Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [170]
“Forget the grill. We can clean it when we shut down for the night. We’ll use the oven, broil the burgers, and, if things pick up we can fry them on the stove over here,” I tell him, shooing him away from the griddle so that I can check out the oven underneath. He looks at me for a moment, clearly wondering who this crazy lady brandishing a knife case is, but I take advantage of his hesitation to further seize control. “Grab me a couple of broiler trays and fire up this oven,” I tell him. “And dump all those condiments and start chopping some new ones.”
I look over at Ben, who has found himself a clean apron and is already grabbing the bins of lettuce and tomato for the trash.
The kid, who is wearing a chef’s tunic bearing the emblem from the local culinary academy with his name, “Ryan,” embroidered over his chest, quickly gets on board, fires up the oven, and delivers me a tray of thin, premade burgers.
In less than ten minutes the burgers are out the door, each with a side of onion rings that Ryan tells me are the house’s singular specialty—thin, crispy, and coated only with a light dusting of flour. They are, judging from the prepackaged soups and premade iceberg salads stacked in individual bowls three deep in the walk-in, the only thing, besides the burgers and the frozen chicken wings, requiring any real preparation.
Around nine thirty or so, the orders pick up. People sitting around drinking tend to get hungry eventually, and by the time they do, Ryan, Ben, and I are working more or less harmoniously. I’ve reorganized the kitchen and given each of us a station to cover. Ben finds a small portable CD player, and we flip burgers to Santana’s “No One to Depend On,” while Ben occasionally belts out lyrics in fake Spanish.
There’s a rhythm to cooking, even flipping burgers. That’s part of what I love about it. Because chefs are almost constantly in motion, we learn to be parsimonious with our movements, instinctively conserving them, stirring the sauce with one hand, flipping the contents of the sauté pan with the other. Each movement is precisely choreographed, according to the particular beat of the kitchen; the key is knowing just how long the buns need to rest atop the griddle to achieve a particular shade of gold, and when to take the food, in one simple flick of the wrist, from pan to plate. While Ben claims to be a competent home cook, it’s clear he hasn’t cooked professionally. He makes several unnecessary trips from the condiment station to the deep fryer, each time placing his hands lightly on my waist so as to move past me without bumping my hand or my arm, and each time flustering me, disrupting my rhythm, and once causing me to toast the buns to an unacceptable shade of umber.
The orders keep coming steadily until last call. Ryan goes out to help wipe down the tables and to get himself a beer. Only when I have stopped moving do I realize that it’s almost two in the morning and I’ve totally forgotten about Chloe.
“Oh, my God! It’s almost two!”
“Relax,” Ben calls from the sink, where he has dumped two large cheese-encrusted sheet pans. “When things started picking up, I called Aunt Fi to tell her we’d be late. She said to tell you they’ll keep Chloe overnight. No sense waking them now. Besides, this way you get to sleep in tomorrow. When was the last time you did that? After tonight you’re going to need it. I don’t know about you, but I’m whipped.” Ben’s hair is rumpled, and his apron bears spots from several run-ins with errant condiments, but otherwise he seems to have held up well. I, on the other hand, feel like I could run a marathon. There’s an honest ache in my legs from being on my feet, but I’m upbeat and exhilarated like I usually am after a busy night in the kitchen. It reminds me of my Grappa days, of Jake and me working this late, the kitchen larger and the food more complicated,