Day 96: Girls, Girls, Girls, Girls....

Listening: I love girls, girls, girls, girls, girls all over the globe.

What's my problem? Girls make my heart explode.

I've almost hit my 100th day on the island. As it stands now, what I expected when I came down here is completely opposite of what I was expecting. I was expecting a full work crew and alternating one day and two day off weeks. I was expecting a slightly more wild atmosphere. And I was expecting to get more reading done. None of this has really happened.

Instead, I'm working six days a week, a different station almost every day. The crew has come and gone unexpectedly, leaving us short staffed for the majority of the summer. I've spent time on the beach about six days this summer, and I really haven't met too many people other than my co-workers. Even then, none of us have the same days off, at least not until the middle of September, so we don't spend any free time together.

It's probably a good thing that we're not all off together most of the time. It means that I don't spend money doing stuff with them. Instead, I hang out by myself and spend minimal cash.

The news, the news, the news.... The shitty and the great news all in one mouthful is that Jo-jo is gone. He went back to school to "check in" to his room and to get an extension of his internship so that he could work through Labor Day. I was an arrangement that he had with Chef before he was even given the internship. When Jo-jo went back, he called on the morning that he was supposed to be back at work saying that his school wouldn't let him come back. This, we all know, was bullshit. We have another guy from his school working for us and he said that all Jo-jo needed to do was call up the school and let them know. He didn't even need to go back.

Jo-jo is a bag-a-douche. Everyone knows that now, and the world is a very small place. Your rights and wrongs follow you around like a cloud. There's always someone who knows someone who knows someone in this industry. References are big. I know that if someone in Boston asks me if I worked with him in Nantucket, I'll tell them that I did and I'll tell them what kind of guy that he was. It's the same thing with the girl from Chez that stole my ipod and headphones. Reputations are important. Why not build a good one?

On the brighter side of things, my wonderful roomie, Iria, came down to visit me from Monday through Wednesday. She got in on Monday afternoon, and was out and about while I worked, and passed out shortly after I got off work. Tuesday morning, we got up, puttered around a bit and then got breakfast at the Even Keel Cafe. I have to say that breakfast was okay. It was nice to see Merrill, a girl who I met working at the Nantucket Film Festival. But, as far as the food went, it was nothing to write home about. I had some French toast, and Iria had some blueberry pancakes.

After breakfast, which actually turned out to be more like brunch, we changed and headed out to Jetties Beach to rent a tandem kayak. Iria had never been kayaking before and, I could tell, she couldn't quite figure out an efficient paddling motion. I spent a lot of my time trying to steer. I can only imagine what would have happened had we rented two individual kayaks. There was quite a bit of splashing around involved, but we really couldn't go anywhere too far. We were restricted by the channel on one side, the jetties on another side and the harbor on the other side. It was fun though.

Iria didn't realize just how wet she would be getting in the kayak, so afterwards, we hung out on Jetties Beach waiting for her shorts to dry. It was a beautiful day, and the sun was out. There was a nice breeze and an amusing little boy playing near us. We spent a good couple of hours soaking in the sun and chatting about everything from her time in Boston to her upcoming move back to Germany.

Once Iria's shorts were dry, we headed back to the compound to pick up a Cisco Brewery growler that I had. The original plan was to bike to Bartlett Farms to pick up a snack, go to the Cisco Brewery to pick up beer, and then head to Cisco Beach to have a mid afternoon picnic. As we rode to the Farm and Cisco, the sky got a bit overcast and it became a bit chilly. So, we just ended up staying at the brewery to do a couple of tasting, drink a few pints, and pick up a growler to bring back to the kitchen crew. By the time we left the brewery, it was almost sunset, so we decided to head down to the beach to see if we catch the sunset, and we did. I have to say that it was a spectacular sunset.

It was a long chilly bike ride home. Neither of us were dressed for the drop in temperature that came with the lack of direct sunlight.

After a shower and a change, we headed downstairs to have dinner. It's only the second dinner that I've eaten at my current place of employment, which is the lowest of all of the restaurant that I have worked at. I can't even count the number of times that I have eaten at the Chez. I ate at least four times at the Dizzle and three times at CK. As Pies said just a couple of days later, the food tastes so much better out in the dining room. Everything just tastes so much better. Jon-jon was our server, and I got a chance to see the smiling faces that make up the cast of characters that I usually see by fluorescent light, not candle light. It makes a difference, you know.

