Opening A Restaurant: faith.

**Please read this disclaimer about this post first.**   

    is it possible to cry from gratitude?

how come I don't know where all the tears are coming from?

what is it that keeps us going even when we are frustrated? worn out? wrung dry?

who are we when pushed against a wall?

.

    how come october is full of death and the memory of death?

do the dead visit?

have you been visited by someone gone?

.

    how is respect in another gained?

can you respect someone whose belief in themselves is a mirage for others to see?

can you teach someone to love and respect themselves with your own admiration for them?

how do you tell your fearless leader they are not leading, just having a temper-tantrum?

/

    how do you put on a happy face when you're not?

can patience be taught? encouraged?

.

how come cooks have lost the ability to finesse? take initiative?

        stop telling me no one else but me has my work ethic.

if culinary schools are producing hordes of graduates every few weeks, how come there are no line cooks? where are the line cooks who want to be restaurant chefs one day?

.

    where does inspiration come from? is it concrete or steam?

can inspiration be squashed?

how come it's so {god damned} fickle?

/

    how often does someone feel threatened by you tell you so?

what if there are two menus in one restaurant and their styles don't match? is it a coin toss that decides the fate of one chef over the other?

how often has someone said that you're food is better than theirs and they are looking to you to make theirs better? how often do they mean it? what percentage of humility does it take for someone to admit such a thing?

.

                it was better when I knew nothing. no one. when I worked with no goal except to get the job done. that day, that shift.

I'm lying.

and I'm not.

it's the fence we straddle. the dark that keeps us up at night, images invading our dreams, designed to make us worry over every detail, every spoken sentence, and every sentence stopped by a bitten tongue.

we fret. we smooth out. we rumple and we fight. we argue with unspoken sentences and battle it out with broken, mended and overblown egos.

I know who I am.

but it doesn't make it any easier.

I know who I don't want to be. not anymore, at any rate.

I know where my experience lies, and I am no longer afraid to say it.

/

years ago I was going through a period of time crushingly difficult.
my friend Irene said something plain to me,

"if you need some extra faith I can spare some. feel free to borrow some of mine, if you need it."

            I'm glad it's in the bank.

.

Today marks week 8.
    and my second official day off.

Comments

[Anita]

Congrats on finding a restaurant job (and a startup at that) where you actually get whole days off! :)

>>if culinary schools are producing hordes of graduates every few weeks, how come there are no line cooks? <<

Haven't you heard? They're all gunning for sous at the least, if not a spot on TV. :P

[Brian]

"I'm lying and I'm not."

I know what you mean. I find it just comes down to: self-discovery means things that were subconscious become conscious, which gives you choice.

"Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual."

"Who has choice, has torment."

The funny thing about choice is you can't choose it away, like, it'd be so much easier if I didn't know any better. But you do know better. And you can't choose to forget.

Like being an ex-smoker. I'm glad for the experience; I feel wiser for having smoked and quit than not at all, but it means every time I'm out for drinks and someone lights up it takes real work to resist, even now, 5 years later, and probably always will.

Fortunately, all it means is hard work, and there's nothing wrong with working hard. You don't seem averse to it, anyway, and that seems like a good thing.

I'll be in San Francisco the last week of October and I am going to come to Sens for dinner. I'm really looking forward to it.

[Richie]

Its true...cooks are hard to come by. People in this industry are so cook to label people that try to push others to a new level as "asshole" or "bitch." I wonder if culinary schools are trying to produce touchy feely food network types, instead of the next Keller, or even Ramsay (minus the hokey tv shows.) So when do all these posts get published together as a book?