Tag Archives: fail

How to Stage/Intern/Trail at a Restaurant: The Wrong Way

kitchen line

So you want to cook professionally and think you have the mettle to work your way up the line? Or you’re a culinary student who’s looking for an internship to get real world experience? Welcome, young stagiaire!

A stage (rhymes with corsage) is the French term for an unpaid internship or apprenticeship, where a trainee volunteers in a kitchen in order to learn new techniques. This can apply to inexperienced cooks, or to experienced professionals who want to learn new cuisines. Ferran Adria’s El Bulli was flooded with applications from aspiring stagiaires, for instance, all of whom were at the top of their fields in their home countries.

Having decided that I wasn’t going to continue with culinary school, I immediately began scouting for new kitchens to work in. The restaurant would need to be 1) located near my apartment (so that getting home at midnight would be relatively painless), 2) offer a supportive teaching environment (not just take advantage of free labor), and 3) serve non-French food (I was definitely experiencing some cream and butter fatigue). With my shortlist of candidates in hand, I fired off an email to the first restaurant.

Days passed and no response to my perfectly crafted email. That’s when I realized I was going to have to simply walk in and talk to chefs directly.

The next day, I checked the lunch and dinner hours for each restaurant. I wanted to walk in right as lunch service was winding down but before the rush of dinner prep, so that I’d be more likely to catch the attention of a chef. Around 3 pm, I put my best clogged foot forward, walked into a restaurant and announced that I wanted to talk to the chef about working there.

A stern-faced woman strode out to meet me. Great, I thought, I like seeing female leadership in kitchens. I stated my case, mentioned that I’d had some classes at French Culinary, and wanted to come in to work. Then I mentioned that I had a full time job, 9 to 5. She coughed a bit. “Our pm line cooks start at 2 pm and leave around midnight. Our weekend brunch cooks start at 7 am and leave at 5 pm.” I gulped. “That’s ok, I’m happy to work weekends, either morning or night. I know it sounds crazy to want to work on the line after having another full time job, but I really do want to learn. Plus, I live just a few blocks away, I can be here in minutes if someone doesn’t show, I pull my weight and I don’t call out sick.” She nodded and said, “Ok, come back next Saturday, 2 pm. Bring your knives.”

Yes, that was so easy! I strode out the door beaming. I threw out the cover letters and resumes I’d pre-printed. Was it really that easy to just walk into a restaurant and land a job?
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Soylent Experiment: Cake, Cooking Without Tasting, and How to Fail Forward

Strawberry Cake Batter

I’ve been writing about what a tremendous struggle it is to fight boredom when you eat the same thing every meal, and how desperately I was craving something new (preferably greasy and cheesy). In reality though, all of the temptations I’d encountered in social situations during the week paled in comparison to what I faced yesterday, and in the end, the person who finally broke my Soylent fast had no idea that he’d done it.

My fundamental problem was this: you can’t cook without tasting. Well, you can, but it’s far from ideal, and I’m not as pro at cooking as Grant Achatz. One of the first things they teach you in culinary school is to always taste your food as you go along, so you can learn how flavors are structured and built during the cooking process, and also just to make sure what you’re serving tastes good. Every ingredient is naturally different, so you can’t simply rely on recipes or memory to cook; a tomato sauce made from ripe tomatoes in the summer might need some extra sugar in the winter.

On weekend mornings, I moonlight on the line at a local restaurant. Soon after starting my shift on Saturday morning, I was confronted with just how hard it was going to be to get through the day without eating anything. Was I going to have someone else taste all of my fillings? Each salad dressing? How was I supposed to learn how to make seafood sofrito sauce without tasting it? I didn’t see a practical way to uphold my professional obligations and continue with the Soylent experiment. It was akin to Beethoven composing the Ninth Symphony while deaf.

Moreover, I was surrounded by food, and even worse, strong smells of food. I’ve always had a good sense of smell, but for the last few days, my sense of smell has been particularly heightened. Every whiff of street meat, every curl of smoke, every warm blast of rising yeast and crackling crust was a siren call to me, a torrent of emotions, desires and urges. For the first time all week, I was being constantly assaulted by food memories and I couldn’t walk away.

So, we made a strawberry cake, using petite, perfectly squishy strawberries from the farmers market. Afterwards, I commented that it hadn’t risen as much as previous iterations, but it also looked less crumbly and had a better consistency than before. T said that he’d changed the amount of baking powder he’d used, and handed me a piece of the cake. “Try it,” he said, “so you can taste the difference.” Oh no, that’s ok I’m going to pass, I replied. “No, try a piece,” he repeated. “It’s really good!”

