Watching Others Work

Most of us don’t have the luxury of watching other people perform their jobs, unless our job is sidewalk superintendent at a local building site.  We’re too busy trying to keep up with our own tasks that we cannot take the time to appreciate how others manage theirs.

However, on a recent mini-vacation to Toronto we did get to take the time and have the opportunity to very closely examine a well-tuned group of humans do something simple, but very, very well.  It was instructive, as well as reaffirming at the same time. 

Here’s the backstory:  The spousal unit and I postponed our birthday celebrations until the May long weekend from February and March respectively.  We simply didn’t have enough time to sit back and do it right.  We can bloody well do what the hell we want, when we want and if we wanted to move our birthdays around, then so be it:  The planet can adapt.  Adapt it did with a particular group insisting that The Rapture would end the Entire World on May 21st.  We shrugged and continued on our merry way, knowing our reservations were for the evening of May 21st.  If the World did End, we’d go out with a good meal. 

Take your home kitchen, when you’re preparing a big holiday meal with all the coordination, cooking, preparation, plating, serving and the other thousands of tasks that go into something like the full-pin Christmas Dinner.  You know how flogged you are at the end of it:  You feel like you’ve just spent five hours juggling a flaming Coleman stove, a bowling ball and a bunch of grapes, riding a unicycle, on a high wire over Niagara Falls, blindfolded, half-drunk, wearing a tutu two sizes too big.  Find the dial that controls the madness and twist it up to 11.  That’s a professional kitchen on a slow night. 

The majority of dining establishments hide the chaos of the line and the pass behind the swinging doors. As a guest, all that happens is you place your order and a few minutes later your meal glides out on the graceful shoes of the server. The other six thousand six hundred and sixty six discreet actions that go into your plate occur away from your sight, back “there”. “There” is where the real work and the real craftsmanship happens. 

In many ways, dining is like theatre. Seeing the mechanism work takes away the mystery and wonder, knowing the Swan has a scruffy, sweaty, stagehand named Gord crouched down inside it, pushing it along the lake on casters.  The suspension of disbelief is important.

We have a lot of respect for professional chefs, the brigade and the service staff as they take vaguely controllable pandemonium, make sense of it, coordinate, perform and deliver, repeatedly, every order, every change, every nuance, every time and get it right.  We got to watch a very good one on Saturday night while on our mini-vacation, up close, where they couldn’t hide.

Seated at the Chef’s table at Ruby Watch Co, you are at most ten feet from burning your forearm on the hot line.  The pass is barely a meter away.  You watch the chef do the last minute checks, seasoning and expediting of every dish.  At the same time, you see every server pick up and deliver their orders, all within easy earshot.  You get to see what kind of place it really is. 

Never once did we hear a raised voice or harsh comment.  Never once did something go wrong that we could determine.  Never once did anyone throw a hissy fit, gripe, or mutter under their breath.  Every step was collegial, gracious, respectful, professional and polite.  Not just to the guests, as that’s expected, we’re talking about the staff, with each other.  Everyone pitched in, doing the thousands of little things that make a dining room run, from the trivial to the critical, they all worked together, seamlessly, seemingly effortlessly making sure it all came together for the guest. 

As an example, no dining room has enough service pieces for the entire night:  It is financially foolish for a restaurateur to have 3000 small Le Creuset ramekins sitting around, gathering dust four nights out of seven.  As each table is cleared, the pieces go back, are washed and have to come back forward for use later.  It’s grunt-work, one of the thousands of little steps that have to happen, so the chef can plate up a later order, without a pause, reaching down and to the left knowing that there is a supply of said pieces exactly where they’re supposed to be.  A small thing, yes, but in the flow and pace of the kitchen, it is important, because if those pieces are missing an order is delayed, the asparagus is overcooked, the guest is unhappy and so on.  Small things can make a difference. 

Towards the end of the evening one of the service staff came forward with a stack of service pieces to the pass and the chef took a moment to thank them for their help.  It is also a small thing, a big name celebrity chef, taking the time to thank another for their help, but it speaks volumes about the people involved. 

The principals of the place were all there on a long-weekend when by all rights they could easily have taken the weekend off, gone to the cottage and been half in the bag at 10:30 on a Saturday night.  Nobody would have objected, but there they were, working the room like the professionals they obviously are.  We were made to feel welcome, as if we were the only folks in the joint and a hotshot gang of cuisine pros were there to cook just for us.  OK, there were a hundred other folks in the place, but you wouldn’t know it by the way we were greeted and treated.

About the food?  We talked about it later and yes, it was the best meal we’ve had, anywhere.  Ever.  Nothing less than simply perfect, flavorful and wonderful.  It was one of those times when all the moving parts worked exactly as they are supposed to work, from the service, to the food to the care and attention paid to how it all came together.  Sitting that close to the working mechanism of a dining room let us see exactly why it works. 

It comes down to respect.

The kitchen obviously respects the ingredients they use, the servers knowing where the stuff comes from show the same respect to the ingredients and the art of the kitchen in preparing the ingredients in a certain way.  Pairing the wine and the food, recommendations that were spot on, to complement what we were eating, enhancing the flavors the kitchen created.  The way the people interacted with each other, showing respect for each others’ role in the whole experience for the guest.  None of it needlessly fussy or frou-frou, just genuine, sincere and respectful. 

The interesting thing is this kind of atmosphere can rarely be created spontaneously.  Humans don’t work that way.  There is an old Yiddish saying that “Fish stink from the head” meaning leadership determines how successfully things work.  The corollary is that the right leadership can show others how to do it the right way, leading by example.  Leading by respect.

Which, at the end of the night, meant we had a wonderful meal, leaving full of belly and warmed of heart by being permitted to watch real culinary professionals do what they do best in the hopes that we would enjoy it.  We did.