kitchen nightmares

Once upon a time, an overly confident twenty-two-year-old cook with stars in her eyes and delusions of grandeur interviewed for a job far beyond her experience and nailed it, based on the confidence a fake pair of glasses gives as well as an “exquisite” portobello mushroom risotto made for the higher-ups of a quite famous catering and events company. It was a damn good risotto, though gaining a ‘Chef de Cuisine’ gig at such a tender age due to the ability to cook very well is just laughable: what an irresponsible hiring process! I was a kitchen baby – only working line positions since the age of seventeen – and here I was being ushered into the big leagues thanks to well-seasoned rice, gumption, and charm.

In my vaingloriousness I rolled into that job like a boss, with the over-inflated confidence not dissimilar to that of a 28-year-old white tech guy working in Silicon Valley. I strode my cocky-ass into that kitchen with what I felt were proper amounts of shit-giving, shit-talking, and exaggerated tough-guy attitude. I lied when asked if I knew how to X-Y-Z, then secretly, fervently searched Google or YouTube on how to X-Y-Z enough to pass the daily tests.

Within my first couple of weeks of the job, I was told that I’d be put on a plane in the coming days to HQ – the flagship of this major global entity being at Hollywood and Highlands, Los Angeles proper, to observe how things were done in the company and help out with a large, VIP event. I strut into that kitchen like some hotshot, sticking my chin out and probably putting out some of the most unlikable confidence a new manager can have. The chef of this giant greeted me warmly, but I couldn’t help but notice the eyebrow lift to his sous chef as I was this super cute, 5’4″ tall baby with the exaggerated swagger of an immortal god. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear that the chef team took bets on how long I’d last in my new role, I know I would’ve if I came across that young cocky attitude of mine in the line of duty; it’s terribly obnoxious.

Imagine the tidal wave of embarrassment when, within the first hour of my first kitchen shift with these industry giants to ‘learn the ropes’, I lopped off my whole finger nail. The whole damn thing.

I was showing off (and not killing it by the way) when I was chop-chop-chopping my way through a stack of bell peppers to get a beautiful julienne, and I pulled the most rookie cut one can make in the kitchen – I somehow positioned my left index finger right under my 8″ Wusthof blade and took my fingernail right off from quick to tip with the pepper slice. I was so painfully gross in my know-it-all bullshit that no one followed me to the sink to check on me, nor a follow to the empty stairwell outside the kitchen to take a gander at my bloody paw wrapped in a rough kitchen towel. Alone, I bawled my eyes out. The humiliation was a massive humbling shift of consciousness, and it was traumatic enough to still give me some heebie-jeebies when I have to slice a red bell pepper twenty years later.

Soon enough someone did come check on me, and clucked and cooed about slapping some duct tape on it and getting back to work, where it was hinted that a touch of humility could go a long way. Upon re-entering the kitchen to some smirks, I became resolute in just showing up, keeping my mouth shut, and losing the strut. When you project you have nothing to learn, it turns out that no one will want to teach you.

Thankfully word of my shame didn’t follow me back to Seattle and I approached the kitchen with a chip knocked off my shoulder. Unfortunately for me however, the inflated ego, inexperience, and hubris were still deeply intact.

In this kitchen I managed a cafe as well as a catering company which now presents as a global brand. Back in the day though it was almost like my own catering company, I wrote the menus and executed them.

One day I had a meeting with a newly engaged couple, who arrived with their parents and my event planner to set a menu for their upcoming nuptuals in our event space. The bride had Hispanic roots, and the groom was Italian; one of their biggest requests was that I honor both their heritages in the wedding reception feast, which was to be a buffet dinner for roughly 200 guests.

The creative gears in me whirled on, ideas and flavor combinations exploding with my voice, painting a rich canvas vibrant with technical feats and crowd-pleasing pictures. I set to work writing a truly stunning menu with vibrant salads, pasta, homemade tortillas, custards and tres leches tiramisu mash-ups.

This all sounds well and good to you now, but imagine pitching a creamy queso fresco and roasted poblano pepper filling for house-made agnolotti pasta.

This is a twirly, hand-rolled, delicate pasta shape with a custom filling.

On an open buffet.

For 200 hungry Hispanic/Italian party people who love food.

What could go wrong!

My Sous Chef listened warily as I did the math on how much filling, how many pasta sheets, and how many individual pieces of agnolotti we’d need. Once we started going over 50#, I realized, with a sinking dread, what exactly this menu would mean for me and my team. I picture that young me in that scary moment looking like Laura Linney as she sees a dinosaur for the first time in the movie “Jurassic Park:’ mouth agape, the shock and trembling disbelief radiating off of her. Before that moment I only saw my vision with not one thought to the pain of production. My Sous Chef took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. We had four days to create close to 100# of homemade pasta, at least 1200-1400 individual agnolotti pastas with at least 9 gallons of custom filling that included roasting and cleaning probably 30# of fresh poblano peppers.

In the kitchen world, this is known as a major dick move.

Worse yet, per the company credo, all pasta had to be made in-house from scratch, and the person in charge of its production was our pastry chef, a consistently frazzled woman – a literal team of one. We needed those pasta sheets; only she could make them, but we were on her time. Despite my protests and begging she made it clear that when she had time, we’d get our sheets. Of course, she couldn’t get to them until the day before the wedding.

As you could guess, that was my first 24-hour work shift. I began that day at 6:00 am, and I did not come home until the following morning to essentially shower, make coffee, then go back to work to execute this wedding. Together, my team of four people stood around an 8-foot table without a break that whole time, and still only managed to make about 20# worth of agnolotti. I didn’t even write a vegetable to lean on in the dish, the only star of the show was the pasta. The only thing we could do before firing the rest of the food for the event was throw our hands up, place the specialty pasta at the end of the buffet line, and hope it wouldn’t get immediately crushed.

Exhausted, pained, and delirious, we set the room and plugged all the hot food into the chafing dishes, my general manager patting me on the back for an exemplary job, telling me how everything looked beautiful while I shook with anxiety and weariness. My kitchen team decided to keep it quiet that for all those people we had a mere four pans of one of their main entrees, around two pieces per person, conservatively.

You don’t have to be a mind-reader to know that the serving staff couldn’t keep up with the buffet and excited guests slammed through all the pasta within twenty minutes. No more than a quarter of the guests had full plates and the rest started murmuring about the lack of food. I died inside, my spirit crumpling to the shame and horror when I finally told my overwhelmed buffet captain that no, there was no more pasta.

General Manager entered the kitchen enquiring about the hold up, as the bride and groom hadn’t eaten yet. Oh sweet Jesus, the bride and groom! The shame came in waves. I sadly explained that there was no more pasta, that we could do double pans of the chicken and heat more rolls, but all that beautiful pasta was no more. Over twenty-four hours of grueling cutting, crimping, and rolling: demolished within minutes.

She grilled me on quantities and I gave her my prep list – only, with trembling and shot nerves, I pointedly left out the part where we didn’t even get to a third of what we needed. She read my notes and was satisfied that well, some parties are just big eaters and if they went through it all, that’s on them. I remained quiet, locking eyes with my sous chef who just shook his head with pursed lips, also now dedicated to this lie.

Despite running out of the showcase pasta, we received high praise for the event and I took the rest of the weekend off to tremble like a cold chihuahua in peace. I learned the hard way the incredibly valuable lesson of knowing when to rein it in and when to splurge. That single wedding remains in my professional memory like a sticky pearl in an oyster; I’ve grown around it and made peace with it over the years, but I’ll never be able to let it go.