kitchen communications. or, learning to speak 'kitchen'

in the course of a day a person hears a lot of words, thinks a lot of words, writes a lot of letters bunched up  with each other, and reads even more.

in kitchens we mince words, speak incomplete sentences, shout orders, and make clear, sharp points quickly. the concept is: listen the first time because i don't have time to repeat myself. sometimes communication is done without words, happens without opening our mouths. our hands communicate, our gestures speak volumes, our eyes admonish, our bodies teach, our body memory saves our lives, and those we work with.

patience. it's an unknown, a foreign word. a full explanation is gold, but not the traded kind, the sort found on a sunk ship, on the sea's bottom. recipes are scarce, methods are memorized, reasons are few. why is a word regarded with resentment, at best. no time for why. why is a word you have to take to the library on your day off. why is a word for those with enough money to go to culinary school. why? why takes time. minutes you don't have.  minutes you could use to go to the bathroom, breathe, take a gulp of water, pause.

sink or swim.

and we do a lot of sinking, and more treading water, hopeful. that our feet will reach sand. soon.

kitchens are about the now. about the i needs and the whens and the now, motherfuckers. maintenant. 'can i have that today, please?' kitchens are about economy. the economy of movement. the economy of words. the economy of thought, opinion and critique. choose your battles wisely, timely.

communication in staccato.

you better be good at morse, at braille, at seeing: using both eyes. hard.
you better have your blinders off.
except when you need them strapped to your head. tight.

kitchen communications are written in invisible ink, in shorthand; spoken in slang colloquial dialect vernacular jargon. kitchenspeak. kitchen-uendo.

that said, all over the world, there's only one language: kitchen.

graffitti.

if you speak it here, you speak it there. even when you're not speaking. once you learn kitchen you can never shake it. tattooed into your skin.

you smell a cook before you see her cooking. you see a cook even before you smell his sallow skin. you see scars, you hear invisible scars. you know.

look up passion. it means tortured.

*

I'm in a kitchen right now with a lot of 'green' cooks. They need a lot of care. A lot of 'hand-holding.' Way more than I would have been able to get away with. Ever. A lot of explaining needs to happen. While we will always have to repeat ourselves, {ad infinitum, in fact-- basically until a cooks gets so tired hearing us say the same thing over and over he will comply, merely out of annoyance!}, the management team (3 of us in total) find ourselves really frustrated by the simplest of basic pieces of information we barely remember learning ourselves. We're frustrated because it seems as though a lot of these cooks have been cooking for a little bit, but did not learn the universal language, kitchen, along the way.

This is not to say I don't remember learning as I was coming up: I do. More than most because I did not go to culinary school. I remember when and from whom I learned what an 'All Day' was. I was taught, the hard way, to use my towel every time I reached for a saute pan. {My partner placed a red hot cast iron plancha in the same stack as the 'cold' ones.}

But I don't remember anyone ever telling me not to call in sick. I remember a female line cook taking me aside and telling me how it was and would always be for female cooks. {"You will work twice as hard, and get 1/2 the recognition & pay."} I remember a sous chef telling me I had to choose between a lover or friends: that I would never have both and have this career.

I have seen a lot of marriages end. I have witnessed a lot of addictions flourish. I have seen a few miracles. I have tasted a lot of tears. I have talked to a lot of people from the edge of a bridge. Mine, theirs.

*

If cooking is your calling, I suggest you pick up the phone. And listen.

If no one is teaching you kitchen, allow me to school you.

~

If you're cooking in the kitchen of some famous chef's empire, but you are not learning, get the fuck out of there. You have no time to waste.

If you don't know how to properly give notice, whether as a dishwasher or a sous chef, ask someone who has been cooking longer than you. If you start burning bridges at the beginning you will have no way of getting to the next job, later. Remember: the worst reference of all is no reference. If you think you will never come across the people you are working with now, again, you are sorely mistaken. No matter how many thousands of miles you travel, I guarantee you you will work with someone who knows someone else you worked with. People talk. Reputations start getting built early.