Iria had the avocado and cucumber soup special and the salmon for her entree. I had the foie gras tasting (how could I not) and the lamb loin special. As a cook, we taste a lot of components to a dish. We make sure that everything tastes good on its own. We can imagine what these things taste like together, but we rarely get a chance to have a taste of the fully composed dish. So, when we do get to eat a complete dish coming from the kitchen that we work in, it's quite a treat. I have to say that I had a fantastic dinner that really stuffed me to the gills. Iria and I ordered a dessert to share, but we could barely make a dent in it.

It made me happy to see Iria clean her plate. She seemed to love everything that she had that night, which in addition to her soup, salmon, and dessert, included a scallop dish and a cheese plate that Chef sent out to us.

That night, as much as I wanted to go out on the town, I was beat. I had four hours of sleep the two nights before, so I was ready for sleep. So, we stayed in and watched a movie before taking a two hour nap before sunrise.

That's right. We got up before sunrise and headed out to Brant Point to see the sunrise over the boats bobbing in the waves. It was great watching Iria watch the sunrise and sunset. There was just something wonderful about it, as if she were taking advantage of every single sunrise and sunset, as to make the most out of her time on earth. Watching her made me want to make the most of my time on earth too. It's tough, though, when you're a night person in a daytime world. Maybe I'll try to see some more sunrises and sunsets on my days off. Maybe I'll try to have the smile and the sparkle in my eyes like she seems to have. You know, that sparkle of life.

After another short nap, we went to Fog Island for breakfast before she headed back onto the ferry. Surprisingly, I knew one of the servers. She works at my restaurant too. I didn't even know that she worked there. Crazy! Anyhow, Iria and I had a nice breakfast and then it was time for her to leave. It was sad knowing that it would be a long while before I see her again. It won't be a forever thing, but it will be measured in the degrees of months, if not years. But, I do know that in the year that she has lived in Boston, she has become one of my good and trusted friends.

A couple of days after Iria got on the boat, I received an e-mail from Linh, just before I went to work. Her e-mail made a bit of emotion well up in me and made my heart heart a little. She wrote:

Tonight was my last night out with Iria. It only just hit me that she's *really* leaving, and I'm pretty bummed out. Totally irreplaceable. I'll miss her a lot....

I thought of you at dinner and wished you could be there. Iria did, too. We agreed it hasn't been quite the same since you've been away.

I always knew that I missed my room mates. I love them both to pieces. But, for the first time since I've been down here, my heart physically hurt as I missed them and the rest of my good friends in Boston. Brit has been going through a bit of homesickness, because she feels that she can't really depend on anyone down here, and for the first time since I got here, I could really feel what I think she's feeling. At the same time I know that it's a necessary evil for me to be down here. It's making me, not only, a stronger cook, but a stronger person who is more ready to move around the world and take it for my own. It doesn't mean that I miss or love my girls any less.

In a related note, I was thinking today. I work with so many amazing women that it's mind boggling. Sometimes I wonder how any of them are single. They're all beautiful, smart, funny, and charming/charismatic. A number of them are in their late thirties, and I wish I could hook them up with some of my single guy friends from Boston. Some I just want to take home myself, but the likelihood of that seems rather slim. But man, how lucky can I guy like me be to work around such beauty, grace, humor and intelligence. I'm such a lucky guy, even if none of them come home with me. I'm "blessed" by so many great women in my life from Holly, a friend from high school, to Jess, a friend from college, to Linh, a friend from my depression years and my transition years, to Sam, my friend in my happy years. I have such great women stick with me through my life. It makes my heart want to explode.

And now it is late. I'll leave you with some pics from Iria's visit.


Iria and I at the Cisco Brewery


A pint that's made from corn!


Iria during sunset at Cisco


Cisco surfers catching a wave at sunset


The sun beginning to rise at Brant Point


Iria on the beach at sunrise


Sunrise on the fishing boat bobbing sea


The first yacht out in the morning


Iria and the lighthouse


Iria and and I in the breezy morning

Day 91: Cannonball!

Listening: Don't let your life wrap up around you. Don't forget to call, whenever. I'll be here just waiting for you. I'll be under your stars forever, neither here nor there, just right beside you.

What's my problem? Waterlogged flounder.

