In the beginning they called me “la Nuyorquina,” with a discernible reverence for the city I came from but didn’t feel nearly as tough as. Still, I was willing to wear that badge if only to draw attention away from how unprepared I was to work in a Michelin-starred kitchen. By day three I was outed.
“You don’t have a restaurant background, do you?” asked one of the interns, an Argentine girl with wolfish green eyes. “How did you know?” I whispered, self-conscious as I spooned the remnants of a vanilla bean sauce into a storage container. “You’re too polite,” she replied, and I wondered if that was something I should work on. “I bet you I can get more from that,” she said, taking the sauce bowl from my hands. She nudged up the eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose and, using a rubber spatula, scraped the bowl clean. I ached to emulate her cool confidence.
The kitchen hierarchy was as precise as the physical space. On top there was the chef, who would appear in a pristine shirt embroidered with his name and the restaurant’s, to taste and evaluate our execution of his painstakingly developed recipes. Then there was the sous chef, who managed daily operations, overseeing us in the trenches. He could turn on the charm like a spigot—and just as easily shut it off, his mood darkening like a storm cloud if a single basil flower was misplaced. This ruthlessness, I took it, was a requisite for advancing in the brigade. Each station—vegetables, fish, meats, desserts, R&D—had its own head chef. After the introductory week I was assigned to vegetables, the gateway to fish and meat.
The cutthroat nature of restaurant work is well documented. And yet, there were so many things I underestimated: How demanding the hours would be (making my lawyer schedule seem lax by comparison). How many steps went into preparing each element in a dish, like the chard juice, which became my daily mission and took the better part of two hours, only to be used as a garnish. The threat posed by the sous vide machine—which, after one failed attempt, left chard juice fanned across my chest like blood splatter for the rest of service, a scarlet letter in bright, unmistakable green.
I became a collector of burns, my forearms decorated with seared skin from the heated cabinets where we stored service dishes to keep them blistering hot. My calves burned with cramps. The physical discomfort was compounded by relentless anxiety about minor mistakes that accumulated like grease on an oven door. Each misstep, each momentary lapse in focus, earned a fresh reproach from the sous chef or, before long, a fellow intern. I started to view the brigade as a system engineered to pit us against each other, a ladder on which I occupied the bottom rung.
Relief came in discrete periods that were always too brief—cigarette breaks after the hurried staff meal and bike rides home along the Nervión, letting the cool air soothe me after a punishing service. At home, fueled by cheap Txakoli, I’d blog about the restaurant to gain some semblance of power.
Spring bled into summer. Squash blossoms and fresh anchovies and jewel-like cherry tomatoes appeared on the menu. Most days my passion for the food—those precious seasonal ingredients—was the only thing fueling me. That, and this was supposed to be my dream job. On rare occasions I did feel like it was. When the vegetable station had a flawless service, working in tandem like a world-class symphony, there was no greater high. But inevitably, I’d screw up and erase any credit I’d earned.
In the beginning they called me “la Nuyorquina,” with a discernible reverence for the city I came from but didn’t feel nearly as tough as. Still, I was willing to wear that badge if only to draw attention away from how unprepared I was to work in a Michelin-starred kitchen. By day three I was outed.“You don’t have a restaurant background, do you?” asked one of the interns, an Argentine girl with wolfish green eyes. “How did you know?” I whispered, self-conscious as I spooned the remnants of a vanilla bean sauce into a storage container. “You’re too polite,” she replied, and I wondered if that was something I should work on. “I bet you I can get more from that,” she said, taking the sauce bowl from my hands. She nudged up the eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose and, using a rubber spatula, scraped the bowl clean. I ached to emulate her cool confidence.The kitchen hierarchy was as precise as the physical space. On top there was the chef, who would appear in a pristine shirt embroidered with his name and the restaurant’s, to taste and evaluate our execution of his painstakingly developed recipes. Then there was the sous chef, who managed daily operations, overseeing us in the trenches. He could turn on the charm like a spigot—and just as easily shut it off, his mood darkening like a storm cloud if a single basil flower was misplaced. This ruthlessness, I took it, was a requisite for advancing in the brigade. Each station—vegetables, fish, meats, desserts, R&D—had its own head chef. After the introductory week I was assigned to vegetables, the gateway to fish and meat.The cutthroat nature of restaurant work is well documented. And yet, there were so many things I underestimated: How demanding the hours would be (making my lawyer schedule seem lax by comparison). How many steps went into preparing each element in a dish, like the chard juice, which became my daily mission and took the better part of two hours, only to be used as a garnish. The threat posed by the sous vide machine—which, after one failed attempt, left chard juice fanned across my chest like blood splatter for the rest of service, a scarlet letter in bright, unmistakable green.I became a collector of burns, my forearms decorated with seared skin from the heated cabinets where we stored service dishes to keep them blistering hot. My calves burned with cramps. The physical discomfort was compounded by relentless anxiety about minor mistakes that accumulated like grease on an oven door. Each misstep, each momentary lapse in focus, earned a fresh reproach from the sous chef or, before long, a fellow intern. I started to view the brigade as a system engineered to pit us against each other, a ladder on which I occupied the bottom rung.Relief came in discrete periods that were always too brief—cigarette breaks after the hurried staff meal and bike rides home along the Nervión, letting the cool air soothe me after a punishing service. At home, fueled by cheap Txakoli, I’d blog about the restaurant to gain some semblance of power.Spring bled into summer. Squash blossoms and fresh anchovies and jewel-like cherry tomatoes appeared on the menu. Most days my passion for the food—those precious seasonal ingredients—was the only thing fueling me. That, and this was supposed to be my dream job. On rare occasions I did feel like it was. When the vegetable station had a flawless service, working in tandem like a world-class symphony, there was no greater high. But inevitably, I’d screw up and erase any credit I’d earned.