A Study in Anthropology

Friday night was my last night at the foundering ship, and I am certainly glad to be done. I'll save the bitching about mis-management and abusive kitchen staff for my ex-coworkers over a shot of Fernet Branca with a beer back, and talk about the differences between cooks and waitresses instead.

As I may have mentioned, the foundering ship had an entirely new staff when I came back from South America. There were no more Mexicans cooking, instead the place is now being run by 22-year-old "culinary school hotshots" who are too big for their britches. The kids can cook all right, but the attitude that comes across the line with the plates was just too much for me. Too much for everyone that still works there, in fact; at the bar last week, two of the bar managers plotted how to get one of the cooks alone, outside of the building, so they could jump him and punch his face. This kid has a propensity for muttering snide comments under his breath, and their rage was warranted. I talked them out of it.

This huge attitude is compounded by the fact that most of the kids are decently good-looking. There is one cook, however, that we all called either "The Cute Cook," or "The Nice Cook," because not only was he the yummiest to view (over six feet, pretty roses tattooed on his forearm in place of the ubiquitous swallows or pin-up girls, hipster glasses, hot hot hot), he was the one who actually said hello to the front-of-the-house staff of his own accord and didn't look at you like you'd just crawled out from under a rock and asked what year it was like the other cooks do. Also all of the other cooks all have a variation of the same name and his is different, so nobody could remember it.

I can understand why cooks have this bad attitude--they put in three times as many hours as waiters do and get paid less than half as much. Now for me, this didn't make sense after one year of cooking at a fancy-pants restaurant when I was eighteen, so I got a job as a busser right quick. Some people are crazy enough to want to cook in restaurants for their careers, and I commend them for this. I have a great respect for cooks, I just wish they would be nicer to me. And I'm not some clueless waitress that just wants to go out and get drunk and go shopping the next day; I do this work because I'm passionate about food, and it generally confounds a line cook even more when I actually know all of the ingredients in Romesco and Rouille, and how these sauces are prepared.

I'd found out before the shift that the Cute Cook's long-distance relationship was no more, so I gave him every opportunity to ask me out on my last night at the foundering ship. Unfortunately, he did not pick up on my subtle clues, like when I asked him if he was going to come and visit at my new spot... "Blank," he responded "What the fuck is a Blank?" More promisingly, when I explained what and where a Blank was, he sort of ogled me and said "How could I NOT come and see you?" in an extremely sarcastic tone. I think working in restaurants has lowered my standards in men.

They love us in Canada

Restaurant Girl Speaks got a mention in the Toronto Sun today!

"Ella Lawrence is a San Francisco writer-slash-waitress at high-end restaurants. She's also the phantom behind a popular blog in the industry -- restaurantgirlspeaks.blogspot.com. Working in four-star establishments for the better part of a decade, she's written extensively about the personalities, quirks and secrets of her trade.

...

As customers, we think we're in an intimate setting -- but we're part of a large production number.

"(As a waitress) you can be the rock star of the area you're serving," says Ella, a 27-year- old who can, on a good night in her elite workplace, earn $500 in gratuities.

With two degrees under her arm, she still says you can learn more about the human condition in an eatery than out of any textbook.

The restaurants she has worked in are a haven of indulgence. The industry, at her level, can offer the best alcohol and the best food and the best excesses."

**
Check out the full article for the rest.

Liberace and debauchery

A couple of days ago I got a call from my friend Jeremy, who does the Ghetto Gourmet in the East Bay. For those of you who've been living in the dark in regards to the underground restaurant scene this last year, the Ghetto Gourmet is basically a dinner party in someone's living room. Jeremy has roving chefs come to town and cook, artists musicians and writers giving performances, and great salon-type conversation.

Jeremy's call went something like this, "HiEllait'sJeremyihaveafriendintownwhoscookingforfamouspeople
outofanairstreamtrailerandhe'swritingabookaboutundergroundrestaurants
youshouldmeethimIalreadygavehimyournumbergottagobye."