So I have been slacking a bit on the updating. Well, it's because I've been working my arse off as usual. Things in the kitchen have been relatively okay. Lindsay is a rockstar. She, I can tell, is a much better cook than me right now. I also think that she has been in the business quite a bit longer than me, so I don't feel so bad. Papi, on the other hand, I am finding out is a shit cook.

Man, I don't know why that guy's a cook. Sure he went to the Culinary Institute of America, but that, I am finding out, doesn't mean shit. He's a dirty cook. I don't mean that people will get sick from eating his food. I mean that his mise en place, or station, is constantly in disarray. He doesn't clean his cutting board very often. Pots and pans are everywhere on his stove top. Second, he comes in late all of the time. He's the last one into the kitchen in the "morning," and the first to leave the kitchen for break. The other day, we put up staff meal at a quarter to five. I still had some things that I wanted to do, so I was still setting up my mise en place. Everyone else was peeling potatoes and onions. Even Chef was helping with the peelings. Papi, he takes his meal and leaves without saying a word. Bag-o-douche.

Tonight, we had a lamb special on the menu. As I have experienced on the nights that I have been working the middle/plating/expediting station, Papi is slow on his pickups. He's the last one to put the protein on the plates. Half of the time, I have to grab his sides or sauces and put everything on the plate. See, the saute plates are really quite simple. There isn't a lot of fancy sauce work., not like with the steak plate setup or the shrimp dish setup from the grill station. It's the veg in the middle of the plate, the sauce around the veg, the protein on top, and a garnish on top before Chef puts the finishing touches on. But still, the guy can't get the food to the plate. When I'm working saute, because of the location of the ticket rack, I plate up 90% of my food and am already working on the next pickup as I'm plating the current pickup. Anyhow, Pies knew that he would be slow on the pickup anyways, but Chef wanted the lamb to come off of the grill. Papi was blowing the lamb away. He overcooked a number of lambs. It was totally fucked. And then, as he was pulling his salmon out of the broiler with a not entirely dry towel, he felt the heat in his fingers and dropped his sizzle plate right onto my two orders of flounder. Did I happen to mention that I only had four orders of flounder left? Oh, man did it burn my ass, and Pies almost lost it as he was working the middle/plating/expediting station. I don't blame him.

Anyways, in other news, another annoyance in the kitchen lately is the flounder. See, we used to get this locally fished flounder. It was beautiful stuff. It was firm, browned up well, and was kind of impossible to blow away. Last week, the quota was filled, meaning that the local flounder fishing for the season is over. In fact the quota was overfished by at least a hundred thousand pounds. So now we're getting flounder for somewhere else, and it sucks. When it gets to us, it's all waterlogged. The fish is soft and easily falls apart. Sometimes, even when I'm trying to delicately turn the fish, it breaks. Sometimes when it's browning in the pan, it sticks and falls to pieces. It's just a shitty product. For the past week or so, I have hated putting it on the plate. I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the guests by putting it on the plate. Luckily, Chef has finally decided to switch the protein. I think tomorrow, we're switching to striped bass until that season is over. I can't begin to tell you how much happier I am with it.

On the fun side of life, last night we were done with service early, so a bunch of us went out on the town. We started at Cambridge Street, and ended up at Soupy's ice cream place on Straight Wharf. A lot of us were trashed. One of the servers from my restaurant was so trashed that she decided that she wanted food. She went back to the kitchen of Cambridge Street and rooted around until she found some ice cream. She proceeded to eat ice cream straight out of the carton. It was partially really amusing, and partially horrifying. After we all raided Soupy's ice cream shop, people started jumping off of the roof of the shop into the ocean water below. It was a lot of fun until the cops came. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do it. But I will be doing it by the end of the summer.

Tomorrow is my day off. My roomie from Boston, Iria, is down here for a couple of days. Tomorrow, I'm planning on taking her to Cisco brewery and then to Cisco beach. It should be a good time.

And one final thought before I throw some pictures at you.... China's beach volleyball player Xue Chen is HOT. Hope she wins the bronze.


Our sommelier with a fake mustache.


The crew raiding Soupy's ice cream shop.


Lindsay thinks ice cream is finger-lickin' good!


Pies and Stephanie. By the way, Pies is holding a pint of vodka in his hand.


Brooke and Papi.