I caved. I tried the cake.

I should mention that I had not explained the Soylent experiment to my kitchen team. Part of this was because up till now I’d been debating whether it even made sense to try to explain what the hell I was doing, given that I was still going to have to eat at some point over the day. The other hindrance was that I was nervous about explaining a philosophically-driven, esoteric, First-World-Problem type experiment to a bunch of Mexican line cooks. Look, I love my crew and we’re pretty tight. We’ve had long conversations on topics like friends with benefits (Me: “Guys, I need friends with benefits…like a yacht.”), arguments over the best whiskey, and lessons on curse words in Chinese and Spanish. But when it came to describing the Soylent experiment? Let’s be honest, I was pretty sure I’d be laughed out of the kitchen.

By the way, the cake was indeed really, really good.

Roasted Pork Leg

Then I went back to pulling watercress leaves off the stems and shredding two whole legs of pork, fresh out of the oven with crisp crackling on top. I pressed the pork fat through a chinois, added salt, vinegar and hot sauce to the meat, then tasted it to make sure it was properly seasoned. It tasted like victory.

Lately, I’ve been playing Dungeon World with my role-playing game group. In that game, the mechanics work such that every time you fail, your character automatically gains XP (an experience point), which means they’ve gotten a little wiser and are a bit closer to gaining new knowledge and powers.

In the same way, although I’ve failed my stated goal of doing a Soylent fast for a week, I do think that I have failed forward, and come away with some wisdom and insights I never could have attained otherwise.

Pizza

After breaking my Soylent fast, I took a sip of the Soylent that I’d stashed in the lowboy cooler. I was immediately repulsed by the monotony of the texture, the leaden color and the rush of misery that flowed forth. Having already broken my streak and decided that I’d accomplished what I set out to learn, I was ready to go back to enjoying food again. After my shift ended, I went around the corner and grabbed two slices of pizza. They dripped grease and seared the roof of my mouth. It was, no joke, the best pizza I’d ever had. I’m pretty sure that meal has undone whatever health gains I might have obtained from my stint on Soylent, and I’m quite content with that.

Soylent Shake

In the future, I do plan to keep drinking Soylent now and then, when I’m in a pinch and don’t have time to cook. It is after all, by design, the fastest healthy food, or the healthiest fast food. I have some Soylent mix leftover now, and in fact, I just drank some for breakfast since I need to head off to the restaurant soon. I’ll be heading to the Food Coop after work to stock up on lots of fibrous vegetables, fatty yogurt, and yes, some more chia seeds and nuts for future batches of Soylent.

Here’s to a future of healthy, fast AND pleasurable food, however you may define it.

Culinary School: Why I’m making the worst food of my life

Poulet Saute Chasseur

Nights in culinary class move in a dance of steel and time pressure. Yank out the wishbone. Quarter the chicken. Sear the skin. Chop the mirepoix. Simmer the stock. Strain the sauce. Pull the chicken from the oven. Plate the food. Run to the front. Hope for the best.

Chef Ray glanced at my plate of poulet sauté chasseur (hunter-style chicken) and gave me a hard look. “I think I’ve told you this before,” he said. “This plate. What’s wrong with it?” I looked down at my chicken. Among the finely shredded flakes, there were some unruly tufts of parsley perched on top, shamelessly advertising their prowess at escaping my knife. “I know, I know,” I apologized, “the parsley isn’t chopped small enough. And there’s some pieces of stems.”

With a spoon, he pointed at a resolutely intact parsley leaf. “Look,” said Chef Ray, “you spent two hours making this dish, and you put herbs like this on the plate it and it just ruins the presentation.” He chased the offending chunk of parsley to the edge. “The chef that taught me insisted on really finely chopped herbs, so since that’s how I was taught, this is a pet peeve of mine too.” Chef Ray prodded at the chicken. “This is cooked well, it’s not overdone and the skin looks great. But you put parsley like that on the plate and that’s the first thing you see.” I bowed my head. “Yes, Chef.” He sighed. “All right, start cleaning up.”

God damn it, I hate chopping herbs.

You know what it looks like when Chinese people chop herbs? Like a lawnmower belched huge piles of foliage on the table. And that’s perfect. We embrace chunky cilantro and scallions like Sir Mix-a-Lot loves chunky booty. Let me show you some examples:

Five Spice Beef
Here’s a plate of Five Spice Beef from China House in Mountain View. It looks like they didn’t bother chopping anything, they just threw entire stalks of cilantro on the plate.

