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I have written about cooks, chefs, and wait staff, but have given no love to those who wash and scrub the dishes and mop the floors.
So here is an ode to those with dish pan hands.
They come in all different shapes and sizes, all kinds of diverse backgrounds, many don’t stay in one place for a long time, and many use the dish room as a stepping stone onto the cook’s line, but there are individuals who strive to be professional dishwashers.
I know there are some of you out who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of a restaurant (consequently you have me to enlighten you), but if you can imagine 8 hours of washing plates, bowls, cups and silverware, scrubbing pots and pans, washing everything the cook can find in the kitchen, cleaning the restrooms, bussing tables, spraying down the rubber mats, vacuuming the floor in the dining room, sweeping and mopping the kitchen, climbing up on the stoves to get the grease filters from the vents, and carrying bus tubs full of dishware all day; all for minimum wage; then you just imagined a day that the genius ponders and the insane laments.
They are called by many names-dish dogs, pearl divers, burros, dish rats and sanitation engineers, but whatever moniker we attach to their service, the restaurant, would not run efficiently without them. They are the back bone of the industry, sometimes working harder and making less than everybody else.
Ask any self respecting chef about their dishwashers, and they will tell you they feed them well and they treat them with love and esteem, because if they walk out- guess who has to do the dishes?
I wrote in the beginning of a sequence of essays on foodservice employees that I would communicate the world of our profession to the general public. Since then I have written about chefs, dishwashers, chain restaurants, and corporate interference in the workplace. I still want to cover the hardest job-the server-but that will be another time.
Here I am going to share two stories about two owners that I had the pleasure and pain of working for in the early 90’s.
Owner #1
Ken was a hard, no nonsense, do-it-my way owner. He expected the best and did not suffer fools lightly. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about running a restaurant. If you did as he said, you had no problems, but if you talked back or argued with him, you were shown the door. No counseling, no write ups, no second chances or a thick file of paperwork on your performance. I was one of the few that kept my mouth shut and did my job, and we had a mutual respect for each other. I know there were a few others that were on his good side, and we were the core of the staff-his “dependables”- and we were paid accordingly. His place was always packed, and we were always busy, not only in the restaurant, but doing private parties and banquets. Even though Ken was strict with the way he wanted things done, he was successful, saw the big picture, and to this day I remember him as one of the few people who “get” it.
Owner #2
Dale purchased a successful little Italian place and took over after learning the operating techniques from the seller who stayed around to show him the ropes. No sooner had the seller left before he tried to re-invent the wheel. With no experience, no ideas, and certainly no business acumen, he proceeded to give away food, feed his friends for free, raise the prices and basically treat the staff like chattel. Checks bounced, equipment wasn’t fixed, purveyors refused to sell us food, and the bank tellers essentially laughed when we came in to cash our paychecks. Worst of all he would not accept help or any advice from those with any skill in the business. He did not listen. Being the clairvoyant that I am, I finally left after an incident that sealed the fact that he was going to fail. I heard afterward he blamed the staff for his failure and let them go without pay. He lost the restaurant months later. To this day I am sure it was his arrogance, stubbornness and incompetence that cost him his business. I sued him for back pay, and eventually won, but I did gain some knowledge from the experience.
I guess the moral of the story is there is no moral, just a contrast and comparison about two situations.
Did I fail to mention that these two places were in the same town and I worked for one right after the other? I’ll let you guess which one.
Spring has made a premature appearance here in Minnesota, and beside the long-awaited thaw and the resurrection of baseball, golfing and fishing, we dream of the day we can pull our Weber’s out of the garage and anoint them with a slab of animal flesh to grill upon their hallowed embers.
I live in a row of townhouses with close proximity to our neighbors. I noticed all the men on both sides of my dwelling rediscovering their inner caveman as they pulled out their grills and loaded them with coals and raw lean protein in a humble offering to the gods of fire and vinegar based sauces.
Not to be outdone, I too uncovered my portable fire pit and drove off to Costco to hunt down a worthy prey. With one kill shot I brought down two racks of pork ribs for $24.19 to bring home and lay at my woman’s feet. As she prepared a dish called “salad”, I seasoned and rubbed the meat with spices and herbs to best augment the essence of the day’s hunt. It slowly crackled and seared itself to perfection with a teriyaki glaze while I enjoyed a refreshing beverage and listened to a baseball game on the radio, contemplating when I should take the fishing poles and golf bags out of hibernation.
My neighbors and I enjoyed our fire cooked meat and I knew that winter was over and all was right with the world, at least until the next snowflakes fell and the blizzards once again covered our caves. But until then, we will search our DNA, cook our meat over an open flame, and take pleasure in the fact that Costco is inexpensive and not that far away.
Recently my wife and I stopped into one of our favorite restaurants (let's call it Billy's Burger Barn for now) to enjoy a comforting meal and perhaps a cocktail or two after a rough Monday at the office. As we drove into the parking lot our first thought was "Uh Oh, they look busy tonight" but agreed that we should stay because it was getting to be dinner time and no matter where we went it would probably be as hectic and busy as this.