Lindsay wielding the scoop.

Day 81: I Have A Girlfriend?

Listening: Now it always seemed such a waste. She always had a pretty face, so I wondered how she hung around this place.

What's my problem? Not enough to say.

Well, it's 8/8/08. It's the opening of the olympics today, and apparently a bunch of dumb people wanted to get married today. C'mon, people. It's just some numbers.

Today was a pretty slow night, surprisingly. On a typical Friday in season, we would be expecting to do right around 200 dinners. Tonight, we did a mere 150. I was running a sardine special on the hot apps station, and we sold five of them all night long.

To be honest, not a lot has been happening lately. I've been working my ass off, as usual, and I am working rounds every week. This means that I'm splitting my time between a number of stations. I work two days on hot apps, two days on saute and two days on the expo/plating station. Doing this is both good and bad. It's good, because it means that I'm clutch. It means that I am the jack of all trades and I can fill in for anyone at any time. It's bad, because it means that I'm covering for people's days off. And on the day before a day off, a lot of people slack off. This means that I have to clean up other people's messes or dig other people out of the weeds. I think it makes me feel important to know that without me, Chef would have to work the line on people's days off.

It seems like staffing is a huge issue these days. We only recently got fully staffed and that's going to end when Jo-jo bounces out of here. A number of other restaurants have had a hard time getting fully staffed. In Boston, I know that since I left the Dizzle, they have been under staffed. What makes it even worse for the Dizzle is that, one line cook left after I left, another one's last day is on Sunday, and then two interns gave their notice the other day. If they don't get bodies in the door, they're screwed.

For the past few years, the gettin' has been good for cooks and chefs, and anyone working in the restaurant industry. With the boom of the food network and all of the pedestrian foodies out there, restaurants have been opening and have been making money hand over fist. With the current economic downturn, I fear that the good times may be ending soon. The cost of everything is up with the cost of oil and gas. In the restaurant industry, we depend on gas to cook with and to transport our raw goods. So this in tern is making it more expensive to put food on a plate, which in turn makes it more expensive for the average joe to go out and eat. If the average joe can't go out to eat, restaurants close. This means that there are less good restaurant jobs. I just hope that when the smoke clears and the dust settles, I'm part of the elite who are running this country's culinary scene.

Anyways, enough of the speculation on the economy and on the future of the American culinary scene. I'll finish this post off with a bit of a story.

Two nights ago, Val, the dishwasher comes in. She works at another restaurant during the day. Lindsay, the new girl's boyfriend works at that restaurant too. So, Val comes in and says to Lindsay and I, "So you're both dating people over at (insert restaurant name)?" Lindsay says she is, and I say, "What on earth are you talking about?" It turns out that The people over at that restaurant were talking about it. Lindsay's boyfriend said that they were dating, and someone else said that the guy with the glasses working where I work was dating a girl over there. I'm the only guy who wears glasses in our kitchen. I assure you, I'm not dating anyone on the island at the moment, but for a while, there was a rumor going around that I was. ti told Val to figure out who I was dating and to make sure she was cute. If she wasn't cute, trade her in for someone who is. As expected, it was all just a big misunderstanding. It's too bad really. It might have been nice to have someone to hang out with on the island.

Speaking of the little bit of loneliness that plagues my stay here, I have found out once and for all the answer to the question of whether I am an introvert or an extrovert. I find that I am an extrovert. I take my energy from those around me. When I'm by myself and I don't know anyone, it's much harder for me to get the ball rolling. My days off are usually pretty solitary, which isn't an entirely bad thing. It's just annoying. Well, I'm off to sleep. Hopefully, I'll have more to say later.

Day 69 (Did You Really Think That I Would Pass This Up): It Should Have Been... Me?!?

Listening: Don't you know me? I'm the boy next door, the one you find so easy to ignore. Is that what I was fighting for? Walking on a thin line, straight off the front line, labeled as freaks loose on the streets of the city.

What's my problem? Inspiring men are not immortal.

I've been working my ass off lately. But, really, what's new about that? Twelve hour work days, six days a week. It's tough on the body. Lately, my body has been hating me. My lower back has been spasming a little over the past couple of days. It doesn't help that while working saute last night, I put up 139 of 205 meals. At the end of the night, Pies and I counted the proteins that we had left at the end of the night versus what we started. The numbers were something like 48 flounders sold, 34 tunas, 32 hens, and 25 monkfish specials. Hot apps probably put up ten or fifteen entrees, which means that grill only put up 55 meals. Yeah. How's that for a split?