Mission Chinese Mapo Tofu
Maybe we need to look at a better restaurant? Cult favorite Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco has won all sorts of awards, so let’s take a look at their mapo tofu. Yup, you can definitely see big pieces of leaves and stems floating on that chili oil.

Twice Cooked Pork
And my personal favorite, Double Cooked Pork from Happy Kitchen in LA. THEY ONLY USED CILANTRO STEMS!

Let’s review the most common culinary school sins:

  • Plate not hot enough (forgot to put it in the oven)
  • Plate too hot (forgot to take it out of the oven)
  • Sauce underreduced and not nappant (sticks to the back of the spoon)
  • Sauce overreduced and too thick
  • Vegetables not brown enough or too brown/burnt
  • Meat under or overdone
  • Vegetables not cut uniformly (see taillage)
  • Not enough acid (lemon juice)
  • Food not salty enough (I’ve never been told my food’s too salty, even when I try to overseason)
  • Too much grease
  • Too much sauce (pooling at bottom of plate)
  • Sauce drips on plate edge
  • Using black pepper in a white dish (where’s your white pepper idiot?)
  • And of course, my #1 nemesis, the herb garnish is too big

In other words, no matter how hard you try, your plate is never good enough. Wait, this is starting to sound familiar…

Maybe the solution is to give up on cooking?

At least my extra tournage work at home paid off. Chef Ray looked at my potato cocottes and said they looked great without other comment. Phew.

I can’t even imagine how much of a pressure cooker it would be to compete on TV. (Well, maybe I can. This piece from pastry chef Allison Robicelli is a hilarious read if you’d like to hear more.) I would have a nervous breakdown. Or start pouring fish sauce on the judges’ cars.

Whatever. My new favorite food photography blog is now Dimly Lit Meals for One (exactly what it sounds like).

Clearly the solution is to start chopping like this guy:

Komatsu after learning Food Honor

Why I’m Never Going to Make It as a Writer

Corby Kummer, august senior editor for the Atlantic and one of my all-time idols, thinks my writing is shit.

Fine, he didn’t say it exactly like that.

Kummer was teaching a weeklong writing workshop, and everyone had submitted second drafts of essays on food. One by one, he whisked us into the hallway for individual conferences, then periodically returned to give comments to the entire group. All day, I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. Why wasn’t my piece being read out loud to the class? Why was it at the bottom of the pile?

Wendy was one of the lucky ones. Her first paper was so perfect that her “revision” was to write another paper.

For the second paper, Kummer told her that he had no comments. It was perfect, again.

I congratulated her on her double win. Then I went back to doing what I do best—worrying while looking happy about it.

Bells tolled. My afternoon stupor was interrupted by Emily’s shoulder tap. “Hey Crystal, he wants to see you.”

In the vending machine alcove, Kummer was marking papers with a vengeance. I glanced at mine, lying on top of a trash can. It looked oddly clean and blank.

“You’re an expert writer, but you’re too self-conscious.”

Kummer looked at me, eyes framed under a furry blanket of hair. He continued.

“I read some of these lines and think, ‘Would you say that in speech?’

“Take this part, where you talk about dropping a lobster into boiling water: ‘The sucker will thrash and create a lively ruckus.’

“It’s like you’re detached and having these self-conscious remarks. You’re so incredibly aware of what you’re doing that it’s distracting. You just sound…Writerly. With a capital W.”

Did I mention that Kummer rejected me for a writing fellowship at the Atlantic three months ago?

I needed to defend myself.

“When you tell me to use monosyllabic words, I feel like it strips away my writing. Maybe I like using long words in daily conversation!”

Kummer gave me a skeptical look. “Shall we go through this piece from the beginning?”

I nodded. I needed to pee.

“You have moments that flow. This part about adding ‘fistfuls of julienned scallions, ginger and garlic’ is nice. Oh, and I can’t believe I missed this the first time—‘Atop a clinical ad seeking sperm donors, I gently placed the cutting board’– that is such a lovely detail.

“This reference to Hades, I just don’t think you would say that in speech. Did you really mean to say that?”

I twitched on the inside.

“Maybe I’ve been reading too much Jane Grigson [a writer who uses lots of classical references]. I don’t know, I was working on this at 6 am.”

“Oh my.”

