Authors: Steve Dublanica
The sad truth is that some waiters are
wasting
their lives. Too busy having fun and reveling in hyperbolic bitterness, these losers pretend they’re somehow above the fray of ordinary life, living a bonhomie existence that allows them to critique everyone’s life choices but their own.
This appellation of loserdom doesn’t apply to all waiters trying to figure out what they want to do. Many waiters, like my brother, are using the restaurant business as a safe haven to venture out and build a life. Some waiters are just hiding. If you’ve worked in the restaurant business, you’ve seen the type of waiter I’m talking about. The ones who always talk about opening a restaurant, going back to school, starting a business, or touring Europe—only to spend year after year stuck in the same place. They’re all talk.
There are a few rare individuals who make waiting tables a career. Usually hardy souls from parts of Europe where waiting is considered an honorable vocation (complete with formal schooling and internships), these servers are blessed with iron feet, steel legs, and an almost religious dedication to professionalism. The waiter I think of as the epitome of the career server is Wolfgang Zwiener, the former headwaiter at Peter Luger’s steakhouse in Brooklyn. Zwiener came to New York from Bremen,
Germany, after he completed a three-year apprenticeship. (Most waiters today train for three days and watch a sexual harassment video.) After a stint at Lüchow’s on East Fourteenth Street in the early 1960s, Mr. Zwiener ended up at Peter Luger’s, becoming the headwaiter in 1968. Over the decades, between all the double shifts and parties, he got married, had two sons, and, on a waiter’s salary, put them both through college and bought a retirement home in Florida. It didn’t hurt that almost all the tips were in cash.
After almost forty years at Luger’s, Wolfgang decided to move up in the world. Instead of retiring, Wolfgang took his sons’ advice and parlayed his lifetime of restaurant know-how into his own restaurant—Wolfgang’s—the highly regarded steakhouse on Park Avenue. Since its grand opening in 2004, he’s opened another location in the Tribeca section of Manhattan. I guess he’s doing okay.
Over the years I met a few people like Zwiener, people who toiled for years at some of the fanciest restaurants in New York City and made a comfortable living for themselves and their families. These guys were dealt a hand, and they played it to the best of their ability. Waiters like these are the heroes of the profession, servers for whom hospitality, refinement, and good service are an almost priestly vocation. Deep down, I know I could never muster up the commitment to the restaurant business possessed by Zwiener and others like him. Compared to waiters of that caliber, I am but a humble amateur. But compared to the next group of waiters we’re going to examine, I’m Michael Jordan.
Quite a few waiters have lives that are train wrecks. A famous chef once observed that the restaurant business is a haven for people who don’t fit in anywhere else. That’s true. The restaurant business can be like the French Foreign Legion—without the heavy weaponry. But think about it, if all these people don’t fit in anywhere else, that usually means there’s something
wrong
with them!
The restaurant business is a fluid and chaotic environment.
Many hiring decisions are made under pressure. Managers need warm bodies to work the grill, wash dishes, chop onions, and bring food to the table. Owners often rely on instinct when hiring people, and references are rarely checked. With this kind of screening system fuckups can breed like cockroaches. Anyone who’s ever worked in the restaurant industry has encountered results of these bad hires—the anxiety-producing drama queens, the falling-down drunks, the borderline nymphomaniacs, the hardcore drug addicts, and the depressed guys who cry on every waitress’s shoulder. These aren’t just people with problems. Heck, we all have problems at some point. These individuals are so problematic they make working in a restaurant harder than it has to be. Over the years I’ve noticed wacko servers share some common characteristics.
Don’t worry, if you’re a divorcée or you’ve had a DUI, you don’t automatically qualify as a screwup. (I’ve needed two root canals since I’ve been a waiter!) Yet, if you’ve waited on tables, you’ve met servers who’ve had several of the above conditions operating simultaneously. There are servers out there who’ve worked every restaurant in the yellow pages, never stayed more than three months at any one place, and walk around looking like they’re heavily medicated. Their résumés usually reflect a steady downward spiral in terms of job responsibility and income. These are the people you pray don’t own guns.
Some managers and owners
love
hiring these kinds of people. Instead of trying to get them help or lending an understanding ear, they ruthlessly exploit them. Mentally ill or compromised people are vulnerable. People with drug problems, burned-out single moms, downsized tech workers struggling with depression, people with financial problems, or the average alcoholic are easy to manipulate. These are the waiters who won’t complain when management steals from the tip-out, engages in discriminatory hiring practices, indulges in sexual harassment, or hurls sexist and racial invectives at the staff. Some restaurant managers go out of their way to hire messed-up people. Why?
