"Mise en place" is a French term that loosely translates to "everything in its place." Its a term typically reserved for the commercial kitchen, referring to having everything you need for service or a recipe set up before you begin. I've been thinking about mise en place a lot lately, it is a beautiful phrase and, possibly one of the most important things I've learned in the kitchen.
Sure you can muddle through a recipe or service with a whole box of lettuces sitting on your station, portioning lamb kefte to order, but trust me you don't want to and if you do it often enough there are consequences. Some days, when you are in the weeds, you know that its your own fault, you didn't come in early enough, didn't stay focused during prep, forgot to ask some crucial question about a dish. Those days, even though you feel like shit at the end, make sense and you can learn from them. Its the days that you do plan, and prep and question and yet for some reason things still fall apart, you burn yourself or drop something unsalvageable in the middle of plating, that make you question the universe. The bad days are occasionally offset by their rare counterparts, the days when things unexpectedly go smoothly. You are having an off day and your head isn't quite in the game and the complicated dish you were dreading preparing is unexpectedly taken off the menu, you find yourself with an extra hand because someone wanted extra hours and picked up a prep shift or simply enough, it was a slow day. Those are the days when you sigh with relief and thank unseen forces for saving your ass but remember you might not be so lucky next time.
The best days however are those that combine both. You get plenty of rest, come in early, the menu is familiar, the orders come in a steady pace, your food looks beautiful, you feed off vibe and as the day progresses, rather than becoming tired you gain more energy, moves becoming more steady, more second-nature, really finding a groove. At the end of those days, you thank yourself and the universe.
Mise en place can be a good analogy for life. For the past two years until a few months ago I was sort of living life "in the weeds," partially because of my own decisions and yet many aspects of it seemed to have no discernible cause. There were good days and bad days and days when it seemed like the universe had just thrown a pan of hot grease at me but very few of those perfect harmonious days. Lately however, it seems like my "mise en place" is coming together.
To give you a little back story I grew up in a food service family. My grandfather had a bar and grill in Spartanburg SC and my father had owned and managed bars and restaurants most of his life, despite his history degree. For most of my childhood we worked catering and concessions, traveling the south east to music festivals and special events selling BBQ and Cajun food out of a striped red and white ten. For awhile we had a little roadside barbecue joint right on the NC/SC state line with hand-dipped milkshakes and homemade hushpuppies. I remember squeezing lemons to make 20 gallon batches of lemonade before I could reach the prep table. Mom would set a milk crate upside down on a towel for me to stand on. Our food was always good but never fancy, what I learned back then was not technique but a love for food and the ability to work hard. My mom never loved the industry like my father and I did. After a busy night at a festival like Bele Cher in Asheville NC, Daddy would sit up counting money and we would trade stories about particular customers or fellow concessionaires from the day. We would talk about previous and upcoming events and how we could attract more customers. If it had been a good day my father, still wearing his black apron, ball cap and sunglasses around his neck, covered in grease or flour, and likely with a rag still hanging out of his back pocket, would beam from ear to ear and say, "Baby, we rolled 'em today. We killed 'em." Mom went to bed.
Being a southern girl and clumsy to boot, my father rarely let me around the more dangerous aspects of the kitchen when I was small. I served lemonade and took money till I was in highschool and then I learned to work the grill. What I learned in those days wasn't so much cooking, though cooking was of course a part of it, it was service. That high that a certain type of people get when you have a full dining room or line a mile deep and for a moment you panic and think you might not make it, might not be able to keep up, might not have the energy and then you find a rhythm and you forget about time or anything other than doing what you are doing and at the end you feel like a hero for nothing more than serving sandwiches.
My senior year of high school we opened a new restaurant, a full-service, sit-down place with a four page menu and a bar. It was supposed to be my parents "retirement from the road," something to show for all their years roaming the country like gypsies. Then Mom left. I worked at that restaurant all through college, on the weekends and summers. I met the love of my young life there, and the girl he would someday break my heart with. I made friends and enemies, learned how to mix a margarita and how to make it through a shift with a killer hang-over. For most of four years I only worked front of the house there, though I covered them all, from waitressing to bar-tending to hosting and managing. I even dabbled in a little kitchen work as an expediter and "salad bitch." It was something I was good at, that came easy and which I enjoyed but never planned on doing long-term. Despite the "high" of a good service there are some serious lows that can come along with restaurant work and I saw them all first hand, most notably the toll that working together took on my parents marriage.
I got a degree in Art History from Wofford College in the spring of 2008. I graduated top of my program with an outstanding GPA. I had traveled abroad to Italy, Spain, Greece and more. I had won research prizes and had intentions of getting a Phd. I didn't get into grad school. I spent a year working full time at the restaurant and this time there was no high. I hated it, I half-assed things, I drank, I came in late, I didn't care. About this time my personal relationship was falling apart as well. I reapplied to grad school, I was sure that if we could get out of that restaurant and out of that town we would be ok, everything would be ok. I was accepted to grad school for fall semester 2009 at the University of GA but by that time my relationship was effectively over and when I moved to Athens in March '09 he did not.
The new town reinvigorated me somewhat but I was also too emotionally distraught to really function. I moved into a shitty apartment with a bunch of couch crashers and started sleeping with one of them. He was 19, I was 23. That summer it was like a second teenage-hood. After all the seriousness of a long-term relationship and a very academic college career with a job on the side and family responsibility it was freeing to be away from everyone I knew and all expectations of me. I got a job at a BBQ place that had just opened in town called Harrys Pig Shop and had no responsibility but work. Since the place was new there wasn't so much business somedays and if it was slow we had to cut someone from the floor. I would find excuses to stay on the clock helping out in the kitchen and before long was taking a few kitchen shifts a week in addition to my front of the house shifts.
