On the Line

“On the line”… three simple words that have come to encapsulate the intensity and thrill our current culture associates with the professional culinary scene. Maybe you have seen this phrase recently on the cover of Eric Ripert’s bestselling memoir of life in the kitchen at Le Bernadin. The “line” is the position of performance where, we believe, each cook works out his or her culinary destiny. I have waited nearly two months to write on this topic, hoping that if I waited long enough, I might be able to write with an insider’s perspective. I have peeled toward that pinnacle moment when I, too, would be thrust “on the line.”

And then one day it happened. I came trotting out of the back prep room during lunch service with parsnips for the steamer. I opened the oven door, moved out of the sauce chef’s way, grabbed a pan for the fish chef, threw a cube of garlic butter into a small sauce pot at the garnish chef’s command, put two cubes of blanched swede under the broiler, lifted a pile of sautéed potatoes into a little white dish and somehow just kept cooking for the rest of lunch. It was brilliant; without doubt, the most exhilarating moment of the past two months. But something inside of me changed that day … and in the 54th hour of slicing potatoes late Saturday night, the smiling stage, once more than happy to tie up her apron and tackle a crate of spuds, had been replaced with a pouting spinach-picker speechifying to herself about the hundreds of Euros she was paying to work like a Mexican in the washroom at Chapter One.*

As life would have it, the story I had fantasized about writing all week was now shrouded by a guilt complex featuring frustration and self-reproach. Stumbling home Saturday night, I read the banner I pass every day picturing Brian O’Driscoll the famous rugby player, “Be Seen. Be a Difference.”
“Ha!” I thought without pause. “It’s the people you never see, who make the real difference.” And then I saw it … what was really “on the line.”

There is something about the way we glamorize the culinary profession that often jeopardizes the very core of its mission. Great cooking does occur at the crossroads of Science, Craft and, occasionally, even Art. But under all the TV shows and fancy, hardbound cookery books, beneath the empires of successful restaurants, food halls and product lines, even after months in experimental kitchens and doctorates in Gastronomy; it remains the “Hospitality and Service Industry.” The thing we most love to do with our hands is bound, at least in part, to the essential and intimate human need for nourishment.

Every night Chapter One hosts over 100 people – some for the first time, some for the zillionth time. But whether their face is foreign or familiar, they are welcomed and fed as an honored guest at the family reunion. The day that a cook in this kitchen can no longer roll up his sleeves and appreciate working hard to feed, is the day that part of his capacity to enjoy his profession has died.

*I thought about editing out the crudités of my attitude that night, but decided the direct quote would be simpler and more sincere in the end.