On not having disappeared off the face of the earth

So it's been a while since I've written and I felt the need to remedy that. I have legitimate excuses for being neglectful of ye here blog--besides working six days a week, which I've been doing for more than two months now, I bought what I believe to be the sweetest condo in Portland and have been attempting during my limited time off to get it painted and settled in. Though I've made some progress, this has for the most part proved rather unsuccessful, as my bedroom currently looks as if a giant moving box got sick and threw up clothes all over the floor. Girl needs a dresser, stat!

One of my favorite things about all the change, however, is I am now proud owner of a kitchen in which I'm happy to spend time. The kitchen in the studio apartment I lived in prior to my condo purchase was hardly more than a sink, electric range and refrigerator in a row against a wall. Now I have this:






I bask in the glory of the gas range! HALLELUJAH!

...in which I can do stuff like this:


pickin' parsley like a pro



...which results in things like this:



Linguine and Manila clams. Nomnomnom. Lesson learned, however: a pound and a quarter of clams is too much for one person.

The goal is to get my house in good enough shape for a housewarming thingy and lots of dinner parties. You know, all that adult shit that comes with homeowning. Plus I have a balcony from which my friends can curse drunkenly at innocent passersby. What fun!

Oh, did I mention the view?


downtown Portland as viewed from the kitchen sink

Yeah, I'm pretty fucking stoked.

A Guide To Being An Awesome Diner

...as told from the point of view of a kitchen monkey.

- Manners will get you everywhere. Saying "Please" and "Thank you" are incredibly underrated in this industry, and those simple words leave a greater impact than you might imagine, from the managers to the cooks. Being nice WILL get your food and drinks to you faster, and special requests will be much more willingly met. From my side of the line, I've had servers plead for an odd dish or made-from-scratch condiment in the height of dinner service, adding, "They're super-nice people." Personally speaking, I'm happier fulfilling their request, knowing that they'll likely appreciate my gesture.

- If there is something wrong with your food or drink, ask your server or manager to fix it. It is unfair for both the diner and the restaurant to not give the restaurant a chance to remedy the situation before going home and blathering to the Internets about how your experience sucked. Some people feel like "voting with their feet" is enough, but a majority of the negative consumer reviews I've read on Yelp, Citysearch and the like revolve around incidents that could have been easily fixed in a matter of minutes.

Where I work (and at any decent establishment), the staff will go out of their way to remedy the situation, especially if you're nice about it. Good restaurants take every bit of feedback seriously. I try to take the time to ask the front of house staff how everything is going on the floor, and if there's anything coming off my station that wasn't well-received, I absolutely take it to heart. If something is too salty, too acidic, too whatever, the cooks need to know about this so we don't make the same mistake the next time.

- Order appropriately. If you're watching your cholesterol, don't order the Parmesan-cream risotto, "light on dairy". If you're not in the mood for something salty, don't order the Caesar salad, "no salt". It's kind of heartbreaking to make a sub-par version of a dish; I think most cooks would rather come up with something off-menu to please a picky diner than to drastically alter an existing menu item. If you know your tolerance for a certain taste (salt, acid, sweet, etc) is low, make a note of it to your server before you order a dish so they can guide you toward certain menu items that may fit your palate better than others, as well as let the kitchen know your preferences.

- Mention your allergies and meat preferences right away. The dish may not list your particular allergen as one of the main ingredients, but there's only so much space on a menu to list descriptors. Your meat dish may have shrimp paste, your chicken dish may have lobster stock, your vegetable risotto may use chicken stock. If it's a very serious allergy, mention it when making your reservation.

- Make a reservation, especially for a party of five or more. It may be a slowish night, but a better prepared staff makes for a better experience for you. I'd like to put a big FAIL stamp on the foreheads of every douchebag who's wandered in with a party of eight 10 minutes before closing time. Even a quick call to the restaurant a few minutes before you show up can make all the difference to the kitchen staff.

- If you're in a hurry, let your server know. Your server can let you know what items are quicker to prepare than others, and will make a note of your limited time to the kitchen so they know they need to put priority on that ticket's timing. Oftentimes, especially on busy nights, the only logical way of managing tickets is to fire them in groups. That means the entrees for four tables may have been fired across a span of six minutes, but they'll be bunched together and come up at the same time. If there's a note on a ticket to rush a table, they'll get priority when it comes to timing.

- Don't camp if you can help it. Campers, by restaurant definition, are diners who linger for an unusually long period of time. No one likes to feel rushed when they're trying to relax, but there's a difference between that and staying an hour and a half after the restaurant has closed, thereby holding up your server, their manager, several cooks and the dishwasher. If you do plan on having a very leisurely dinner, do the following: 1. Come in early enough so that you're not keeping the restaurant open much longer after closing hours. 2. Let your server know you'll be staying a while so both the front-of-house and back-of-house staff will be prepared. 3. Pay your bill promptly when you receive it. And fer peet's sake, 4. TIP WELL.

- Don't get pissed when a table that sat down after you gets their food first. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Sure, you got there first, but they ordered a dish with a three-minute pickup time, and you're the one who ordered your steak medium-well. You should by all means say something to your server if you're legitimately concerned that you've been forgotten, but more often than not, it's thanks to the laws of physics that your dish takes longer to make than someone else's.

- Do I need to say it again? I think I do: TIP WELL. A lot of debate can be (and has been) had about this topic, especially because tipping is, technically speaking, optional in this country. Consider, however, that tips are a vast majority of a servers' wages, and that they give a percentage of their nightly tips to bartenders, server assistants, expediters and us kitchen monkeys. Also, keep in mind that servers have a keen memory for shitty tippers. Telling your server that your meal was amazing and you had a fabulous time is not enough... they're not waiting tables for the self-esteem, trust me.