I know that I've had a heavier share than that before though. When we run striped bass as a special, it blazes out of the kitchen. I don't know if it's because it's the most delicious fish on earth when cooked (in my humble opinion), or if it's because it's a completely seasonal fish. But people order the hell out of it. I think if I remember correctly, one night we sold out of 54 orders of striped bass with an hour still left in service.

Anyhow, last night, we totally got fucked by the flow. It was a complete deluge followed by a lull and then another deluge. Our last big push of the night had 57 dinners. About halfway through the night, I turned to Pies and asked him if he ever felt like he was in a bad prison movie. One of the things that totally fucked the flow was that on a four or five top, only one person would order an appetizer. This means that while that one person is eating his or her salad or whatever, everyone else at the table is sitting around with their thumb up their ass, waiting, getting hungrier by the second. See, from what I'm told, every actual minute feels like three if you're a diner waiting for food, and feels like ten seconds if you're a cook who is in the weeds. So, the lesson in this is for you to order apps so that the guys cooking your entrees have enough time to give them the proper care.

I think what hurt the most about last night's service was the very last pickup. I had a guinea hen on that pickup, and I accidentally blew it away. When the order for a guinea hen comes in, I drop a bread pudding in the warming oven that's set to 250 or 300 degrees, dredge the guinea hen breast in seasoned flour, shallow fry it skin side down until the breading is golden brown, flip it, fry on that side until golden brown, and then transfer it to a sizzle platter and pop it in my oven which is set at 500 degrees until it's cooked through. Well, I had so much going on in the last four or five pickups that I didn't even realize that it had finished cooking and that the bottom of the breast had burnt to the sizzle platter. Yeah. It sucked. We had to re-fire a new one. Luckily, I was able to pick out a smaller breast so that the cooking time was shorter.

Aside from that, work has been pretty good. I've been really on top of things, and have even started butchering the fish on a regular basis. I know that sounds pretty mundane, but it's a big thing for me. In every other restaurant that I have worked with, either the prep guy, the chef or the sous chef does all of the butchering. In the one case where it was the prep guy doing the butchering, he had been doing it for upwards of twenty years. So, needless to say, they only trust certain people to do the butchering. When I cut fish, I'm very careful and deliberate. I do a lot of things that I don't have to do when I butcher too. I check the invoices, calculate out how much everything costs, and cut according to how many portions we should be getting. For instance, salmon costs $12.50 per pound. I was told we want our food cost to be about $7 per serving of salmon. So, I'll multiply the number of pounds of salmon that we received by the cost of the salmon, which is about $12.50. I'll divide that number by 7, and that will tell me how many portions I should be getting out of the amount of salmon that we received. At first I was a little bit scared of doing the butchering. I mean, what happens if I make some bad cuts and we lose money on those portions? But I quickly got over that, and now it is probably one of my favorite things to do during prep.

On the worse side of prep, staff meal, or family meal, has been killing me. Since Mikey left, I have been doing a great deal of the thought for staff meal. Papi does his best to avoid doing anything for it, even if the master prep list says that he should be helping. Jo-jo just sucks, and he comes up with a lot of things that are a lot more labor intensive or just have weird flavor combinations, so I try to box him out of it. Pies is never on staff meal because he's sous. Chef isn't on it because he's chef. Brit. Well, she has some great ideas, it's just that sometimes it's bad timing. For instance, she wanted to make a chicken alfredo for staff meal the day after we had pasta with bolognese.

Yesterday, Pies deliberately gave me the day off from making staff meal, so it was just Jo-jo and Brit making staff meal. They decided that they would make sandwiches with sauteed beef, avocado and bean sprouts. It doesn't sound so bad. Brit made focaccia bread just for staff meal (mistake #1: staff meal should take at most 45 minutes of labor time... baking bread for staff meal is just unreasonable). Now, Staff meal is supposed to go up at a quarter to five, so that we can break at five and be back at half past five for the six o'clock start of service. They didn't get staff meal up until almost five past five (mistake #2). Further more, I had to help them put together the sandwiches. We weren't out of the kitchen until a quarter past five, so we only got a fifteen minute break. I said to Pies on the way out of the kitchen, "And this is why I will never get another day off from staff meal...."