Stick with the winners. Watch the cooks who do it better than you. Watch cooks who are more organized, work cleaner, are more efficient, have composure, can take criticism, are graceful. Watch. Hard. Study, yo. LEARN GOOD HABITS NOW. Think of it this way: it's easier to learn good habits now than get bad habits beaten out of you later.

Stop moaning, whinging, complaining, pouting. Have you ever babysat? A silent, resentful cook takes all the energy out of a room, a kitchen, team. You are no longer a child. You are not the most important person in the kitchen, even if you're the strongest. There are no cowboys in kitchens. Kitchens are teams, yo. If you're so strong, help someone who isn't. If you need so much attention that you will fuck up on purpose to get it, a good chef will weed you out and press eject. If you need help, ask for it like an adult. Passivity is annoying. Ask for what you need. Be direct. And if one cook says no one night, she might say yes the next, so keep asking. Sometimes the most noble bravery is vulnerability. 

Watch, listen, learn. TASTE. I can't stress watching enough. Memorize your station, and the station next to you. Inventory, taste EVERY PIECE OF YOUR MIS EN PLACE EVERY DAY, every night, every service. Even if you are the only one on your station. Even if you don't want to. Some ingredients/components just take a few hours to go off. If you serve bad food it's on you. Have INTEGRITY. And if you hate your job/menu/chef so much that you don't care to taste your m.e.p., leave. Please. You have no time to waste.

Read. Read the restaurant reviews in your town. Do Google searches on your place of work. Read what people are saying. Read about the cuisine you're serving. Read food magazines, cookbooks, food blogs, industry magazines. Just read. Please. Look up ingredients. Read about how ingredients are used in their native foods/cuisines/dishes/ceremonies. 

If you're allowed: eat where you work. Get perspective. Try eating something you serve, start to finish, with the utensil your front of house serve it with. If you don't want to eat the whole thing/a certain component, then it's a good bet your diners don't want to either.

Stage. If you have a day off, go to another kitchen. Go to another kitchen to watch, to look, to see something else, to hear something else, to smell something else. Use your days off well. The first day is for laundry & sleeping, but if you have another: study. Even if you don't have money to eat out, look at other menus. Surf the web and look at restaurant websites. I'm not the only chef blogging... Read, look, comment, ask questions. 

Shut up. Shut up and listen. "Yes Chef," or "Oui Chef" should be your only response to critique. You have another opinion? Save it for the bar after work. Save it for someone who cares.

Someone I worked with recently thanked me for my patience, my teaching, my explaining. She said she had none of these attributes. She told me how she 'teaches' in her kitchens.

"I say, 'This is unacceptable. This is how you do it. Any questions?'"

Remember that your response to critique/instruction informs your chef about how to talk to you the next time. If you don't respond to thoughtful instruction, but you change after being screamed at, you will surely be screamed at from then on out. If you're in a kitchen where the chef only screams and you can't learn in that environment, find another kitchen. But I warn you: this industry isn't nice and patient. If that's all you can handle, there will be a lot of kitchens you'll never be able to work in. Learn from.

Clean clean clean and then clean some more. You can never be too clean, too organized, too efficient. Learn how to use 2 side towels. Yes, I said two. Not twenty. Try keeping your whites white. Whether butchering or making chocolates. It comes back to integrity. It comes back to sticking with the winners. You want to be fast? Be good first. Work clean, work efficiently, move with purpose, with grace. Look up the word INTENTIONAL if you don't know what it means. If you don't know how to practice it. Speed will come. I promise you. But if you're moving really fast, and you're a fucking mess, then you're not doing a very good job. You're no one I want to promote. You're no one I look up to. You're no one to judge.

Pay attention. Look beyond yourself, your station, your job. Attempt to see yourself as part of the whole. I know it's hard. It's impossible when you're first starting out.

Be ACCOUNTABLE. Learn the word accountability. Take responsibility for your actions, your inactions, your lies, your mistakes, your commis' mistakes, your cooks' mistakes, your achievements, your fears, your strengths, your weaknesses. You didn't order enough? Say sorry but do more than sorry. You think only about yourself? Open your eyes and pay attention to/support the cooks you work with/for/next to. Your station is never set up? You can't figure out how to keep it clean or leave it clean for the next cook? Stay late. be receptive to learning.

