[Sca-cooks] Understanding the kitchen

[Christine Seelye-King]

> Bryan Miller wrote a lovely piece about his estaj position in one of
> New York's finer restaurants. He, having realized that it had been a
> long time since he had been exposed in any way to back-of-the-house
> restaurant operations, talked his way into being the unpaid chef's
> apprentice who cleaned the mushrooms, as above, or some such
> position. He learned a lot both about restaurant operations, and also
> to attach the proper perspective to certain elements in a meal. In
> short, before bitching about something on a restaurant menu and
> asking, "How hard could it be?", he actually acquired some idea. He
> said it changed his life.
>
	I had a friend who liked cooking, but didn't take sanitation very
seriously.  We had a huge falling-out once when I was cooking in a kitchen
without much equipment, when I turned around to see him cleaning a chicken
by pulling the innards bag out with his teeth.  I yelled at him and was
thoroughly pissed off, and we didn't speak for several years.  Much later
(we were talking by then), he came up to me and said he wanted to apologize
to me.  He had taken a job in a kitchen to see what it was really like (he
had cooked for the SCA for years, but never worked in a professional
setting).  He only lasted a couple of days, and he made the same comment,
that it had changed his life.  He apologized for never taking my concern for
cleanliness seriously, and said that he understood a lot more of where I was
coming from now.  I was completely blown away, as it had been many years,
like I said.  Amazing how a few miles walked in another's shoes will give
you a different perspective, huh?
Christianna