Not so cocktail related (maybe more than I think), but I really enjoy writing about all the kitchens I worked in. This is a continuation of part four, from yesterday.

After the salami, it became my daily responsibility to slice cheese as well. Big heavy loaves of mozzarella. I always made the slicer immaculate afterwards. Spotless. For weeks afterward, Kevin would inspect my work, looking under the slicer for any crumb but quit after realizing I complied to his exact specifications. I wanted to appease Kevin in this way to show him I could do a good job, but I also did it simply so he would leave me alone. He harassed all of the other cooks incessantly about their cleanliness. Some days, while putting dishes away or just wandering around, I saw him in their faces as they cooked during lunch service, his face full of fury, theirs of exasperation and complete frustration. Teddy, Grey, Adam, the fill ins others who worked the off days, everyone except for the night guys. There were days when he asked me to stay because the other dishwasher was running late and I monitored Kevin and his interactions with all of them, especially Bunzer. Kevin was terrified of him. The instant Kevin came over to the pizza station to interfere in Bunzer’s work, he was physically shoved out or threatened with a ten inch knife and ordered to “Get the fuck out of my way, bitch.” Teddy told me the two had even come to blows once in the back parking lot and Bunzer had flipped Kevin over his shoulder where the chef had hit the asphalt hard and had the wind knocked out of him. 

Everyone else both respected and feared Bunzer, the master of the pizza oven. A legend. A guru who commanded the hardest and busiest station. Kevin spoke often of Bunzer as if spinning some fireside yarn regarding a harsh, godlike figure. 

“Bunzer had twenty-one pies in the oven one night,” Kevin said one afternoon with a distant look in his eye as he prepped mirepoix at the table behind me as I washed dishes. “He had them end to end in there, stacked perfectly, the sides of the crusts resting on one another like shingles on a roof, each one perfect and immaculate.” He was glazed over as if he spoke of some wild magical being of legend. “He drinks like a fish. Every night. More than anyone else. Someday I’ll get him in AA.” 

How he knew this detail, I had no idea. But Kevin took tabs on everyone’s drinking. I guessed he eavesdropped on all of us. I had weekly sessions in the office with him when he suspected I was hungover on the job. More talk of elevators. More of his outlandish stories. 

“For the weekends I would often buy a case of scotch,” he said. “Put it in the backseat of my car and just drive from party to party. Such a great time. I would wake up on Monday morning with no idea where I was. The scotch gone. I would need a drink.”

When he reminisced about his time with alcohol he always presented it as if it were something he missed rather than regretted. An activity creating so much fun he had no choice but to give it up. His stories made me want to drink more rather than his intended effect to burn fear into me. Kevin had quit drinking because he scared himself by the sheer amounts he quaffed down, not because he had done something stupid or hurt someone.

“I woke up one day and just realized that if I continued then something really really bad would happen to me that hadn’t happened yet. I would die or kill someone else. That’s how crazy it got and that’s how lucky I had been up until that point. So I quit.” 

This part resonated with me the most. It seemed the most responsible path. In terms of what I thought about my own drinking however, I was nowhere near his level. Sure, I drank a couple twelve packs over the weekend, but I rarely touched the hard stuff and never drove drunk. I walked everywhere. I refused to be like him. I never would be one of these old guys who spoke about the old times and bragged about how much booze they consumed. 

Kevin came to me one morning with a raincloud over his head and told me “Grey put his fucking notice in.” He wanted to put me to work on the pizza station. I would receive a raise and have more responsibilities. He believed in me. He would train me. “You and me in the morning buddy! You’ll start tomorrow. I’ve already got a new dish guy coming in.”

This great news lasted all of a week. The new dish guy, a kid from the local university lasted all of an hour and a half. It was the pots. The damn pots. After looking forward to not washing dishes and scrubbing the damn things I ended up back there for the rest of the week until Kevin found an unsuspecting dweeb suitable to weather his abuse. I thought about that a lot. Was I just tough as shit or just able to put up with more mistreatment than the next guy? That thought bounced back and forth in my head quite often. Stupid or rugged? Had my life failed so hard at that point that this was my last shot, standing in one place for hours on end while filthy plates laden with the remnants of people’s uneaten food were shoved at me? Desperation or work ethic? A blend? For sure I had what it took and so veered toward that side of the argument. I wasn’t a pussy. That’s what I told myself. And in a way, as much as all these guys were a bunch of wastrels, criminals, and miscreants, I was too. This is where I deserved to be. All the choices in my life had led to this waterlogged, insane existence and I actually liked it. I enjoyed seeing Kevin flip his lid or do something crazy like how he decided one morning to scrub the ceiling in the kitchen, the hot soapy, bleachy water dribbling down onto his face and into his eyes. Every day a new crazy situation presented itself. I also learned while watching him. He was a master of soup making. His favorite thing to do, making stock, standing with me in the back kitchen while I worked and he retold his booze laden stories while he diced onions and celery and peeled carrots for what I learned was something called “mirepoix.”

“Fucking essential for great soups,” he said with tears in his eyes from the onions. “And stock of course. I make the best fucking stocks.” He would hold out a spoon for me to try. I held the chinois as he grimaced and picked up the whole fifteen gallon pot himself and poured the mess of vegetables and bones into the strainer, the veins in his neck and forearms bulging, pumping. Once the stock was filtered he began the process of seasoning it. I had never even thought about salt at this point in my life and Kevin educated me by having me taste the stock through all the levels from fresh off the stove, to cool, to mildly seasoned, to properly seasoned. Salt. I never knew. I just thought it was an ingredient old people put on everything but tasting the difference between a salted and unsalted vegetable was a revelation. It made the wheels turn. 

“Stock is just roasted bones,” Kevin said. Another morning. I sprayed down dishes as he dumped a bucket of ice into the sink around a steaming pot in order to cool down a fresh round of stock. “It was always my favorite thing to do in culinary school. All the saucier duties. Making stocks, soups, sauces. The love juice.” He stated all this with a faraway look in his eyes and turned the cold water spigot on. 

“So you just roast the bones and then boil them?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Never boil. Never fucking boil. It must be simmered. Absolutely. That’s where the love comes in, the simmer.”