September 3, 2010

So your here to learn about Line Cooking, eh? Well let me tell you being a Line Cook is not a job that I would recommend to anyone who isn't ready for some serious self-sacrifice to get the job done. This JOB is a physically and mentally demanding occupation. I should know, I have been cooking for 16 years.

Whew! has it been that long?? Man, I've been crawling around in dumps, dives, mom and pop's , and four star kitchens... Well, I think I have seen almost all there is to see about the restaurant business and let me tell you it has been full of very hard work, manager problems, scheduling problems, ordering problems, trash talking waitresses and PAIN!

The joy of cooking hasn't at all been like what you see late night on tv shows or Martha Steward and the job isn't about fine dining. It's about commercial-volume-cooking.

Line Cooking is more like the life of vagabon with little to lose and everything to gain. Well, it has been for me and for many of the the people I've ended up working with among the heat of the broiler and the sizzle of the fryer. These people are like me.

Line Cooking is so much a life-style that what keeps drawing me to work so hard for pennies a day is the companionship of those around me who think like I do and are willing to do what it takes to crank out 600 to 1000 dinners a night (at a corparate place). That is more the cooking I have a love for. It's the head of chaos and I like to be at the "wheel" driving the kitchen through that mess of bitchy servers and picky eaters.. Those of you out there reading this that do this for a living or have done it in the past know excatly what I am talking about. It is shear madness...

Why would I, or anybody, want to work in the center of chaos you ask? The thrill of it, the excitement, the challenge, and the satisfaction of being able to control a "rush" for several ours. To maintain a level of stress that gives you a natural high that directly comes from handling multiple responsibilites that are critial to every one's job.

Yeah I get jacked by the job. I am feeling so damn high, and stressed, by the end of 3 hours that I don't don't want to see a 4th or a 5th or more. But I have and I still do. So that is it I think, the challenge of getting through it and having done it well.

Oh, I haven't always been at the helm constantly trying to reign in the chaos from the onslaught of peoples orders, and from a station other than the head I have seen a kitchens go down in the heat of the rush and that, my friend, is never a pretty sight. That is what you could call nothing less than hell on earth. A night of shame, pity, yelling, cursing that could teach a sailor how to really swear. But that Story is/will be found later here on the site when I get around to it.