Ask questions. Ask how to be better. Ask questions silently. Go to work every day with a question and get it answered at the end of every shift, even if you can not utter it aloud.

Be better today than you were yesterday.
Every day.

Become versatile. Think you're great on saute? Grill? Come in on  your day off and work in pastry. learn your voids. Fill your gaps. Dive into what you're afraid of. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MOST SKILLED PEOPLE IN YOUR KITCHEN. Volunteer to butcher. Apprentice the gnocchi making sous chef. CHALLENGE YOURSELF.

~

In the kitchen where I work now the chef is bringing in whole animals. You know what the crime is? NOT A SINGLE COOK HAS ASKED TO LEARN TO BREAK THESE ANIMALS DOWN. What the fuck are they waiting for? A formal invitation? Come on now. Are you serious? I can count on one hand the kitchens I've worked in that have brought in whole animals.

What else?
What 'schooling' have you received?
What am I forgetting?
What did you learn that has stayed with you through the days, the hours, the years, the grueling jobs, the awful kitchens, the shoe-maker chefs?
What do you teach your cooks?
What do you pass on?
What do you wish you never learned?
What's indispensable?

*

I'll leave you with these words, which I recently submitted & collected from my friends & colleagues on Facebook ~

Urgency, Communication, Responsibility, Finesse, Listening, Accountability, Organization, Humility, Mindful, Efficient, Receptive, Critical, Questioning, Curiosity, Taste, Common Sense, Empathy, Resourcefulness, Creativity, Consistency, Fearlessness, Self-Critical, Levity, Focus, Grounded, Preparedness {aka Mental mis-en-place}, Humor, Taste Memory...

*

If you're in the wrong kitchen, I urge you to leave. If you're not learning, I urge you to find a kitchen, a city, a cuisine you can learn in/from. If you can't afford culinary school, don't go. You have a myriad of options.

I can't possibly be the only chef passionate about teaching, about apprenticing, about sharing.

I can't possibly be the only chef who believes these words with all her might.

Remember, know this:

we can only keep what we have, by giving it away.

Comments

[Carri]

'behind you' two of the most important words uttered in the kitchen, so many disasters could have been averted if only those words had been used.

[Jess]

Shuna! You have completely blown me away this morning. This post is inspiring and inspired. Thank you for the peek into your world. I would so love to see you in action. Wait, I think I just did.

[Molly]

An essential read for any aspiring chef. Thank you!

[Victoria]

Yikes. For a person who cooks at home - granted with great passion - this sounds sooooooo different. I get to cook slowly, with great deliberation, for people who always cheer me on.

I'm leaving town for two weeks, but when I get back after spending five days cooking for a bunch of skiers - breakfast, packed lunches, and dinners - I'm heading to 10 Downing Street first chance I get.

Glad to have you back writing a little more regularly. As Michael Ruhlman said, you are the amazing Eggbeater.

[Maggie]

Thank you for taking the time to write this—many, many people will read, ponder, and come back to this post again and again.

[Yogi]

Shuna, this is a recipe for success in LIFE, not just kitchens.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yogi

[Lib]

WOW! I have not tasted your food, so I cannot attest to your skill as a chef;but you sure can write and teach and inspire. Saturday will find me in my kitchen cleaning and organizing then trying a new recipe.

Keep writing - I'll keep reading.

[Lauren]

"Attempt to see yourself as part of the whole." You're right about this being nearly impossible for new cooks.

Will print this out and read it at the end of those especially hard shifts.

[Kevin]

Un-f---ing believable. Much more inspiring than
hear your meat guy say, "My day off is never
long enough."

[Hilda]

I totally agree with Yogi, just insert the appropriate words for whichever industry or just life, and this is the best advice ever. Regarding how to answer the chef: I was watching a show on the UK food network and a Chef had given a group of culinary students a bunch of things to do very quickly. One of them was being particularly slow, mostly because he visibly wasn't into it, and when the chef told him he was making his (the chef's) life miserable, the student answered "I could say the same about you chef." I had to look around for my jaw on the floor after that. He was told off in no uncertain terms (and the chef was a really big guy too, muscularly big) and I'm sure the only reason he wasn't just kicked out of the kitchen was because they had to get a lot of food ready really fast. But I don't have the first clue what that guy is doing in culinary school. He is going to get his ass handed to him in a trash can next time.