Not one to like to wait in line, and having been in this environment as a restaurant employee, (it makes me edgy and I feel like I need to help out) I sighed and opened the door for my wife like the gentleman I was raised to be.
Yes indeed, the place was indeed packed to the rafters, but there was only one couple ahead of us and they were being led off to be seated
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In the environment in which I work, we do our best to serve great food and provide excellent service to our guests, but sometimes problems come up in the service, cuisine or the way the dining room was left from the shift before.
I work in a senior living facility where we take care of senior citizens in an independent, assisted living and memory care environment, and our staff does an excellent job in providing the needs of this unique group of people. The meals are tasty and well presented; the staff is trained to recognize the specific dietary requests of clientele (i.e. food allergies, sodium, diabetic and mechanically altered diets), serve the food professionally and to clean up and get ready for the next shift or go home.
Pretty simple stuff-prepare the food, cook the food, serve the food and clean up, because it is only food
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They say that the children are our future, absolutely true. But I am not talking about curtain crawlers hanging out with you while you make egg salad at home; I am talking about the teen agers who work with me in the kitchen and dining room where I am employed. We employ many high school aged kids or older who for the most part are working their first job. It isn’t easy washing dishes and doing food prep or waiting tables, but the crew we put together does an outstanding job. We have two kitchens and two dining rooms that are full to capacity with hungry residents all the time.
These kids come in after going to school or college and are going at it from the time they walk in the door till the time they clock out
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They say that the children are our future, absolutely true. But I am not talking about curtain crawlers hanging out with you while you make egg salad at home; I am talking about the teen agers who work with me in the kitchen and dining room where I am employed. We employ many high school aged kids or older who for the most part are working their first job. It isn’t easy washing dishes and doing food prep or waiting tables, but the crew we put together does an outstanding job. We have two kitchens and two dining rooms that are full to capacity with hungry residents all the time.
These kids come in after going to school or college and are going at it from the time they walk in the door till the time they clock out
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I decided to become a food writer, a journalist if you will, for the world I have been a part of for three decades. I came to the conclusion that I am getting older and my existing path has taken a toll on my feet, my back, my knees, my sanity and my liver. So obviously the evolution of my species should develop into a food writer, hopefully before I fall over into a hotel pan of gravy and give up the ghost.
Okay, I will write restaurant reviews and be a food critic, and get my name in the paper, maybe my own feature. Piece together a little column of 300 words on where I ate last and either complain or praise its service, atmosphere and food. Or I could start my own blog and write about food and recipes and all the trappings of making a menu and preparing great cuisine for all my friends. Boring! I tried these things and have had some limited success. Then a light clicked on in my head after some deep thinking and even deeper drinking. I will write about the restaurant industry and those who work in the sweaty, steaming back of the house, the dimly lit, smoky bar, and the punishing battlefield of the dining room. I will write about what I know and the people I am proud to call my compatriots.
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There are a lot of good things to say about dining out in a chain restaurant, and there are a lot of dreadful things as well. Let’s start with the good. Let me think…oh yeah-average, lackluster food and automaton service. Now don’t get me wrong, the service is great in some of the chains, but it is usually because the server is brand new with a personality that hasn’t been tarnished by the banality of the job, is passing through to better things, or a company drone with a 401(k) that is just biding their time until they are fully vested in the company and can one day reprieve themselves from serving the same dull food day after day after day, like a beat cop waiting for the day his pension kicks in.
And then there is the food. You can’t blame the cooks and chefs for the dreary fare that is taken from box to plate and prepared with all the imagination of a factory worker on valium. They bake, broil and grill whatever the corporate goons sitting behind desks 300 miles away decide. And it is usually a trend or three behind the culinary curve. If anyone remembers the great pesto obsession of the early 90’s then you know what I am talking about because it is probably on some chain restaurant’s menu right now.. They don’t create food trends they just copy them, and the chef should not be blamed for that. Most chain restaurants are a great training ground for those just starting out in the culinary field, a boot camp for those out of culinary school who believe they will be an executive chef in Switzerland with a six figure income at a 5 star hotel when they graduate. I know quite a few that ended up at Applebee’s or Denny’s to learn how the real world works because it wasn’t explained to them in school that there are long hours and you might just get your chef coat dirty while waiting for a phone call from the Food Network
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I knew when I decided to write about this topic I would probably offend a whole lot of people and have death threats made against me. But in my endless drive to educate the unenlightened proletariat on the truth and madness of the restaurant/ foodservice industry, I had to express myself on this subject. Please bear in mind I literally have 34 years of blood, sweat, and tears invested in this business, with a myriad of observations, and in no way am I trying to demean anyone, I am just pointing out the truth after interviewing many people like myself in the trade, and drawing from my own humble experience.
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