My ex and I still talked on the phone, still talked about getting back together, never really forgot one another, but put things aside for awhile. The 19 year old became a boyfriend and as fall approached responsibility crept back in and I fought it tooth and nail. I railed against the way my short summer of fun had devolved into another relationship and another bout of schooling. I hated grad school from the start. I was living with the new boy and a roommate who were undergrads and spent most every night drinking and watching movies. I waited till the last minute to do everything, panicked about it until I was sick and just barely scraped by. I was amazed, I had never been this way in college. What was wrong with me? I procrastinated, whined, bitched, moaned, complained, and just generally was miserable and my fall grades showed it. I ditched the boy, moved into a single apartment and tried to muster the energy for a turn-around with spring semester but it wasn't enough and in April 2010 me and grad school made a mutual decision that we weren't working out for one another.
That summer I worked full time at the bbq place. My manager was a saint for changing my schedule so often from practically nothing during school to practically overtime hours when I wasn't. He had asked me once before, mostly joking, why I wanted to go to grad school when it was obvious that I belonged in a restaurant. At this point I was working mostly kitchen hours and had learned alot but still didn't think of restaurant work as a long-term plan. Hell I had a college degree and an expensive one at that, who in their right mind would choose kitchen work after that? As the economy continued to deteriorate and it seemed that any job in the arts would be completely out of the question without a return to grad school I started to reconsider. Despite the fact I was still a bit emotionally damaged from three break-ups (the ex, the boy and grad school) in two years I was the happiest I had been in awhile. Still drinking too much, still behind on bills but day in and day out, happier than I had been in school in a long time. I rediscovered that restaurant high, but this time in the kitchen.
There were still bad days, like the time I was so drunk I got a ride home from someone and left my purse in their car, so I busted the window to get into the apartment and awoke the next morning two hours late for a 10 am shift with no car to get to work and no phone to call in. That part was all me. When I finally retrieved said phone about 2 in the afternoon I had missed calls from my family telling me my grandmother was in the hospital and I needed to come home. That one's on you universe. Around the same time I got a second-degree grease burn cooking a quesadilla on the flat-top at Harry's and a couple stitches in my middle finger. Those were combo deals. The most wtf-ish was when I let the boy (yea we still talked what of it!?) borrow my car which he wrecked and totalled. Really universe?!
Despite all of this I started to think about restaurants as a profession. Obviously unless one works at the 21 Club, Charlie Trotters or somewhere similar one cannot make a living waiting tables, but I had management experience and kitchen experience and a deep and newly rediscovered love for the industry, surely there was a place for me somewhere. I started looking for second jobs. My manager/owner at Harry's, Manny, had talked about opening another place, maybe I'd go there. Maybe I'd bartend downtown for awhile and become a manager and eventually open my own place. Hell, maybe I'd go to culinary school.
A restaurant in town called The National has always been a personal favorite of mine and is commonly regarded as one of the best if not the best in town. One of several restaurants connected to Chef Hugh Atcheson, The National is run by Chef Peter Dale who worked with Atcheson at another establishment. Once Manny had said, "If you want to really learn about food in this town, you should work at The National." One night after a day shift at Harry's and a late night at an awful dead-end bar gig that shall go unnamed I was perusing the Craigslist for jobs and saw one simple post. I can't recall the exact words but something to the effect of this. "Looking for kitchen staff. Strong skills are important but more important is a desire to learn. No attitudes, no drugs." It stood out, I was intrigued, no name was given just an address, I googled it, it was The National. I thought, "well there's no way in hell I can work there with no experience other than cooking BBQ but I'll give it a shot." I wrote a LONG (as I an wont to do) email and attached a resume. I explained that I was looking to give food another shot, that I had experience in the kitchen but not with that kind of food, that I wasn't sure I wanted to be in the kitchen for ever but that I was looking for a career in the industry at large. As I wrote it, I realized it was true. As I waited for a response I realized that I was really and truly excited about something for the first time in a while. Chef Peter emailed Manny, Manny gave him a recommendation. I waited some more. I heard nothing. One night about two months later I was deleting old emails and saw my initial email to him. I thought it couldn't hurt to check in so I wrote an email thanking him for his time and consideration and letting him know that I was still interested if a position was available and if not to please keep me in mind in the future. The next morning I received a reply asking me to come in the following week. I was ecstatic and terrified. Sure I had worked in a kitchen before but I was going into a real kitchen with a real chef, where people wore chef coats and brought their own knives to work!
I prepared like I should have prepared for school. I bought cookbooks, I read magazines, I bought new shoes. I started working garde-manger, (aka fancy salad bitch) at the National in late August or early September of 2010. As of this post, December 28, 2010 I am still there and still loving it. I am learning so much and am still excited and nervous about what I do on a daily basis. I still work at Harry's too, though only a few nights a week. I am looking forward to taking on new stations at The National and someday in other restaurants as well. Though I'm still not sure where I'll end up eventually, front of the house, back of the house, chef, owner, manager, etc. I think my time in the kitchen will serve me well and who knows, hell, I may still decide to go to culinary school someday.
Recently the ex and I decided to give it a second go and things are going well. I have a snug little apartment in a cool town, an awesome dog and a job I love. Despite dropping out of school my family (especially dear old Dad) are proud of me and at least for the most part happy that I am happy, though Mom is still a little wary of my going back into "the life" as she calls it (like its the Mafia or something, though I guess in some ways it is.) I feel like I'm finally getting some "mise en place" in my life.
I decided to blog as a way of keeping up with the things that I am learning and wondering about this new direction in my life. Maybe some of you out there will have some advice for a young cook, maybe some of you will learn some things from me. Wishing you all a Happy New Year and good mise en place for yourselves! Till next time
-Sarah
