The Restaurant Cycle

You enter the building for the first time, wide-eyed. Faces pass you by, proceed with their day-to-day of which you are not yet a part. Everything is odd, exciting, unknown, distant yet all encompassing. You tire of relying on others, constantly asking where the chopping boards are, where to find the oil, I couldn’t see the herbs you asked for, oh sorry they’re right there, my mistake! The floorplan is unfamiliar, you forget which door leads where, landing in the office when you were looking for the dry store. Every action is proceeded by a question, exposing your utter helplessness. You make mistakes. It’s embarrassing. You slowly build a log of the team’s characters, their movements, their backstories. They seem nice overall. But still leave each day, feeling removed and isolated, glancing over awkwardly as the seniors laugh loudly at a shared joke, reminiscing about a former chef, chuckling over an anecdote. “You had to be there,” they say.

You find your first connections. You slowly divide the team into your favourites, the good eggs, the not so good ones. Work becomes more immersive. You’re more self-reliant, coming into work with a clear plan of your day’s mise. Notice your first improvements, a task completed more efficiently than the day before. You learn who you work well with, whose handovers you prefer, who’s the fastest or slowest in the clean down. You experience your first big rush, the adrenaline high that comes with it, the after-service pint that hits just right. They needed me tonight, you think on your way home, I carried the section well and truly on my own. After an evening shift, you stay for one more drink with a few colleagues, hear some gossip, bond over disliking one of the chefs, agree on the attractiveness of another. You laugh and leave feeling light and energised despite having just spent twelve hours running around in a kitchen.

You’re a beast on your section now. You have distinct greetings for different people. You feel the presence of your colleagues without looking up, flowing around them smoothly, knowing their movements and their cues. A single glance with your friend is enough to set you off, to communicate without words, to check in and understand. Your whole life is wrapped around work, you discuss it over a pint with the team, you go on and on about it with your non-hospitality friends, your lover, your family. You’re insufferable, frankly.

When you cook at home you find yourself using techniques and ingredients from work. Despite pretending to be sick of the restaurant food, you find your palate conditioned to the flavours which surround you every day. You have worked a few of the sections now. You can be thrown anywhere and do a decent job. A trial comes in and they get assigned to you. Confidently you show them around the building, talk them through the dishes, the day-to-day. You find yourself in the cellar with another chef and treat yourself to two blissful minutes of gossiping and ranting, providing you with more energy for the day than any quadruple-shot coffee ever could.

The inevitable happens: An institution hands in their notice. You try to imagine the place without them, cheer them merrily yet painfully at their leaving do. Replaced by someone new who doesn’t know their voice, their catchphrases, their manic laugh when they go down during service.

All of the sections are now a routine. You go through the motions and wonder when you last learned anything new. When a new dish comes on, you only need to be talked through it once before you send it out yourself. The people you work with are the people you live with, who you see on your days off, who you spend your evenings with after shifts. You know what mood they’re in the moment they walk into the kitchen. You know the many imperfections, the defects and flaws of the place, the little cracks in the floor, the warped work surface, the special technique to open and close the eternally uneven fridge, the dripping tap. When another thing breaks, you’re no longer surprised. “Fuck my life,” you say, to keep you grounded.

The team has changed. You exchange jokes with the old guard, laughing loudly, indifferent to the shy looks of the younger, greener additions who stand awkwardly at the sideline. When problems arise, they come to you, expecting patience, solutions, encouragement, and sometimes you wonder why people don’t just think, why they don’t just follow the recipe, why they don’t just use their common sense. After the shift, a few of the new ones stay on as you regale them with the old stories, and when they leave to get back to their homes, you sit remaining with your old friend and fellow soldier, thinking back to when you first started; that was the golden era wasn’t it, what a brilliant team that was. It’s different now, you say.

It gets harder and harder to get excited for work. The adrenaline of service leaves you knackered and crumpled up in the corner. Customers thank you profusely, it’s one of the best meals they’ve ever had, they say. You don’t get it. You eat the dishes and your stomach scoffs at the sickly familiarity.

You’re on your way out. You had a trial at a nice little place nearby and have handed in your notice. You do so with a sudden heavy heart. It has been a good time here. You’ve learned so much, really. You think back to when you first started, awkward, slow, clueless. The restaurant felt so much bigger then than it does now. In those final days, the shifts jump back and forth between rosy nostalgia of what you’ll leave behind and a suffocating lethargy hitting you in your chest, begging to leave this godforsaken place. The last day grows closer. New chefs start and listen to your jaded ass with wide eyes. One day you run into one of the real OGs; one of the big dogs who left soon after you first started. I miss it really, they say, I remember what it was like way back when it opened, the real golden era that was, they say. You listen to their nostalgia, to the times long before you worked there, and you wonder, if that was their golden era, what era was I in? And how many more eras are yet to come?

A few months later you come in for lunch. You marvel at the dishes you were once sick of. It’s a great restaurant actually, you think. You notice the old tilted fridge has been replaced by a new one, all shiny and straight. You look around and recognise one face, maybe two, greet them with relief. An unfamiliar waiter asks how your meal was. You mention you used to work here. “Oh, that’s nice,” they say, place down your fully priced bill, clear your table and wish you a good day.