Today, I came in to find out that no one had pulled any protein for staff meal last night. This means that I have nothing to work with for staff meal. Today, I just couldn't deal with it. My brain was tired and my back was killing me. I stood in the walk-in for a good ten minutes just trying to come up with an idea, and nothing was coming. So, I said, "fuck it." I let Jo-jo deal with it and he and Papi picked up the slack. It's tough to come up with anything good after working on every staff meal for six days a week for three or five weeks. It's a tough, tough thing. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll be back on my staff meal game. I'm doing my best to bring my game to the next level. For the most part I think I'm doing it.

Speaking of the next level, a funny little conversation happened the other night when I was out drinking with Pies. He had worked in kitchens for a long time at places like Longhorn Steakhouse and as a short order cook, but got serious about food and went to culinary school at age 28. He's 31 now and sous chef at arguably the best restaurant on Nantucket.

So, we're strolling along half cocked and I say, "Y'know, I wonder sometimes if I had gone to school, if I would be a sous-chef by now." He told me, "You would have, even if you hadn't gone to school. I know that for sure." I asked him how. This is when he tells me that one night he and Seany sous-sous had been out drinking when Seany said, "I hope the next sous is as cool as I am." Pies asked who the new sous was, and Seany told him that Chef had hired a guy from Boston (me) who was supposed to be pretty hot shit. Since no one knew anything about me, Pies got a bit up in arms. Originally Pies was gonna work the season and then head to southeast Asia to travel. This place was his way out of working for his brother in Seattle and his way out of the country. Pies wasn't even being considered for the position, because Chef knew that he wanted to take off at the end of the season. That's when Pies decided that he wanted to stay. He wanted the position, even though he wasn't being considered for it. After getting angry about it for a bit, he sat down with Chef and said that he wanted the position and that he would commit to at least two years. And that's how I was bypassed unbeknownst to me. So, I was supposed to be the next sous-chef.

I have to say that it's pretty amazing. I have a decent resume. I have decent skills, but am I ready to be a sous-chef? I don't know. I think I have the management skills and the mental capacity, but I dunno if I would have had the line confidence to be sous-chef. Now, I think that I totally have the line confidence to be a sous-chef. I wonder what would have happened had I become the sous. I think that I would have failed miserably. So I guess it's a good thing that Pies stepped up. I definitely see myself as lead line cook right now. I'm taking on more and more responsibility every day and I love it. I also don't think that it would have been as possible as it has been if Mikey hadn't dipped. Chef and Mikey were tight.

Anyhow, I only have a few more thoughts for the night. First of all, for those of you who don't know, Dr. Randy Pausch finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer on the 25th. He was the man responsible for giving the famous "Last Lecture" and writing the book named after the speech. The speech is worth the hour and fifteen minutes of your time. I have to be honest that as I watched the speech, I felt that he was talking to me. I know that it wasn't my childhood dream to be a chef, but I know now why it was so hard to get as far as I have gotten. I can't even begin to convey how inspirational Randy Pausch was, and continues to be for me. It's a great asset to the world that this man existed and touched more people than he could probably imagine. It's a great loss to the world that he is gone.

It's time for me to go to sleep so that I can wake up in the morning and beat my body to hell all over again. I need to find a masseuse. Anyone know a cheap masseuse in Nantucket?

Day 63: Sexile?

Listening: But unaccountably my heart was growing small and mean. A hurry past wretched people I pretend I haven't seen, but there's money in my pocket and my clothes are clean

What's my problem? One person can ruin it all.

Strange... I've been consistently blogging around once a week for the past few weeks, and here I go and blog twice in three days! Amazing! My two fans in Chicago must be psyched. But please, don't everyone cream your pants. It's just a second blog in a week.

So, yesterday, for the first time ever in my life, I was sexiled. Yes. Sexiled. What is this? College? For fuck sake! Let me tell you how it all went down.

