08.30.06

Poetry in Motion

Posted in The Story at 6:05 pm by Chef Matt

Two chicken parmesans fly effortlessly into the salamander while a pasta portioner full of spaghetti is pulled from the boiling depths of the cauldron on the stove. No sooner has the pasta slipped in with the red sauce in the small sauteuse on the front burners than two veal cutlets burst into flame on the pan immediately to the right as another batch of veal lemon (it’s supposed to flambé like that) is finished off. The chicken drops down to work level again with a beautifully browned crust of cheese on it, and receives its spaghetti accompaniment and the veal lemon is sauced and married to fresh vegetables. All the plates are cheesed, parsleyed and handed over to the runners while two lasagnas and a batch of spaetzle are started for the next ticket.

Total elapsed time: under 1 minute.

It’s kinda like this - only with FOOD on the plates… (photo copyright (c)2004 Blissweb Photography)

Let’s make one thing clear - this is not me at work in the kitchen. Well, “not yet” is perhaps the way I would like to think of it, but simply put, it is truly an amazing thing to see line chefs at work who know exactly what they are doing, and when to do it. Not a single wasted motion. No hesitation in any movements. Just pure completion of the tasks at hand with invariably perfect results.

With all the effort and stress on our faces that you or I my have when watering our lawns, the other chefs at Tirolo are able to work five lunch orders at a time, and still manage to have pleasant conversations with the customers and make sure that all other staff members (like me) are doing what we should be doing at the right times.

The crowds were pouring in through the open doors today. (Don’t they know we are supposed to get a lot of rain?!) And they really were crowds. Every other order was for a table of 6 people. It is much more pleasant to see 10 orders for two people than 2 orders for 10 people, believe me. Timing is everything in the kitchen, and when one dish is missed on a long ticket or something takes longer than expected or has to be redone (let’s just say, hypothetically of course, because someone added a bit too much red pepper…) then the whole careful balance of timing the tickets is thrown into chaos.

And it was that revelation today that helped me understand why it is so important to get everything right the first time. It’s not because of the wasted food costs or the delay to the customer - though these things are important, they can be absorbed through careful pricing and the fact that most customers are understanding of such things. But rather, a great set of chefs, while they look like they are effortlessly navigating a mighty sailing ship around Cape Horn in 40-foot seas, the fact is, they are dancing a perfectly choreographed ballet - and don’t do well with someone coming along and stepping on their toes. Everything is thrown off, and THAT is hard to recover from for them.

This guy is to “So You Think You Can Dance”, as I am to the other chefs at Tirolo. (That was my first analogy since the SAT’s)

So more than learning to cook at Cafe Tirolo, I think I am learning how to dance. Even if it won’t land me on “So You Think You Can Dance” any time soon (for the record, “No, I don’t think that.”), I think this will be the real lesson/skill of this first job that I take with me.

The question is: are the dance steps I am learning here applicable only to Tirolo, or will they be useful everywhere I go? There will be only way to find out - but hopefully that will be some time from now.

Matt

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