The Devil Wears… a Chef Coat?

Last week began like any other.

Arrive early, peel and blanch vegetables, run over the one of the other restaurants to pick up desserts, finish setting up my station and prepare for service.

Usually Sunday is the day that we are sous-chef free, which is refreshing.. not that he isn’t a decent enough guy…

but this Sunday he was taking the place of another cook who requested the day off to go to the Tom Petty concert.

With only two hours of service left, I am not totally clear what happened between the sous chef and the cook on the pasta station because I was sent on yet another errand but when I returned the pasta cook was alone in the kitchen and while I was arranging the items I was sent for, he said to me

“Bobby, you might be starting pasta sooner than you think and I might be going back to garde-mange. I don’t even care anymore…”

I was shocked and not totally sure I heard him because I was bent down stocking pastas for him and asked him what he meant.

When I returned to my feet, I noticed sous-chef on the other side of the window staring stone-faced at the pasta cook who had his back turned – I don’t know if he even knew sous-chef was there or for how long but he dissapeared again. This time, I heard him punch one of the walls.

He returned minutes later and with no place to hide, I was forced to witness a horrible and incredibly awkward argument that resulted in the pasta being kicked off the line and sent home. At one point during the argument, the pasta cook actually called sous-chef “the devil”.

With just two of us, the rest of the night was both tense and demmanding as a post theatre crowd sent to hot ticket machine into a frenzy.

Sous chef asked me if I had seen him plate some of the main entrees and I responded that I had and he then asked me if I would help him get them out.

Thank God I had been paying attention. One by one, I put up seared halibut plates with pea puree and roasted baby carrots, clams with pain-rustico (grilled bread), and grilled lamb with apricot cous cous.

At the end of the night, sous chef thanked me for my help and complimented my plates, which delighted me despite the circumstances that forced me to rise to the occasion.

At the close of service, my back was facing him as I closed down my station when I suddenly felt him behind me and he whispered in my ear,

“It’s time that you lost your pasta making virginity…”

And just like that, I became the newest pasta cook at “Il Restaurant”. Perhaps the most demmanding station in the kitchen… after all it is an italian restaurant and so it is not uncommon that people want.. PASTA!

I felt like a slightly older, slightly more voluptuous, balding version of Anne Hathaway’s character in “The Devil Wears Prada”.

 That’s all.