“Well, it was better than writing it post-party.”

Kummer gave me a look. I am not sure if it was sympathetic or admonishing.

He went on. “Are you familiar with David Szanto? He had the same problem.”

David is a writer who taught at the beginning of the year. He is also a former student at the university, and my go-to advisor for all matters related to writing.

“David used to say, ‘I can write this piece with 3 different tones. What would you like to see? ’

“I guess I want to see you develop a consistent voice. What do you sound like?”

I looked at Kummer and stammered, “Don’t you see? I feel incredible pressure to write whatever you want me to write.”

“But that’s exactly it, I want to hear you.”

I started to cry. God, I hate when I do that.

“What if I am a pretentious person who loves high-falutin language?” I asked.

“You would call yourself a pretentious person?”

“Do you see the shirt that I’m wearing?” I waved at my body. “It says, ‘Bad grammar makes me [sic].’ If you called me pretentious, I would not be offended.”

Kummer’s face wrinkled with a smirk.

“You know, back when I was younger, people called me pretentious too. So I can relate.

“Writers have a way of hiding behind a façade, and you can’t really get to know them. It’s like they have something to protect. They want you to see a certain aspect of themselves, or maybe they’re too embarrassed to show their true selves.

“I want to see who you really are.

“This line—‘stop being a pussy and just kill the damn thing.’ I think that’s you. That’s who I want to hear.

“Now, I really wish I could read more of your writing. I’m curious about what your voice really is. After working with David for a week, I think he really nailed it down.”

He handed me a blue tissue. I wiped my nose less than gracefully.

“You know what, David thinks my writing is great.”

“Of course, I’m not surprised,” Kummer replied.

“I am sorry that I have made you upset.”

I waved him off between sniffles. “No no, it’s all right, I really appreciate your honesty.”

“Okay fine, then I’m not sorry that I made you upset.

“I am being so harsh because I want you to go to that next level.

“I spent half my time copyediting the rest of the class’ papers. In terms of copyediting, this is flawless.

“You’re an excellent writer—you’ve made yourself into one—and you’re ambitious.”

Maybe he was making that up entirely.

I bet he hates that I used the word “august” to describe him in line one.

I don’t care.

Escape from Heathrow Hell

This tale is getting published about a month later than I had anticipated, but I figure everyone likes listening to a good yarn of travel woe, so here it is.

Like most disasters, this one started out with a quiet whimper buried amidst the lull of complacency. True, I had checked the BBC the day before, and the headline story was about “severe weather disruptions” and cancelled flights at London’s airports due to snowfall. However, the amount of snow that had fallen (4-5″) was piddling by North American standards, and the article seemed to indicate that everything would be functioning normally by the next day. And so, I happily hopped on a flight out of Turin to London, where I would transfer to a connecting flight to New York. I was returning “home,” whatever that word meant after seven months of expat life in Italy. In Turin, British Airways staff boarded the flight with nary a hint of distress. Naturally, while we were in the air, my connecting flight out of London was cancelled.

When I arrived, the scene at Gatwick airport was a madhouse of stranded travelers—part refugee camp, part crisis counseling center. Behind me, an Italian girl wailed into her cell phone, crying, “Non ci sono voli, niente! Niente!” (There are no flights, nothing!) I resolutely joined the customer service queue to rebook a flight to New York. In line, I soon made friends with Maddie, who had also just flown to London from Turin. Her dad was frantically trying to find a new flight for her online, with no luck. After 90 minutes of waiting, the clerk gently informed me that the earliest flight I would be able to take would be the evening of Dec 23rd, four days later.

It was now about 5 pm. I was homeless, flightless and my cell phone was very low on credit and battery. On the plus side, I had all the time in the world. Dazed, Maddie and I trekked to the internet lounge on level 1, where she tried to buy a Boingo pass for wifi access, but the servers were so swamped that nothing was loading. There were three workstations off in a corner, and on a lark, I sat down at one and opened a browser. Much to my surprise, it did not ask me to pay for internet access. Concerned that this lifesaver could be yanked away at any moment, my fingers moved at hyperspeed, posting pleas on Facebook, Twitter and Gmail to please let me know if anyone could house me in London. In short order, my plight had been publicized everywhere from Argentina to the Couchsurfing SOS list. Meanwhile, it was slowly sinking in that I was going to be here for a while. “You know,” said Maddie, “they’d planned a welcome party for me tonight.” I winced and tried not to think about my dashed plans for a triumphant return.
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