Amy Cray

In 1994, craving an experience more rich than my life in Los Angeles, I sat in a Denny’s booth one evening with an open AAA map before me and tried closing my eyes, plunking my forefinger down at random and seeing which town I had selected. It wasn’t working well, but the trucker in a weathered red ball cap in the booth adjacent mine, rolling his own cigarettes, was watching. “Portland,” he said finally. “You’d like Portland”. In the spirit of adventure, and upon confirming that the coffee and music were good, I loaded my car with everything I could fit, and moved. I knew no one.

I took the first apartment I found and immediately set about finding a job. No one would hire a blonde California girl with rollerblades dangling from her backpack for any retail position or anything else I’d ever done (anti-California sentiment runs deep in this green state), so I marched into a restaurant that looked like it had a heart, and asked for a job. I told them I’d do whatever they needed, as long as there was room for promotion and free lunch, as my shared $450/month studio apartment left me with minimal funding for groceries on minimum wage (then probably something like $4.50/hr!). That meant starting out at the lowest rung on the smallest, saddest ladder: washing dishes.

For weeks I pulled trays of half eaten calamari and bolognese through the service window and loaded them into my machine, not unlike any menial job I’d done in California. The revelation, however, was watching the cooks in action. I casually kept an eye on them down the line during the dinner shift. They were so cute and controlled. They sang Frank Zappa songs and crashed and smashed their sauté pans about while cooking seven sauces at once with ease. I scurried to pick the pans up, still steaming in the plastic bins below their stations, and dunked them into soapy tubs on my side of the kitchen, wondering how I could angle my way into their world. They were creating such intense, brilliant food for all these demanding and well-traveled guests with such simplicity, confidence and permanence, but lived such casual lives. They were artists, naturalists, poets on the side, threw great parties and were generally incredible conversationalists. They biked instead of driving, on principle. They knew about wine and still listened to vinyl. In the afternoons I began to prep ingredients for them, grating 30lb wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano and pulling beaks from inky frozen squid while watching the entire senior line sneak into the walk-in refrigerator to smoke a joint as soon as the sous left the room (they have fabulous ventilation systems, the walk ins). I wanted in.

I persistently hacked away at my rookie status, to convince everyone that I was more than a “dish kid”, that I was just a resource waiting to be tapped, and that I belonged on the line. At night, the senior staff (front of house and back), would gather for a drink or four. Cooks from other restaurants would amble by as soon as they closed their kitchens down and it became one big nightly industry soiree. Though the other dishkids and prep cooks scurried nervously out the door, eyes to the ground and not daring to expect to be well received, or even noticed in this crowd, I stood my ground. Though only 18, I convinced the bartender I was cool and could handle a vodka orange. I scooted my barstool closer to their tables each night, acting casual about hanging around late and tucked my shaking hands beneath my thighs to appear indifferent when they eventually began to include me in their conversations and buy me a round. They were so awesome. I was so not.

Suddenly, one afternoon, it was announced that the pizza cook moved on to the day shift. They threw a chef coat at me and said “we’ll see how you do”. I was thrilled and terrified. The training was brief; a few nights shadowing and then I was off and running on a light Monday night. I was responsible for calling entrée orders down the line, spinning pizza dough into the air, making salads and appetizers and calling to the waitstaff when orders were up.

Overwhelmed in this crucial position, I would constantly forget where I was, and how much time to anticipate. I was nervous about everything but estatic when my pizzas and finished plates turned out nicely. The boys on the line were sweet, and always saved me when I had fouled up the order of something or forgotten to add cheese to the pizza in a moment of panic (yes, sad but true), but my work quality didn’t match my enthusiasm. The night shift waitstaff, understandably, was not so accommodating or patient. They glared at me as they picked up their orders of mussels or salads, slightly askew, or the occasional overly crunchy pizza, and made up sarcastic names for me. They complained about me while standing right in front of my station. I wanted to crawl into it and die. It was discussed that I wouldn’t last, and finally, standing in front of the beverage station before a shift, I received a stern reprimand for my lazy response in critical moments from the sous and was given a week to shape up or ship out.

Though recipes were static, no one was there holding my hand, telling me HOW to work. The precision of timing between getting and understanding the orders (reading them properly and learning their shorthand names was paramount), calling them out to the cooks down the line in order, spinning my dough and squinting into a 550 degree oven for hours on end, making everything come out well, hot, and on time was tricky.

Eddie the senior line cook met me at my station with a dishrag in one hand and a wild look in his eyes. He threw the rag at me and said, “I’m going to teach you how to cook.” He told me to simplify. To stop overthinking, worrying about my outcome and trust in the process by learning consistency is key. Each time I would slow my pace to preciously place pizza toppings, or let my heart and anxiety take me over, he’d take the dishrag and clear everything on my station and tell me to start over. It was irritating at the time but I realize now what an incredible moment that was. Just cook. It’s not a big deal. Do it right. Have fun. Stop stressing out.

I learned that day to commit fully. I could no longer tenuously call out my orders or depend on luck. I needed to be present among the rattle of utensils and oven doors, and people whizzing around me. I started minimizing my movements, keeping things central and clean, rather than flailing about my station and waiting for my team to pick up the pieces. I noted the moment a sauce went on the fire as I slid my pizzas onto the hot stone and listened to for just the right sizzle before pulling it back out.

This is the breathing of a working kitchen: almost a sixth sense of feeling the bodies around you, the doneness of what you’re preparing, the pace of the room. Timing. Listening. Having that foundation allowed me to embrace feeding people as a simple process, and one that should be joyous and straightforward. Though my path to food was unconventional, and my training entirely hands-on, I’ve been doing it ever since. And it works, no matter whether this is the first time I’m making what’s on the menu, or whether I’ve cooked a dish 600 times.

I cooked lunch for clients today, then came home to my own cluttered kitchen and tried to get dinner on the table, while the baby hollered for cheerios in one ear and the six year old babbled about gymnastics in the other. I sighed and longed for the restaurant and its vibrant but even pace, and imagined the beef stock sputtering away near my prep table on a rainy afternoon. Suddenly I thought to myself, “If only I could get my mis en place”. I think it’s a new mantra.