The radio stays off. After twelve hours of tickets printing, pans hitting the flat-top and somebody yelling “behind,” the last thing I want is more noise.
The Drive Home…
Windows down, nothing playing. The buzz of service doesn’t stop when the shift does. It has to wear off on its own, and that usually takes about as long as the drive.The interstate at midnight isn’t the same road I took in. At two in the afternoon it was stop-and-go most of the way. Now it’s empty. Everyone else is home in front of the TV or already asleep, and I’m only just starting to come down.
So I drive, and I go back through the night. What went right, what didn’t, what I’d do differently. The plates that clicked and why. Somewhere around my exit it hits me that I haven’t eaten since family meal.
Here’s the part nobody believes. Chefs don’t eat well after service. People figure we go home and cook something great because we can. We’ve got the skills and the hands, so we must eat like kings. Most nights it’s nowhere close. It’s a burger from Maccy D’s, a gas station burrito, or the old standby, a bowl of cereal. Lucky Charms, in my case.
Every cook gets it. I’ve been feeding people for twelve hours, and I’m not standing over a stove again just for me. I want something I don’t have to think about, something already made, something I can eat sitting down. After a whole night of handing plates out, I want to be the one getting handed something.
Then I’m home, and the second I sit down my feet let me know about it. I never noticed them during service. Twenty thousand steps without leaving the building. Birkenstocks help, but they don’t fix it. Then everything else shows up at once. The burn on my forearm from the oven door. The little splatter marks from the oil. The cut on my finger that’ll sting for days every time it meets salt or lemon. Small stuff the guests never see.
The shower isn’t really about getting clean. It’s about getting the onion and garlic off my hands, which never works. That smell’s baked in, and it’ll still be there tomorrow. Whites and aprons go in the wash. Then an episode of The Office I’ve seen fifteen times, or twenty minutes scrolling nothing at all, just to feel like a normal person for a bit before I go back and do it all again tomorrow.
Or today, depending on what time I got in.
Then I lie down and it starts. Did the order go through? I’ve left more messages on a supplier’s answering machine at one in the morning than I can count, hoping somebody picks it up early enough to make the truck. Did everything get turned off? Are we covered tomorrow? If we’re not, how long is mise going to take with one less pair of hands? How many covers are on the books?
You’re not working. You’re just not finished.
Then there are the other drives.
Same road, same hour, same wrecked feet, completely different ride home. Word comes back from the floor. Compliments to the kitchen. A guest who couldn’t stop talking about the special. A packed service where nothing broke and nothing had to come off the board.
The best ones aren’t even about the food. They’re the nights the whole building clicks. Front and back of house, nobody bickering, nobody dragging, everybody on their A game at the same time. It doesn’t happen often, and you can’t schedule it. When it does, I replay it the whole way home and I’m almost disappointed when I pull into the driveway.
That’s the night that keeps us here. It’s why the cook who swore last night he was done with this industry is back on the line today.
The road hasn’t changed, but the body has. Those hours land harder at this end of a career than they did at twenty-two. They say the line is a young man’s game, and some nights on that drive I believe them.
The garlic’s still on your fingers when the alarm goes off.
You go in anyway.
