04.25.07

The Early Shift

Posted in The Story at 12:05 am by Chef Matt

My cell phone rang at 7:40 AM this morning.

This would normally annoy me to no end as that is time I usually have reserved for sleeping, but I was up this particular morning. I was going in with the early shift today. Because I am going on vacation next week, I am a prime candidate for putting in extra hours. And extra help is what they needed on the catering side of things this morning. I was dressed up in full chef’s regalia, and was preparing to get in my car, but the ringing tone from my pocket stopped me.

“Hello?” I was barely able to murmur seeing as how I was not fully awake yet.

For those of you who don’t know your cuts of pasta, this is rigatoni…

“Hey Matt, it’s Amy, can you pick up six boxes of rigatoni noodles on your way in this morning?”

“Six boxes of rigatoni?” I repeated back to make sure I had heard her right so there would be no mistakes.

“Yeah, and be sure to keep you receipt so we can get you cash back.”

“Gotcha.”

While this would of course make me late for work, this was not a big deal since they at least knew why I would be late. But there was an entirely different problem with this early morning request Amy had made: I was now going to have to go food shopping in chef’s clothes.

Imagine you are on a golf course and you see Tiger Woods walking by. You might take the opportunity to ask him a question about how to get out of a sand trap. Or imagine you are skateboarding and Tony Hawk walks (skates) by. You would probably ask him how to land a 360 indy nose bone.

Now imagine you are shopping for food, and a chef walks by…

I have no idea why women approach me when I am cooking… (Good lord no, this is not me!)

I don’t know why this always happens to me, I guess I just have that “approachable” look to me, but I cannot go into a grocery store in the chef’s uniform without someone asking me a question about something. This morning was no exception.

I walked straight to the pasta aisle as fast as I could to hopefully get in and out without being seen. I needed to get a mere six boxes of rigatoni, so this should be easy. The problem was there was no one brand that had 6 boxes of rigatoni on the shelf. I didn’t particularly want to mix and match brands as different brands have different cooking times, but as I scanned each brand’s stock, it was looking like I would have no choice. There was NO WAY I was going to stick around to ask a clerk to check the back room for more of any brand’s rigatoni. That would just be asking for disaster. So I picked as much of the brand that is generally the best (Barilla) as I could, and then one more of another brand (San Giorgio).

This meant cleaning out the shelf of Barilla rigatoni. And this was an action that did not go unnoticed.

“So, that’s the best brand there then?”

Damn.

“Yeah, I tend to think so,” I replied as nicely as possible to the lady standing behind me. She was obviously looking for someone to talk to, and I was the target.

“What are you planning to do with all that?”

I was caught with my pants down on this one. I actually had no clue what Amy wanted this for. I was just told to pick up six boxes of rigatoni (it was “rigatoni”, right?…) but not why. So now I was the “expert” cleaning out a shelf of pasta at 8 in the morning, and I had to tell this nice lady that I didn’t have the remotest idea why I was doing it.

“Ummm, I’m actually not sure.” This answer was not the one she was expecting or desiring. She gave a sort-of frown to tell me such. “See, another chef asked me to pick this up for them - I ‘m just the carrier here.”

From “expert” to “The Swedish Chef” instantly!

And that broke the spell! I was no longer an “expert”. I had made myself into just some second-rate dumbass in stupid pants. The nice lady thanked me, wished me luck, and moved on. Somehow I had gotten out of what would have surely been a 10-minute conversation by just playing dumb. And I wasn’t even playing! This is a trick I will have to remember for the future.

I arrived at work at the ungodly early hour of 8:10AM and got right to work. I was preparing salmon Caesar salads, and I roasted the salmon with a little lemon and dill for an extra flavor kick (it was awesome). I then loaded up the van and along with Jose I headed out to make the delivery, which was to be followed by a trip to Restaurant Depot.

This photo is not truly representative of the experience as there are not three more forklifts coming right at you.

The delivery was pretty routine, so I will fast forward to Restaurant Depot. For those of you who have not been, Restaurant Depot is like Sam’s Club for restaurant owners. Everything is there in one large, dimly-lit stock room with forklifts buzzing around you like mosquitoes at a July 4th picnic. You can get pretty much anything there you need to run your restaurant from cases of soda to packets of jelly to those spinning hot dog cooking machines. It was crowded, bustling and quite overwhelming at first. Fortunately Jose was a regular, and knew where most things on the list were, so we were able to load up our racks pretty quickly. At the end of the day, the cost of all the equipment we had ordered was quite considerable, and was a real eye-opener to me about how expensive it really is to run a restaurant/catering business. But you gotta spend money to make money, right?

The best part about shopping in Restaurant Depot? There are LOTS of people in there wearing chef’s outfits! Not one person asked me a single question about what I was buying.

Back at the restaurant, I had to help unload the van, and the lack of sleep was starting to get to me. Jay took pity on me and said I could swing on home for a little bit if I wanted. He didn’t have to ask twice. I treated myself to a nice, leisurely break.

For just a mere 45 minutes.

Then it was time for me to finally go to work, because after all, I’m supposed to be working the late shift.

Matt

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