After work last night, I come upstairs, talk on the phone for an hour, shower and plop down on the couch only to channel surf and find that the only decent things on the TV were "Ghostbusters" and "Desperado," two legit uses of two hours when you're bored as fuck, but not really what I expose my brain to. Apparently Jo-jo, Pies, Papi, Sandy (a food runner), Soupy (a bartender) went to the Muse, the local "nightclub" (I use that term loosely). It was there that Jo-jo picked up a taxi full of chubbies and uglies. I use that in the nicest senses of the words. I'm taking some of this from second hand information. Apparently when these chicks hopped out of the cab, it raised up a good three or four inches without their weight inside. I know one of the girls who was part of the crew, and she is a chubby, and without a good personality to make her a worthwhile individual. I know I sound awful, but, okay, there's no good reason for it. I should erase this whole paragraph, but what's done is done. You'll just have to deal with the edge I have on this whole thing.

Anyhow, they bring all of these chicks back to the compound, continue drinking and causing a ruckas. That's when I got my fat ass up off the couch to see what was going on. There they are, being loud and annoying. If you talk to Brit about it, she gets heated. She was trying to sleep while all of this was going on. She had a 6AM prep shift the next morning. So, she comes out and tells them all to be quiet and I go downstairs to see what's up. It's there that I make visual contact with the annoying chubbies and uglies. They continue being loud and annoying.

After talking to the guys (Pies, Sandy & Soupy), I head back upstairs, because I figure this shit ain't worth my time. I stopped drinking hours ago and chubby & ugly girls who don't have anything interesting to say are not entertaining. On my way back into the apartment, I see this girl sitting on the bench across next to my front door texting on her phone. She's neither chubby nor ugly, so I ask her why everyone else is half in the bag and she's not. She admits that she is, in fact, half in the bag just like everyone else. I talk to her some more anyways.

I find out, when we introduce ourselves, that she has known about me for a while. Apparently, she worked at Temple Bar with my friends Tom and Greg. She said that when she told them that she would be working at Straight Wharf, they told her that she should try to find me because I would be working on the island too. As we talked, I half rolled my eyes at things she said, because she was a self admitting trust fund kid who lost her trust fund because her brother squandered it on drugs. She said she worked in kitchens in Boston and said she could rock the line. The truth was that she looked a little too prissy to have done all that. She definitely looks more front-of-the-house, which is what she's doing at Straight Wharf.

But I kept talking to her thinking to myself, "Hey, it's nice to meet someone who knows people I know in Boston, and maybe I might have someone new to hang out with on my days off." So I talk to her and talk to her, and that's when Jo-jo shows up. I'm fucking talking to this chica and he fucking hijacks the conversation. What tha fuck? Are you serious, dude? Have you any social graces? Clearly not. So Jo-jo likes to talk. He talks and talks and talks. I'm not just talking about in this particular instance. I'm talking in general. And ninety percent of the things that come out of his mouth make him sound like an arse.

Now, I'm not a guy who tries to hijack anything back. I'm not a guy who's gonna cut someone down while they're trying to throw game. At that point, I can't get a word in with Jo-jo's jabbering on anyways. So, I head back downstairs and end up sitting with the guys and one of the chubbies/uglies (all of the other ones left) until about half past three in the morning. When I finally go upstairs, there's a shirt on the door knob and sounds coming from inside.

Fuck, man. All I wanted to do was go to sleep. So, not only did I lose sleep, because I was out on the couch, but I lost someone I thought I might hang out with on my day off. See, I don't like to hang out with people who hang with people who are lacking in character. And as you can tell, I don't think too much of Jo-jo, both personally and professionally. So if she's riding the Jo-jo meat rocket, I don't want nothing to do with that chick.

It's amazing. I never once got sexiled in college. Not a single time. I have to wait until I'm thirty years old before that happens. How fuct is that? Anyhow I'm over it for the most part, but I still think about my living arrangement. I "share" a room with Jo-jo, a guy I don't really like all that much. At least ninety percent of the time he sleeps on the couch in the common room because he likes to sleep with the ambient noise of the History Channel. In the room he leaves his shit all over the place. He leaves the TV on all of the time, so, I can only listen to my music in my bunk where it's so low that I bump my head when I sit up straight. Tonight is a rare occasion. Jo-jo is asleep in the room, so Brit and I are in the common room on our computers and I'm playing my music. The TV is not on.

Pies, Brit and I were talking, and Pies said that it really shouldn't be Brit with the room all to herself. He says that the interns should have to bunk together and that I should have the solo room. I wish that were the case. There is another room in the back house. The only problem is that you have to go through the bathroom to get to the room and if anyone's in the bathroom, you can't get out. I've been thinking about moving into there. At least I wouldn't have a bunk over my head and if I wanted to just sit in my room, reading and listening to music, I could.