Any other awesome diner tips I forgot?

It's the little things.

"Can we get some more grilled bread?"

Six thin slices of French baguette, drizzled in olive oil, grilled on both sides and stacked up neatly on a plate.

Such a simple request, right?

We've all been there--sitting at a table in a nice restaurant, chatting with your companions and trying your best to be patient while you wait for a simple request to be met. I admit I've had my moments where I've thought, 'What the hell is taking so long? It's just ____ (bread/condiment/drink/etc).'

Now imagine this: It's a Friday night, the house is packed, and you're on the hot line riding the insanity that is weekend dinner service. Your station is grill station, which really means grill and saute, as you're responsible for several appetizer and bar items as well as entrees, including temped-to-order meats. You've just put up seven hot appetizers and you're in the middle of a four-ticket entree pickup, with another three tickets trailing and six other tickets on hold.

You're juggling eight pans on six burners and your oven is stuffed with another four pans. The line expo is heating your plates for you in his oven because you have no space in yours. You have to remember the temps on the five steaks and three lambs you're getting ready to plate, and you're watching the starch carefully as you're running low and it's a special order grain that won't come in again until tomorrow. You haven't even started on the bar items that just came in, and your ticket time for your next app pickup is looking perilous.

The saute cook has a pan down for his scallops so you fire the "very rare" steak you've been holding off on until now. As you reach for the steak, you look at your resting rack to make sure you're on top of the items you have on fire, as well as the ones you have on hold. Your adrenaline-pumping heart jumps ten notches when you realize you're short one medium-well steak on this pickup--that medium you have on hold is now your medium-well and it goes straight into the pan with the rare. You have to remember to get another steak on for medium right after this pickup. Was it four mid-rares, two mediums and two mid-wells on hold or do you have your mid-rare and mid-well numbers switched?

You desperately need an all-day, and look to the line expo only to see him already beginning plate-up on the 12 plates that saute has going with your 10. You're cursing silently at your steaks to cook faster, goddamnit, and maneuvering pans around to make room to fly the sides going with that forgotten steak. Meanwhile, you're making sure your sets are hot, tasting and adjusting seasonings and keeping a mental timer on your proteins in the oven. While you're organizing the order of plating in your head, the digital timer goes off, beeping urgently to tell you the lamb racks you have on hold in the oven need to be pulled out and checked on. You turn your steaks before reaching into the 500 degree oven, and just barely brush your forearm against the screaming-hot oven rack. You literally hear your skin sear.

And then the front-of-house expo says to you, "Hey, table seven wants extra grilled bread for their charcuterie."

It's just a simple request.

Right?

Well-done ≠ Done Well?

Being on grill and saute station means I get the pleasure of cooking a shit-ton of steaks. I had a thought the other day: 'Have I cooked a thousand steaks yet?' It certainly feels like I have. If I'm not at a thousand yet, I think I'll be there soon.

It's tricky business, cooking meat to temperature order, and even trickier when your instrument for measuring doneness is your finger. Line cooks temp to touch, no thermometer in sight, and it takes a lot of practice to get it right. A LOT. There are so many factors affecting the touch: The cut of meat, the thickness, the temperature before it was cooked, how marbled or sinewy it is... getting it right is a challenge. But when you do, there's nothing quite like cutting into a steak and seeing the inside look exactly how you wanted and imagined it to look like. On busy nights, I tend to make audible "Wooo!"s and the occasional "Yeah, baby!" when I cut into and plate a particularly gorgeous piece of meat. Nerdy cook stuff, y'know.

I'd say the average temperature order we get for steaks is medium rare or medium. Medium-well comes in every now and then, and there are certainly folks who go for "bloody". I can see the appeal behind the Pittsburgh steak, aka "Black and Blue"--charred on the outside, rare on the inside. Personally, I like my steak a nice medium rare with a well-seasoned crustiness on the surface.

About two or three times a week, I get an order for a well-done steak. My immediate reaction is to look at the table number on the ticket and take a peek at the person who ordered the well-done. I try to put myself into their shoes; maybe it's how they grew up eating it, or they're old and set in their ways. Maybe they really enjoy chewing on shoe leather. Maybe (and this is usually my assumption) they get squeamish at the sight of the red (and wonderfully delicious, might I add) juices, which makes me sad that anyone has that much of a disconnect with the fact that they're eating an animal that gave it's life to provide us with a delicious piece of meat.

It's about as judgmental as I get from my side of the line.

As a grill cook, it's my job to make the food the way the customer wants it, and I do that to the best of my ability. When that well-done steak order comes in, I try and take as much care of that order as I do the medium-rare. There's certainly a way to cook a steak to well-done while still maintaining a relatively appealing appearance on the surface. But no matter how you slice it, per se, you're still cooking the shit out of a piece of meat, and it will be tough and chewy with not much in the way of taste, because that's what happens when you cook the shit out of a piece of meat.

Frankly, it breaks my heart to cook a beautiful cut of meat to a charred leather state. Temping a well-done steak to the touch is equally heartbreaking--touching a steak that has little to no give whatsover is kind of frightening. Every time I cut into a well-done steak, I get this pang of "OH GEEZ WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?" And then I quickly realize that someone asked me to do this on purpose, and that thought could possibly be even more disturbing than the initial pang of guilt. As I watch a person chew (and chew and chew and chew) on a well-done steak, all I can think is, 'Are they actually enjoying this?'

Judgmental much? Just a tad, I know.

In my attempt to maintain a sense of diplomacy and open-mindedness on this here blog o' mine, I'm hoping to hear from someone out there who actually enjoys their steak well-done, with an accompanying explanation. Maybe if your explanation makes enough sense to me, I'll cook you a well-done steak.

(But you're paying for it.)