Because they’re easier to control
. If the staff’s easy to control, then it’s easier for management to rip them off to line their own pockets. Restaurant workers are basically disposable. Because waiters tend to be a self-involved lot, mentally ill coworkers often go unnoticed or ignored until they decompensate and can’t perform. Since there’s usually no health insurance in the restaurant industry, getting these people any kind of psychiatric help is expensive and well nigh impossible. When these workers flame out, they end up quitting or getting fired. If you start working at a restaurant and discover that 80 percent of the people are beyond nuts, you’re in a toxic work environment. Get out before you end up going crazy yourself.
The espresso machine finishes brewing my demitasse. I place it on a saucer and head back toward the front of the restaurant.
As I sip my coffee I look out the front window and think about all the people I’ve worked with in the restaurant business. They’re mostly faces not matching up to any names. Some of them worked in this business briefly and ended up doing something else. One of them died.
When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a waiter. But I also want to tell them I’m a man who dreams of living a different life. My writing has been giving me hope that I’m a waiter working toward becoming something else. On my darkest days, however, I feel like a train-wreck personality that’s going to stay in this business forever.
I sip my coffee and sigh. Maybe I should have been a fireman.
T
he customer at table 17 is taking forever to make up her mind. As I wait patiently I idly think that, if I had become a fireman, I’d never have a problem getting laid. What is it about those guys that gets girls all hot and bothered? Man, the four-year-old me wasn’t thinking that when he wore his fireman’s cap to bed.
“Might I suggest the salmon, madam?” I offer, finally breaking the silence. “It’s quite good here.”
“I don’t know,” the woman says, furrowing her brow as she peers at the menu. “I’m a fussy eater.”
No kidding, I think to myself.
It’s Saturday night. I have other tables to attend to. This lady’s consumed one cocktail, twenty minutes, and most of my patience while contemplating her menu. Her husband’s getting antsy. I can feel my other customers’ eyes running up and down my body, their telepathic cries for attention rattling off the back of my skull like hail on a tin roof. The part of my brain that runs on autopilot, my waiter’s sixth sense, which lets me know drinks are running low or appetizers need to be cleared, starts tugging at my conscious mind.
“Let me give you a few more minutes,” I say, turning to leave. “I’ll be right—”
“Don’t go anywhere,” the husband groans, “or she’ll take even longer.”
“Yes, sir,” I reply, stopping in my tracks.
The woman’s lips move like she’s silently reciting the menu items out of a prayer book. Fussy eaters are an interesting evolutionary paradox. How did they manage to survive the primordial jungle and pass on their DNA? Didn’t they just eat what was available or die? When haute cuisine was still a long way off, our appendixes might’ve been used to digest grass. You ate what you could when you could. I can just imagine some Stepford cave-wife getting mauled by a saber-toothed tiger because she dithered between picking free-range mastodon and dietetic tree bark. Picky eaters seem like an evolutionary dead end, but they’re here anyway. I’m sure some academic will find a reason.
“Madam?” I prod gently. No response. Damn. There’s never a saber-toothed tiger around when you need one.
The woman stares at the menu. This is taking way too long. I feel anxiety start to tickle my stomach. My blood pressure shoots up.
“Is the salmon farmed or organic?” the woman finally asks.
“It’s organically farmed,” I reply.
“There’s no such thing as organically farmed,” the woman snaps. “It’s either wild or raised on a fish farm.”
“These are farmed,” I reply, “but the supplier doesn’t use pesticides or antibiotics.”
“Then it’s not organic,” the woman harrumphs.
I want to tell this lady she’s wrong. She’s operating under the misconception that all organic fish is caught in the wild. Organic produce, by definition, is raised in a controlled environment that eschews the use of chemical pesticides, nonorganic feeds, and synthetic fertilizers. Because wild fish are not raised in such a controlled environment, hence the name “wild,” many of them don’t meet USDA requirements to be labeled organic. But here’s the real kicker: under the current rules only vegetarian fish like tilapia and catfish can be labeled organic. Salmon are carnivores. Unless they’ve been raised on a fish farm eating nuts and twigs
instead of little fish, they can’t be considered organic. What my customer’s asking for is an impossibility. Don’t blame me. Blame the Department of Agriculture.
“I assure you, madam,” I say, “the salmon is excellent.”
“When was it delivered?”
“Friday.”
“Not today?”
“No, madam.”
“Ugh,” the woman says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Frozen fish. I never eat frozen fish.”