[Alessio]

I think I am speechless. Just like from a waterfall, this is how your words have hit me. It's the first time I see somebody so passionate about cooking and sharing. Sharing is a great word that to me is synonymous of humility and reciprocity.
Don't really know why, but my eyes got wet at the end of the post... Might it be because of all the energy you have just transmitted us?
I wanted just to say thanks!
BTW I'd love to learn to break down those whole animals.

[Abigail Blake]

A stunning and inspiring piece of writing. Thank you.

[Jeremy]

Here I am waiting for a party, and I can't finish this post but I will, maybe at home durnig the storm while baking some bread?
But it's like memory lane!

Jeremy

[anna]

Heh, this is my life right now. I am quickly learning to be faster, more accurate...my first week in a real kitchen has taught me so much more than six months in school did. Lucky for me I work alongside a very encouraging pastry chef, and even though I mucked up a few things and got yelled at for each of them the other night, she still said I was doing better than the previous nights.

If you'll excuse me, I have to practice my quenelles. AGAIN.

[Brooke]

The number of people I could show this to in the classes I'm taking, and have it mean something, is astounding. Like Yogi said, this is so much more than just the kitchen.

Thank you again and again for sharing.

[meg]

yes, chef.

[ScottyB]

I agree with Yogi and Brooke, this is for life. Hugely inspirational and directly applicable to my software career.

I chose programming over cooking and went to college. For the past 10 years I've regretted not trying harder to pursue life in the kitchen instead of life in front of a computer. I am now motivated to see what I can do about that. Thanks.

[Blue]

I've worked in the restaurant industry since I was a teenager. Usually I'm in the front of the house as a server but have often been in the kitchen to run food or expedite and have helped with small things behind the line. Whether you're in the back of the house or in front of it the language of kitchen is essential and I love how much emphasis you put on it here. A good employee of any restaurant should know it so that they can jump in and lend a hand in the kitchen when needed. Whether to be able to grab a quickly diminishing ingredient from the walk-in to help out a line chef in the weeds or to help organize and expeditite tickets if you're short staffed and have no permanent person doing so for the night. Whether you're in there all night or running in and out from the dining room a high functioning kitchen is a thing to marvel at, a well oiled machine. I am amazed every night I am there that more disasters and collisions don't occur and I often marvel at our collective ability to become almost psychic when maneuvering around each other and assisting another colleague in need. That being said I ABSOLUTELY agree with Carri's post and the incredible importance of the phrase "behind you". I find myself saying it wherever I am... and you can always tell the ones who know its origin from the ones who don't.

[James Rugile]

Shuna...You're a fucking rockstar. I love your outlook and interpretation and straight-forwardness in your writing. You're writing things every cook worth their salt should be reading. Kudos.

[Cynthia]

"Watch, listen, learn. TASTE." that translates to Pay Attention with all your senses.
I'll say it ONCE and before the sentence is complete, the brain has skipped ahead to the next 1000 things to do. My work kitchen is not a playground.
I am focused and I am abrupt. The teaching kitchen is demonstration and another realm. Shuna, I am lol and loving this post.

[artjackson]

This is great. If I still had a knife box, I would print this out and keep it in there. Now I have an iphone and will keep it there.

[Lou Sgroi]

I work in a hospital kitchen in KC and apprentice under the chef there. It is great to read so much stuff that it takes years to learn in just one scroll down your blog- you are a cool chef. Lou

[Alysten]

Thank you. You have captured the heart of a very important lesson that some chefs never learn.

[Chou]

Thank you for the lesson. And thank you for showing the emotion/pace/feel of a kitchen through your writing.

[Alex Lincoln]

I thought this was a great post. These are all things I try to get through to my crew, I just haven't been eloquent enough to put it into words. I have already had all of my kitchen staff read it, and got a nice response. That's for the motivating, and inspiring thoughts.

