Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [102]
Aspirins are called crunchies because we eat them like candy. Finger cots are condoms, pronounced with Spanish inflection. The nail on which completed orders are spindled is the spike. Any round metal container placed in a water bath is a bain (pronounced bayn) from bain-marie pronounced baahn maree), or simply a crock. The life we live is la puta vida, 'this bitch of a life', and one might well bemoan a sorry state of affairs with a cry of Porca miseria! (Pig of misery!) or Que dolore!, 'What pain!'
The slide, when full of dupes, is called the board, as in, 'The board is full'. Food currently being loaded by a runner or waiter is My hand, as in 'Where's that fucking steak?' Reply: 'My hand, Chef!' A hot nut is used when an expeditor wants something now: 'I gotta hot nut for that sole on table six'. This is often for a VIP, or 'Very Important Pendejo' or PPX, or soigneee mutha-fucka - meaning friend of the owner, or the man himself. So make sure to move that food out rush or STAT.
Applying what we've learned to a battlefield situation, one might find oneself saying: 'I gotta hot nut for that six-top on seven, Cabrone! It's been fired for ten fucking minutos, pinche tortuga. What? You don't got yer meez together, asesino? Get that shit in the window, you seso de polio pinche grill man throw it in the fucking jukebox if you have to. The rest of the order my hand! And don't forget to give it a wipe and some mota and a squirt of that red jiz on the way out, I got shit hanging here and you're falling in the fucking weeds!'
'Working,' might come the reply. 'I getting buried here. How come the saute no getting slammed like me? I take it in the ass all night! How' bout table ocho? Fire? I can go on eight?'
Which might inspire this: 'Eight my hand, baboso! Eight fucking gone! Eight fucking dying en la ventana waiting for Doogie Howser Motherfucker to pick up! You got dead dupes back there, idiota - what the fuck are you doing? You are in the shit! Hey, Rayo! Step in and bail the culero out!'
OTHER BODIES
RUNNERS ARE THE CHEF'S Imperial Guard: half-breeds who dress like waiters, are paid out of front-of-the-house payroll, but whose loyalties lie (ideally) with the chef and the kitchen. Usually ex-busboys or exiled waiters, they must choose sides early, especially as they will be called upon to perform tasks that might be interpreted as contrary to the aims of their former comrades.
I like wide-bodied, highly motivated runners. My runners, particularly in busy pre-theater operations, where the entire dining room has to be served during a thirty-to-forty-minute period, are generally whipped into such a frenzy of enthusiasm, fear and naked aggression that I am constantly being asked to tell them to refrain from bowling over the waiters on their missile-like progress to and from the kitchen. It takes unusual skills to be a runner. Language skills are not important. I want dedication, speed, the ability to gauge quickly what the hell is going on in a busy and hectic situation, pick out the next order from a busy array of outgoing orders, carry multiple plates at one time without dropping them, remember position numbers and donenesses at the table, and prioritize sensibly. Runners usually get a full cut of waiters' tips - with the advantage that they don't have to deal with the general public in order to get paid. Their job is to shuttle food, in the proper order, out of the kitchen and to the customer, and to get back to the kitchen quickly. Their job is also to do the chef's bidding - whatever that might entail. Other, more nebulous tasks might include intelligence gathering, like a forward artillery observer, reporting back to the chef/expeditor such cogent bits of data like the answer to 'What's going on on table one? Are they ready for their food? How's the special going over?' and so on. Fetching drinks for the chef might be a regular duty as well, or taking his jacket to the cleaner's, running to