I catch the annoyed look threatening to spread over my face. This lady has no idea how restaurants operate. Most restaurants freeze their fish. If a restaurant gets a fish delivery twice a week, what are they supposed to do the other five days? Not sell fish? You can’t run a restaurant that way. Fish is delivered to The Bistro on Tuesdays and Fridays. The guys clean the fish, cut them into filets, wrap the measured portions in Saran Wrap, and freeze the suckers solid. Even Nobu, New York City’s temple of sushi, sometimes uses frozen fish. The chefs use a special deep-freeze process that transforms succulent fish into rock-hard slabs. When the frozen tuna needs to be pressed into service, all they need is a band saw, ten minutes, and a bowl of warm water to return the fish to its pristine red state. Fish purveyors have spent millions of dollars building gigantic freezers to freeze tons of premium tuna with sophisticated technologies that preserve the texture and flavor of the fish. Done right, tuna can stay fresh for two years! Imagine telling my finicky customer
that.
“I’ll have the spaghetti Pomodoro then,” the lady says, angrily shutting her menu.
“For chrissake, Marjorie,” her husband says, “you can make that at home for a dollar.”
“They don’t have anything organic,” the woman pouts. “I’m fine with pasta.”
“At least try the salmon.”
“No!”
“It’s a great price for salmon, Marjorie.”
“It’s farmed!” the wife says. “Forget it.”
Marjorie’s husband has stumbled onto the reason why The Bistro uses farmed salmon. Farmed fish is
cheaper.
That’s why the salmon we serve is $22.95 instead of $35.95. Restaurants serving super–high-quality fish have to pass the food costs along to their customers. That might work for Nobu, but the average restaurant can’t risk buying super-premium fish and not moving it. Customers zealously demand the best, but when faced with the prices in black and white, their fervor often cools. Restaurants have to balance food quality with a healthy profit margin.
“Marjorie…” the husband groans.
If I don’t get away from these people, I’m going to go into the weeds. I decide honesty’s the best policy.
“Folks, I’m sorry,” I say. “But I’ve got other customers.”
“She’ll have the salmon,” the husband says, waving me away.
“Very good, sir.”
“But…” the wife sputters. “He can’t order for me!”
I decide to stymie the progress of women’s liberation and run away from the table.
I go to the POS computer and ring in the woman’s salmon. She’s going to be fine. The salmon’s excellent. Besides, if she knew better, she’d want the fish to be frozen. Some fish, like salmon, contain parasites that are killed during the freezing process. If the fish wasn’t frozen in the hold of the ship, you better pray it was frozen in the restaurant. People get sick from improperly stored fish. No one ever died from frozen fish. We all survived fish sticks, didn’t we?
A few minutes later I encounter another animal lover.
“Do you serve free-range chicken?” she asks.
“No,” I answer honestly.
“Why not?”
Fluvio told us to tell the customers we use organically raised chicken. Then again Fluvio automatically tells the customers whatever they want to hear. Fluvio almost told a Jewish customer
we were a kosher place. Luckily, I intercepted that faux pas. I’ve learned not to listen to Fluvio.
“You’d have to talk to the owner about that,” I reply. “I don’t know why.”
“I only eat chickens that were allowed to roam free and drink clean water,” the customer says. “I think a happy chicken tastes better.”
I shudder at the thought of happiness becoming a flavor enhancer. I wonder if chickens from industrial farms and free-range pastures appreciate the differences in their upbringing when facing the farmer’s ax. Is the free-range chicken thanking the farmer for the nice living conditions as its head’s being lopped off? I don’t think so.
“Might I suggest pasta, madam?”
“How’s the steak?” the lady asks.
“Excellent.”
“Is it free range,” the woman asks. “Like in Argentina?”
“Happy cows, madam?” I deadpan.
“Exactly,” the woman says. “In Japan they feed their cows beer and massage them so they’re really happy. Keeps the flesh tender.”
There is some truth to what the lady’s saying. If cows experience anxiety before they’re slaughtered, they can release hormones that degrade the taste of the meat. I’m all for making a steer’s end as painless as possible, but there’s something about this lady’s attitude that’s creeping me out. Her desire to see animals humanely treated has less to do with compassion and more to do with her taste buds. It’s like she won’t be happy until every petting zoo’s been turned into a death camp.
“That’s Kobe beef, madam,” I say.
“Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re an Italian restaurant.”
“Oh.”
I finally persuade the woman to get the striped bass. Luckily, she doesn’t inquire about its pedigree.
