I’m out of the restaurant business but like an amputee with ghost pains in a long gone limb, I feel the pull to dive back in. I don’t miss the ass kicking and the stress of the lifestyle, but I do miss the people and the adrenaline rush of the rush, and the inevitable excuse to indulge after going through the rush. I don’t miss the four walls covered in stainless steel and grease from the fryers. I don’t miss the two ton beast of a stove that used to serve as my enemy and my best friend, in the some of the worst times of my life and great company in the best of them as well. What I do miss is my friends and the ingredients they would bring from home. I miss standing in the prep line kitchen eating tacos off a cutting board with salsa roja and lime juice running down my chin. I miss eating my dinner sitting on a empty beer keg, six feet away from the dumpster and four feet away from the grease trap. I miss all the deep conversations about life and some conversations not so deep about life in a thirty-two degree metal box call a “walk-in”, man if those twenty-five pound wheels of romano could talk. I miss the twelve hour marathon shifts in front of a 600 degree wood fired grill and then going home and practicing my knife skills on a bag of potatoes. I miss the great ingredients that we had to “throw away” and what those ingredients made for meals at home on days off. I miss walking into the farmers market before a shift with my chef coat on and all the freebies the vendors would give to me and the endless possibilities as to what I could create. I miss the identity that I had as a chef. I know that at the core of my being somehow being a chef runs a lot deeper that your chef coat. I don’t miss food cost. I don’t miss watching the ball drop on new years eve sitting at the bar, with my skin burning from the degreaser . I do miss being the last to leave and enjoying a glass of wine in a dark, silent restaurant. There is something hallowed about a place that for the majority of it’s exsistance is fast paced and chaotic, being, in contrast dark and void of a single soul. Think of times square with out the people and traffic. I miss seeing the raw ingredients come in the back door that morning and following them through the prep kitchen and then to the main line and finally to the guests plate. I miss espresso and a bowl of biscotti cereal in the morning. I miss how sweet it was to get out early on a Indian summer evening , to go get a bottle of wine and some take out and fall asleep infront of the TV watching iron chef , of course. I miss the sweet release of stress after sixteen hours in the trenches, at a dive bar with a pitcher of beer in front of me, no cup, pure bliss. I miss saying “good morning “ to everybody I see coming in for my shift, even though it’s after 1pm. I miss trade outs with other restaurants for dinner. I don’t miss guests who don’t know how to eat at a restaurant. I don’t miss using restaurant language to confuse my friends family, cause I still do it. I do miss speaking restaurant language and being understood. I miss the bonding we used to do by making jokes about the new guy on the back dock. I miss all the crazy hazing and pratical jokes we used to play on each other. I miss spending most of my shifting laughing my ass off. I don’t miss the constant stream of espresso, coffee, and other energy drinks that I would have to drink to “get up” for a shift and “stay up” until that shift ended. I can’t decide if I miss drunken guests, because on one hand they were assholes and on the other they can be much needed entertainment at the tail end of a shift. I miss the restaurant sponsored Thanksgiving dinners at my home. I miss how incredibly comfortable a pair of chef pants and a hanes t-shirt can be. I miss the hum of the hoods. I don’t miss having to sautée vegetables in a cast iron skillet with onehand, my wrists still hurt(no joke). I don’t miss the front of the house ringing in the whole restaurant at the same time. I do miss the drinks in Styrofoam cups from the bar at the end of a grueling shift on the line. I miss how good it felt to run the pass on a night when we were busy but nothing went wrong. I miss being so good that I could cook the orders coming in and prep my dinner at the same time. I miss staff lunches with the prep crew. I don’t miss calluses on my knife hand from literally chopping all day. I miss using the wood fired pizza oven for everything but pizza.But most of all, I miss the people and living life with one another, one ticket ,one shift, and one meal at a time.
