Four days in a restaurant kitchen

BY Julian Sudre



CHOP, whack, wham, and whoosh. Come on guys. Let’s pump it out. Service is on anytime now. Are we all set?
As soon as I climb into my chef’s whites, I was somebody else and had to execute my duties with sharp synchronisation.

My pulse was racing; the stoves were red-hot; the shouting claimed victory over civilised communication and cooking meat and onions were predominating the oppressing scents that turned rapidly into an affront to my senses.

The tension was sizzling with an electrifying simmer and suddenly the head chef – the conductor of an orchestra – erupted with a plume of orders that I was to expedite with military precision.

Salmons and salad were whisked together into dishes and cheesecakes ready to be stung with a mint leaf and off were they dispatched to the servers.
Three main course tarts needed to be garnished with watercress and seasoned accordingly. My hands were flying through the air, thrusting and cutting like martial arts movements so as to deliver the hopefully standardised dishes that the expectant customer would smack his lips over.

The logistics of a kitchen are very well coordinated but speed, first and foremost, is the nucleus of the power-monster that churns out plated-up meals; the chefs stir mechanically gallons of stocks and mash potatoes in brobdingnagian saucepans under the supervision of the head chef.

And the porter gets fobbed off with piles of gargantuan gallimaufry of pots and pans that need being scrubbed clean, but fast.

A kitchen is by all means, not the reflection of those dainty and toothsome dishes that seem to have been prepared with hearty love when you get them at your table. I have, as in point of fact, found in good measure, a degree of discordance in the production and the end product. And to a certain extent, the presentation of a dish stimulates more the imagination than enlivens the taste buds.

Kitchens have become locomotives that grind out half-hearted dishes under the pretence of the aesthetics of the final stroke of the head chef.

So perhaps, I have become like a trainspotter; I enjoyed the feel of the beastie locomotive for those four days but now I have seen her entrails.

I will think twice before the delusional subterfuge of its beauty captivates me into being an admirer of its delivery.