The other day, a French neighbor asked me how I started working in restaurants. I don’t know if teenagers in Paris work after school or on weekends as a dishwasher, especially at places like Bonanza Sirloin Pit, as I did when I was sixteen. Buffalo Grill, a French chain, is the closest to the Western-themed Bonanza, but I doubt they have Texas toast: extra-thick white bread drenched in butter then griddled until crisp and toasted on both sides and served warm alongside ribeye steaks, as well as pricier T-Bones.
Back then, we didn’t have Anthony Bourdain, Food Network, Top Chef, or Master Chef to make professional cooking look like something to aspire to. True, Bourdain didn’t necessarily show the best sides of the work (and he was critical of Alice Waters), but he made working in restaurants (and bro kitchen culture) sound thrilling. I’d hear home cooks dropping the word mise, which is short for mise en place, where you put all your ingredients in place when you’re getting ready for service. I worked in restaurant kitchens for over thirty years, and I never heard anyone say “mise,” even at Bonanza, although they did have free parking.
Personally, I never found restaurant work glamorous. I worked my way through college at Muggsy’s, a college hangout that was famous for—you guessed it, mugs of beer. We had to wash the glass mugs so fast because the restaurant went through them so quickly. I remember the thick glass bottoms of the mugs cracking off and crashing to the floor when a server tried to fill one of the still-warm mugs with cold beer. I scooped ice cream for a few summers in college and also worked at a vegetarian restaurant, where one night I had a stare-down with a table of womyn from the womyn’s community who requested a female waiter. I told them I was as close as they were going to get.