Well, I like meeting new people, especially other restaurant people who are writers, because we are few and far between. Michael Hebberoy and I made plans to meet at Ti Couz for a cocktail and a crepe, and I knew we were going to get along when I texted him, "On my way. Brown hair, blue eyes, six feet tall. Bicycle," and he responded "Long hair blue eyes big truck likes Barry Manilow and walks in the park."

So I threw on my Barry Manilow t-shirt (yes, I really do have one! I only wear it on special occasions because it's very old and for some reason I always wind up getting really drunk when I have it on) and away me and Barry went. I thought I was just going to meet some chef. Who I met was a guy starting a cultural revolution. Hebberoy (or "Hebb" to his friends) is a well-known Portland resterateur who is going through a "very hard break-up with that city," and to get out of the public eye he decided to go around the world and cook for interesting people. His philosophy is philosophers, and in telling about me the sorts of dinner parties he's hosting (at other people's houses), I was reminded of nothing more than the literary salons hosted at the Paris home of Gertrude Stein and her partner in the 1920s.

This weekend, Hebb is going down to L.A. to host a dinner party at Gore Vidal's house. The impressive guest list includes well-known literary and musical figures; not the type you see in (my beloved) Us Weekly, but the type who are quietly doing what they love and believe in and have gained recognition for their work along the way. The guy who started the Sex Pistols is going to be there, as is Madonna's sister.

Hebb's book-in-progress, "Kill the Restaurant," will focus on three groups building culture through feeding people on the down-low: the Ghetto Gourmet here in the Bay Area, a guy in Seattle who serves only the things he grows on his 10-acre farm (except for flour and sugar, although both crops went in the ground this year), and a group in New York. He'll be attending the upcoming Ghetto Gourmet dinners on Sunday night in North Berkeley and on Wednesday in the Mission. I'll be there, doing what I do best: bringing the food out of the kitchen and putting it down in front of people who want to eat it.

**
Also last night I attended the soft-opening of my friend Brandon's new venture (aside from the newly-minted Avenue G), Luau. The bar is on Lombard between Franklin and Van Ness, and I vaguely remember driving by there in my Bridge and Tunnel days. A vague memory of last night is all I posess as well. I know that there were lots of people I didn't know when I got there at 10:30, and then lots of people I did know starting around 12:30 or 1am who began to trickle in as they finished their shifts. I'm pretty sure I was yelling and throwing pretzels by the end of the evening, and was trundled into a cab with my bicycle poking out of the trunk and sent home. I received an email from the esteemed Hebb this morning, which went something like:

"apologies for my sheer drunkiness last night. ended up losing my phone somewhere to boot. i think maybe it is kickin around the bottom of that fuckin truck. it is dangerous to drink heavily with a blog queen...- liberace"

All in all, a successful opening!

No More Ties for Restaurant Girl

After a night staging, some intensive food and wine training, and my first night on the floor at the New Restaurant, I am happy to report that Restaurant Girl is no longer being choked by a tie, the great waiterly de-humanizer. I forgot what a difference it makes to not have a tie around your neck in your comfort level when waiting tables.

The New Restaurant is a self-proclaimed "not-hip spot," which automatically makes it cool. The groovy owners, who all hail from San Francisco or its outlying areas are "not slicksters," as one of them says, and what this comes through as is a restaurant that's well-designed with a decided lack of pretense. Everything's organic but they don't advertise the fact, they just let the food speak for itself. And last night, on a Tuesday, in a reduced section (two tables), I made the same amount of money as I'd made last Friday night at the foundering ship. Sigh of relief.

The way the New Restaurant does its training is really nice. I came in to stage on a Sunday night (and wasn't paid for my five hours of foodrunning, unless you count a truly delicious dinner and cocktail ordered off the menu at the bar after my shift) and then returned the next day after being offered a position to meet with the owners and review restaurant philosophies and policies, which happily are in line with my ideas on how a restaurant should be run; ie. open doors to management, building sustainable communities through feeding people and being a positive force as a business in the neighborhood you've chosen, and making sure the employees are happy.

