a different kind of family meal
At some of the restaurants I’ve worked at, there’s a thing called family meal, most people are familiar with the term, but for some of my grandmother’s friends and those few in the corners, it’s a meal cooked by the BOH, either the lowest level staff members, or the sous usually end up stuck with the task, that everyone in the restaurant eats theoretically together. Usually hearty, starchy, and cheaply made, it’s a thing of beauty when done well – and can be so many other types of terrible when the intern who got the “honor” of cooking chokes and the fish stew is a bland homogenous mix of over cooked trimmings and odd combinations of flavors that don’t exactly bring out the delicate flavor of 3 day old true cod scrap.
I cooked it a couple times during my time as an intern at the fanciest restaurant in town way back when I was a wee culinary student and that place was still open. There were a few years without family meal while I sweated at the busiest place I’ve ever considered employment at. Then the farm-to-table joints brought back the tradition in a wild ride of beautiful meals with odd characters.
These days, I find myself engaging in a more private version most nights, after I take off the rainbow clogs and shove my apron somewhere under the sweatshirt I always think I might need in the morning. After I walk home, or cab if it was a stairs kind of day, I start rummaging in the fridge after a few glasses of some overpriced apple juice or a homemade slightly weird tasting cocktail that always tastes too strong and too watery when my amateur hands attempt such craft marvels, and my family meal begins.
There is only one other staff member most night, and from a different staff. Equally as hungry, tired and uninterested in cooking again as myself, but so willing to sit with me and break bread as we put another night on the books to bed and begin the process of unwinding ourselves so we can start over again tomorrow. It’s a lot of work some times, this cooking thing we do. There are more things to keep afloat than the busiest juggler in Camelyn could dream of, and most have fire or blades.
Once I collect a suitable gathering of findings, I get out a cutting board, pull a moderately dull chef knife from the magnet strip and proceed to make a lot of noise trying not to bang pans suddenly when my goal for the last 12 hours had been to effect as much controlled movement as possible without concern for the sounds i might make setting a pot on the stove, now I shift gears to making the least disturbance possible while still effecting something like real cooking in my mind.
After the pasta or whatever is done bubbling, boiling, and heating up an already overly hot house, I get out one of the plastic trays, look at the clock and lament the 1 oclock hour, and set plates.
The edges get their customary wipe, the silverware is eclectic and there’s always a sauce of some sort. But this isn’t the restaurant anymore. Finally, I have an appetite for something besides clearing the board, finishing the list, filling the pot, or seeing the stainless shine, something besides filling another person’s belly and finding a small success in each happy diner.
I’m hungry, it takes all night to get through the nerves, but I’m finally ready to eat, and it’s usually a fine affair. Many more plates than necessary, I get bored while the water boils so the quick pickles are just to get rid of the produce starting to wilt, but he doesn’t ever ask why. I treasure not having to explain food for the first time, the components of the plate or the allergen potentials. It’s just noodles and sauce and salad and cold vegetables with left over aioli and some cured meat because that always helps and a bread product of some kind because breaking bread is key.
It’s just another night at the butcher’s block, eating the sudden hole in my middle away before I fall into a bed full of overstuffed fluffy things and squishy blankets because everything hurts but tomorrow is coming quickly, it’s already 3, and the night could go on for hours. But I know that no matter what, I’ll have to piss at 9. And I’m not quite ready to sleep yet.