[Eve]

Yes! I've been in a restaurant kitchen nine months now, and I found myself nodding along to your points. I'm going to send this post to our new GM, fresh from culinary school, who's having a really hard time figuring out the language of the kitchen. The tao of the kitchen, maybe.

Also, I just read on TastingTable that you're at 10 Downing. After reading your blog for a couple of years now, I can't wait to try your desserts!

[donna]

i needed this.
thank you.

[Alex Lincoln]

Here are a couple emails I received from a couple of my younger kitchen guys after I forwarded your last post to them. I thought you may like to know that your writing is not falling on deaf ears.

#1, a guy that used to work for me and wants to come back:

Hey man,
that is some deep and very true shit. reading this makes me think about some much and how awsome it is to work in a kitchen. Your team in a kitchen is like a family and you all need to work together to make it a succes. There is so much to learn and i feel like i have learned so little. That is y i want to work under u again, Like it said in the blog, if you arent learning than find a kitchen where u can learn. I mad a mistake wheni left there. I know that under you i will learn some thing new every day and that every day u will make sure i learn something because you love teaching. Reading this makes me think about how much better i can be. Thanks for sending me this i will call you tomorrow or the next day and talk to you bout it. keep sending me things if you find any other cool things i will send you stuff to if i find things. k i will talk to you later man.

#2, a guy that is my brightest young star:

This was a great e mail one of the best you have sent me thank you chef

Shuna, thank you for putting into words, what I have been trying to convey to these guys. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work.

[Camille]

Thank you for posting this!! I have moved to a new city and am having a hard time finding a job. I have been feeling like giving up on the industry but your post gives me new hope that people like you exist.

[Robert]

amazing.....

[JARED BECKER]

HEARD.

[Roger P]

Thanks you very much-great Blog

It is good to see you share a part of yourself

I very much apprecite the comment: "you can only keep what we have, by giving it away"

[Stephanie]

Thank you for this. I have recently found myself struggling with trying to be "part of the whole" after 6 months, and I feel a little burned out but still enjoy what I do very much. I will come back to your words again and again.

[tish]

"If you're cooking in the kitchen of some famous chef's empire, but you are not learning, get the fuck out of there. You have no time to waste." - Thank you, that's cleared up any doubt I've had about leaving a job, and not feel bad about leaving (since there never is a good time to quit, in the eyes of the chef). And thank you also for the other article, how to give notice.
And thank you for all the things female cooks need to hear from another female cook, but there are rarely any around to look up to.

[Chris]

Thanks for this. I found it from a link someone posted at the Natural Gourmet Institute's blog. I'm considering going there in a few months. I've never worked in a restaurant or with food and was wondering if I could hack it.

Your post was a shock to the system—a much-needed dose of reality about how hard it will be.

But, it was also inspiring and made me realize how much satisfaction can come from learning and doing with skill, intention, and a desire to constantly grow and improve. After working for many years in the unrewarding, uninspiring world of advertising, I am tantalized by the idea of being in a place, a field, an industry, a kitchen that motivates me to push forward and be better everyday. I have no illusions now about it being easy. But despite the slight terror I feel, I feel oddly excited, more intent on following through and making certain I learn the language of kitchen so I can be more than just proficient in the kitchen.

Your post makes me want to start working out daily so I can be both mentally and physically strong when I embark on this adventure. It makes me want to get some practice with mindfulness so I can be focused, clear, and in the moment when I'm in a fast-paced, balls-out kitchen. It makes me want to scrub my own kitchen from top to bottom. It makes me want to be a better person, so I can be a team member my kitchen-mates will be glad to have around.

Thanks for all the words. Thanks for all the inspiration. Thanks for the reality.

Chris-- thanks for finding, for reading, for commenting & for seeing. Really seeing. Now it's time for the doing. Are you sure you need to go to culinary school? ~ shuna

[Dave]

Finesse is the word that I am most drawn to. Not because I am drawn to it in any way, but because its probably hardest to achieve, but when you do....its something magical