buttons. But who's actually cooking your food? Are they young,
ambitious culinary school grads, putting in their time on the line until
they get their shot at the Big Job? Probably not. If the chef is anything
like me, the cooks are a dysfunctional, mercenary lot, fringe-dwellers
motivated by money, the peculiar lifestyle of cooking and a grim pride.
They're probably not even American.
Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It's a high-speed
collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance. A properly
organized, fully loaded line cook, one who works clean, and has
"moves"—meaning economy of movement, nice technique and, most
important, speed—can perform his duties with Nijinsky-like grace. The
job requires character—and endurance. A good line cook never shows up
late, never calls in sick, and works through pain and injury.
What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is
not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the
most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that,
presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line
cooking—the real business of preparing the food you eat—is more about
consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of
tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.
The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with
ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and
presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back
and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield
conditions.
A three-star Italian chef pal of mine was recently talking about why he—
a proud Tuscan who makes his own pasta and sauces from scratch daily
and runs one of the best restaurant kitchens in New York—would never
be so foolish as to hire any Italians to cook on his line. He greatly prefers
Ecuadorians, as many chefs do: "The Italian guy? You screaming at him
in the rush, 'Where's that risotto?! Is that fucking risotto ready yet?