous tantrum. Plates are thrown down the line, accompanied by a stream of sweat, blood, and four-letter words. The crab frittata is now up. The chef reaches into the lowboy for crabmeat, fingertips scraping only the icy bottom of a half-pan. "Chef, we are 86 crabmeat," says a wavering voice from across the pass. "No crabmeat! You realize that you have to f#cking tell me these things! Communication is key, assh#les!" His hisses float above the cacophony of searing, clanging, and machine-gun chopping. A self-titled culinary MacGyver, the chef reaches into an adjacent half-pan and retrieves a filet of tilapia and grabs a handful of Old Bay and a bottle of lemon juice. "You f#cking better hope that they're stupid. Runner!" 

One of the two convection ovens has an electrical short. Dormant feuds between the front- and back-of-house begin to flare, bringing the chaos to the floor like a trail of gasoline ignited. The chef's antagonism and counter-productivity hits its peak as he resigns simply to stand proudly at the hull of his sinking ship to bark insults.

Kerry, the woman on sauté, reaches her emotional apex and barks back, "Look, give us fifteen f#cking minutes and then come back and we can fight about this! Okay, chef?" He throws down a pan, food splattering and hissing on the range, and storms out of the swing door. End-of-service is becoming more of a reality as the tickets begin to dissipate. The phantom limb of nicotine beginning to gain focus and the prideful walk out of the back door, head hung high is becoming a reality.

So, as you send your favorite dish back to the kitchen, you wonder what simple lapse in judgement could have created such a disappointing meal. You might assume that it is ignorance or blatant apathy towards the job, but remember that the flow of the kitchen is dictated by the quality and efficacy of its environment. You wonder what could go wrong? Simply put, everything. Bon appétit.