I sigh to myself. When I was a kid, customers never asked these kinds of questions. Gone are the days when patrons blindly ordered off the menu and took the chef’s word as gospel. Things like free-range chicken, organic fish, and the stuff hemp-sandaled hippies ate was unheard off. Kobe steak? A sybaritic rarity. Nowadays customers armed with information gleaned from the Internet and television shows fancy themselves as apprentice chefs. Just because they read chef biographies and watch Bobby Flay, they think they know everything there is to know about restaurants and cooking. Trust me, they don’t. In my seven years as a waiter I haven’t learned a tenth of what there is to know. Do you watch
Grey’s Anatomy
and think you can perform surgery? I hope not. Customers often think they’re entitled to second-guess a chef’s judgment.
Don’t get me wrong, in the long run an educated customer’s a good thing. I’m happy to see palates becoming more informed and adventurous. No one ate raw fish when I was in high school. When I was a kid, Tuesdays meant meat loaf and Fridays meant pizza. On Sundays Dad would try his hand at making something out of a thirty-year-old cookbook. One time he made something I call fish heads and oatmeal to this day. Dad tried calling it bouillabaisse, but I still don’t believe him. He warped my tender culinary mind. I can’t blame my father, though; he tried exposing his kids to a bit of culture. In the end he just couldn’t overcome the Irish meat-and-potatoes genes.
Now American tastes are much more sophisticated. High school kids eat sashimi, college kids churn their own tofu, and adults daydream about opening vineyards in Napa. We have twelve-grain bread, frozen Thai food, twenty-dollar mustards, gourmet chocolates, and more places to eat out than ever before. Restaurants, food, and kitchen equipment are a multibillion-dollar industry, and every industry needs a PR network. Today the most visible propaganda arm of that industry is the Food Network.
The Food Network is, quite simply, the Death Star of American cooking. Born in the crucible of cable television, it gradually assumed the level of influence that once belonged to Julia Child and the James Beard Society. Long before
American Idol
and the rest of the reality TV craze, television executives stumbled upon the idea to pluck relatively unknown chefs out of obscurity and turn them into television superstars. These mad geniuses realized they could operate a television show with low overhead and make massive profits off food-industry ad dollars. You don’t even have to be a chef! Look at Rachael Ray! The Food Network took its low-overhead shows and did what the news channels did—broadcast twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Why watch a cooking show once or twice a week when you can watch one all the time? It’s a great American tradition—take a fun activity and dedicate twenty-four hours of programming to it. It works for NASCAR and the Golf Channel, so I’m not surprised it works for food. Salivating over the free exposure, chefs and restaurateurs clamor to cook in the network’s studio kitchens. The restaurant industry has always been an incestuous business. Chefs, owners, suppliers, dining-out guides, and food critics fall over one another with ass-kissing cross promotions, each trying to become the next Emeril,
Gourmet
magazine, or
Zagat
. I just wish waiters could get a reach around once in a while. We seem to have been left out of the loop.
Now there have always been cooking shows. Food on television is nothing new. I remember watching the Galloping Gourmet getting soused, trying to decipher Chef Tell’s impenetrable accent, and Julia Child dumping wine into everything. Americans love cooking shows. Come to think of it, how many of us are eating when we watch a cooking show? As we watch the chef perform his or her magic, the humble ham sandwich we’re gnawing on briefly transubstantiates into whatever the chef’s preparing. There’s always a small communion between viewer and chef, only you don’t get to eat what they’re making. It’s like watching a Catholic mass on TV.
But the Food Network’s evolved beyond mere cooking shows. When a channel has that much airtime to fill, it desperately needs
content
. The development guys have given us chefs battling in culinary Roman arenas, dragged viewers across the world looking for exotic flavors, and offered us a never-ending assemblage of toothy domestic goddesses teaching us how to whip up fantastic meals in fifteen minutes.
There’s nothing wrong with learning about food, and there’s nothing wrong with learning how to cook. In that regard I think the Food Network’s a cool thing. You just have to remember those telegenic chefs massaging olive oil into rump roasts are also trying to move cheap aluminum cookware with their name on it out of a warehouse in southern China. I worry food is being sexualized into a sort of status symbol in the service of profit. What happens when these messages are constantly inculcated into people’s psyches? I’m not saying they’re doing anything deliberate, but after watching the Food Network’s on-air personalities wax orgasmically in reverent tones about grilled this and sautéed that, the pickings in my average cupboard start looking shabby in comparison. I know—food’s been a status symbol ever since the lords of the feudal manor ate meat while the peasants ended up with offal and the hooves. Fast-forward a thousand years. Today we drool over elaborately filmed platters on television the way chubby teenage girls look at the skinny fashion models. People think TV life is real life. Everyone wants to be a rock star. People want to eat like a rock star. We’re starting to become convinced that everything that passes our lips has to be sexy, fresh, wonderful, and exciting. A peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich doesn’t cut it anymore.