The most important thing.

photo by mark linthicum

What do you think is the most important thing for a restaurant to have? Great ingredients? A passionate staff? Nice cooking equipment? A great wine list? Caring but discreet service? Clean bathrooms?

The answer is yes. And no. Of course you need all these components to make things work. But what a restaurant, and more specifically, a kitchen needs is great communication--on all levels. Let me explain:

(I'm not very good at math, so please excuse my poor algebra.) 90db noise + hot, cramped kitchen + a group of people that don't speak
the same language + intense pressure = a perfect storm of poor
communication. The Chef needs to be communicating with the sous chef who needs to be communicating with all of the cooks and prep cooks and dishwashers who in turn need to communicate among each other so they can go back and communicate with the sous chef who will communicate with the Chef. It's a whirlpool of nouns and verbs and lines like "so like fuckin, the fuckin peppers are fuckin from yesterday, and fuckin, they like, look, like, fuckin kinda beat." Decoding the essential information takes more brainpower than a chess match.

The thing that makes communication so important (and difficult) is that rarely is one piece of information more important than the other. How much fish you ordered--the AM shift needs to know about that. The nozzle on the hose in the dish pit is leaking--the sous chef needs to know about that. There are only 9 chicken left--the front of house needs to know about that. But wait! The am sous chef ordered squab, and its already been prepped--the Chef and the sous chef and the front of house need to know that. And that fish special has been coming back to the dish pit with plates almost full all night--the whole kitchen needs to know about that. Add to this the constant chatter between stations during service, the Chefs critiques on the plates coming out, or the GM letting you know that a food critic just sat upstairs, and you've got a lot of information flying around.

What serves us in the Nopa kitchen is that we all speak the same language--and I dont mean English or Spanish. We all understand the timing on the food, and what exactly "five minutes!" means. (in my experience, a minute in a kitchen is never actually a minute) The sautee cook knows what I mean when I say "watch your color" and the grill cook know what i mean when I point at his grill while he's plating. When it's all clicking, it's a special thing to watch.

photo by mark linthicum

HOMEWORK.
i used to give new cooks homework. culinary terms to look up. articles to read. places to eat. it's interesting, how many cooks think the job ends when they leave the kitchen. sure, cooks like to look at (not read) cookbooks, and sure, they like to eat out...but how much information is being absorbed there? there is no way to grow if you're only focused on whats going on where you work. having said that, there is really no way to grow if you're only focused on the type of cuisine you cook. (i had a duck dish at slanted door that would probably have been more at home on chez panisse's menu, and it was inspiring.) get together with your fellow cooks, trade books and articles, and eat out as much as you can. just dont drink too much.

notes:

• im trying to write, but this vice-presidential debate is making me want to stab myself in my eyeballs
• sundays. they're never, ever fun.
• "she looks like a cross between maggie gyllenhall and john goodman." "she looks like she's spent a lot of time in tents."
• moleskine. why did i not have one before?
• my wife sings bad country music while she cooks
• two quarts of asahi might be too much
• bloodsugarsexmagik on rock band. hells yes.
• what the hell is a shlada?

the flat top at dotties. yum

you've been warned

al's got links.