I returned to taste through the whole wine-by-the glass list yesterday at 3pm, and then went through computer training (the Restaurant uses one of the most up-to-date and user-friendly systems that's available) before starting the shift. The kitchen puts up just about one of every dish at every line-up, so the waiters can taste it all before they start. They also put up a nice staff meal at 11pm...a welcome change from the new kitchen at the Old Restaurant, who didn't allow the waiters to taste anything (costs too much to feed us vultures the fancy stuff the guests get?) and sometimes put up leftovers that were too disgusting to sell before the shift started (old tapioca pearls from last week's soup, anyone?). Sometimes a salad was put up (no protein was offered in the two weeks since I'd been back from South America) but the chef put most of it on a plate for the "vegan" floor manager ("vegan" in parenthesis because when a meat dish was infrequently put up for the staff to taste, this floor manager would be the first one elbowing you out of the way with their fork, to "know what the food tasted like").

It's easy to tell how a restaurant feels about its waiters by the way they feed them. After all, restaurants are in the business of feeding people. So if a restaurant feeds its staff, happily and with good quality food, you can bet it's a place where all the staff is happy.

Polished and Shining

Like rats deserting a sinking ship, all of the waiters at The Restaurant are quietly putting their other options in order. While I can't (and shouldn't) speak for other people's projects; ie how they are going to tactfully remove themselves from a Restaurant that has been suffering under mis-management for a year, I can speak for myself.

I have been staging (pronounced in the Frenchy French manner--"stAH-sheeng") at other restaurants around town. Staging, a term that is used when a cook tries out for anywhere from one day to one month at a restaurant, is a way of trying out a restaurant (and having a restaurant try you out) in a relatively low-pressure setting. The resume has been approved, the interview(s) have gone smoothly, and the stage takes place to see if the restaurant is a good fit for the cook (or in this case, the waitress) from both sides.

My stage tonight went extremely well, and I accepted the position. The new Restaurant is a joy to be at. It's funny how when you're working at a place where the entire staff is miserable, and you're miserable, that you start to accept those as being normal working conditions. I kept telling myself, "It's just a phase. The Restaurant will settle down (or pick up) soon enough, I just have to wait it out."

Leaving for two months and then returning put a lot of things into perspective. Just about everything at The Restaurant has changed since I've been gone, and this has been the common thread at The Restaurant for the last year (the time that I've worked there). While I didn't mind it when I was raking in fistfuls of cash, once the cash stops a-flowin' (and The Restaurant has been scarily slow for the two weeks that I've been back working there) I start to evaluate why, exactly, I'm working in a place that has made me consistently unhappy for the better part of my employment there. I left for a period of time because of a terrible manager; once he was fired I came back but now there *is* no manager, which presents a whole slough of other problems.

The deciding factor of which new restaurant to accept the position from came tonight; the New Restaurant is filled with professionals who are all decently nice people. Nice people are somewhat of a rarity in a restaurant world filled with ex-cons in the back of the house (cooks) and charming coke-heads in the front of the house (waiters). While The Restaurant has been busy trying to cover its lack of panache with a glossy PR campaign and an elitist attitude, the New Restaurant quietly goes about its business (providing excellent food in a nice setting), and people are taking notice--they did over 400 covers last night (on the same night The Restaurant didn't even break 100 covers).

Another restaurant that offered me a position is one of San Francisco's Very Famous Restaurants, and I spent a lot of time thinking about their offer. But after speaking with a couple of servers at the place whose offer I did accept, I feel confident in my decision. The other Very Famous Restaurant serves a specific clientele, a gentrified clientele that sees a big distinction between the people who serve them, and themselves. I'm not into that. While the money is consistently good at this place, I think I would only have lasted about 3 months before I began to hate it. The New Restaurant seems to be a perfect fit. It's run by a few people who have been in the business at comfortable, hip places of quality for a long time. Nice people who happen to love food and run a restaurant. Bon appetit!