None For You

Every restaurant has a head chef. Ours just happens to have his own cookbook with his face plastered across the front, selling for damn near $70 up at the hostess stand.  Williams and Sonoma, as much as their shit is over-priced, doesn't have many books for seventy bucks. I'm not sure what load of crap we're peddaling, but come on already.



A bit about our little gem- Ricky*. This chef is from Lebanon...green carding it perhaps? He's cultured, sure- but very self-serving. The kind of person that seems to be looking down his nose when speaking to you. He's spoken of having servants in Lebanon from when he was growing up.  A cook. A chauffeur. A caretaker. A maid. In his culture, if you have the means and the money, you can buy just about anything. 

There had been a time, on a very busy night that an oil had fallen from my apron, shattering in the doorway going into the kitchen.  Frustrated, I held the door open so no one else would swing open the door, and slip on the mess. I called for Darlene*, one of our bussers, to grab the broom since I had no idea where they were.  My intentions were good, not to use her to do my dirty work for me.

Appalled and horribly offended with my apparently brash and brazen request, Ricky took it upon himself to ream me out for using Darlene. How dare I.  Who was I to order someone else around? It's not like he has ever demanded another person do his bitch work. Nope. Not him, definitely not. It's not like I'm tipping the bussers out 20 bucks a night on top of their hourly wage or anything. That would just be ridiculous, right? Ha! Shame on me!

In times like these, I'm itching to snap back. The words, sharp and callous, sit on the edge of my tongue simply begging for me to open my mouth and let them rush forth.  I bite my tonuge, feebly mutter "I'm sorry". Forcing an apology in livid disagreeance.


So last night we had a regular come in.  Bobby*. The guy is awesome. Very low maintence.
Bobby's straight up New York accent makes me think of the Soprano's every time he stops in for a visit. Quite comical. His family owns a meat company, and he had brought it two different kinds of deli meat for the servers to test out.  The meat gets put out on the back expo counter in case any employee would like to sample it.

What happens?

Ricky swoops in, confiscating the food from the servers and hiding it.  One pack is wrapped up and goes home with Mama*, our real back of house chef who comes in at the crack of dawn to prep everything for the day.
"This-" he scolds us, "is property of Wulf."
Seriously? It's fucking deli meat, that was handed by its original owner to the servers as a treat.
"Until it is okayed by Wulf, no one can have any." Um. It wasn't like we were stealing anything.

That's that. We were a little shirked, but went about our business.

Not even twenty minutes later, what do we see in the kitchen? Ricky shoveling handfulls of rolled up meat into his pie-hole, and snapping pictures of himself doing so on his iPhone.

Are you kidding me??

It's not always the interaction out on the dining floor that gets under the skin of the employees during shift, but those who work right alongside them.

If Ricky did something (ANYTHING) other than come in for just a few hours, and order others around- taking long breaks, disappearing off into the downtown, take ten minutes with my food that is getting cold so he can decorate it with parsley, and feel the need to rub elbows with and smother the big names in the area with "on the house" extras and special treatment....I might like the guy.

Ricky...
What a primadonna.


-LM

Photo credit:

http://www.cooking-culinary-arts-schools.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Head-chef-TS.jpghttp://www.customlicenseplatesandkeytags.com/images/LP-1138%20MY%20BAD%20!!!%20License%20Plate%20-%20X340.jpg

Youtube:
Marina and the Diamonds- "Primadonna"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8httDjxJqI