Anyhow, enough about bad shit. Let's talk about a little bit of good shit. So I'm prepping today, and chef slips a little manila envelope into my chef coat pocket. I know what it is. It's cash. I don't know how much cash, or what the cash is for, but I know it's cash. It's in the same type of envelope that he gave me the cash for my first week's raise in. I look in the envelope. It's the same amount of money as the raise I got. Weird. Pay day is on Friday and it's Monday. So, I really don't know what that money was for, and I'm kind of afraid to ask. If I get my paycheck this Friday and it's the same as the last paycheck, it just means that my raise didn't make it to this pay period. If my check is fatter than last paycheck, then I guess I got another bonus. I suppose that it could be that. Over the last week, I have been taking on more responsibility. I have been butchering fish, doing different prep odds and ends, and two days ago, I made a "bangin'" dipping sauce for the crab wontons that Chef was serving at a special catering event.

So that's all the news that's fit to print. Tomorrow's my day off and I have no clue what I'll be doing. I may just go somewhere to read if it's raining. Maybe I'll see whatever movie is playing tomorrow night. I also want to get to Marine Home Center to see if I can pick up some stuff for the kitchen. Anyhow, it's late. Time to go to sleep.

Day 61: R&R Followed By Helter Skelter

Listening: But the girl on car in the parking lot says, "Man you should try to take a shot. Can't you see my walls are crumbling?"

What's my problem? I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

WHEW! What a week. I guess I'll start with my day off. Because Mikey dipped out and because there has been so much drama in the restaurant, Chef decided to close on Tuesday. He said it was the only time and will be the only time that he would close during the season. The funny thing was that it was my day off anyways. That's right. had Mikey not taken his ball and head home, I would have had Tuesday off anyways.

With that being said, all week, I had been thinking of whether I wanted to go to Hyannis to see Sam. She was down on the Cape hanging out with some of her family from out of town. I guess, every year a big group of her family rent a cluster of cottages and hang out for a while on the Cape. They go on bike rides and have wine and cheese parties. Honestly, it sounds like a lot of fun. But she asked me if I wanted to go to Hyannis to meet her for lunch. My first reaction was to say yes, but then I got thinking about it. It costs me $40 each way to take the fast (1 hour) ferry to Hyannis, or $19 each way to take the slow (2 hour) ferry. And even then, you're a slave to the ferry schedule, where there are only five or six departures per day each way. Then, there's the fact that I would only be seeing her for a few hours. While we were talking about it, she made it seem like she would only be able to meet up with me from around noon until three. So it would have been either $80 and two hours of travel time for hanging out for three hours, or $40 and four hours of travel time for three hours of hanging out. It hardly seemed like a good idea, so I hemmed and hawed.

On Monday, I had to make a decision. As I talked to Sam on the phone, she could tell that I wasn't really feeling it, so she let me off the hook. After I got off the phone, I started talking to my friend Rachel online. I asked her if she thought it was worth it. She said that if it would make me feel good to see Sam then I should go. If not, then don't. I thought about it and changed my decision. The second I did and stepped out of my room, Brit and Jo-jo were in the common room talking abotu going to Hyannis on the day off. They said that they were taking the 8AM flight from the Nantucket airport to the Hyannis airport for $20. See, the first four Nantucket Shuttle flights from Nantucket to Hyannis are $20! Score! And it only takes 15 minutes of travel time! Bonus!

So, I text Sam and tell her that I'm going to meet up with her after all and tell her the details. It turns out that she could meet up with me earlier, so we left it that she would call me on her way to Hyannis after she did a couple of things with her family.

The next morning, Brit, Jo-jo and I dragged our asses out of bed (or in Jo-jo's case, the couch) and caught our flight to Hyannis. Once we got there, both Brit and Jo-jo were on the prowl for McDonald's. Blech. They're kids. I suppose it's what kids eat. But, really, how can you have a refined palate and an appreciation for quality ingredients and still want to put that shit in your mouth. Then again, I was on the hunt for Dunkin' Donuts. Mmm. Donuts....

We found the Dunkin' first, so I got a nice large coffee and a chocolate donut. Right across the street was a McDonald's. To tell you the truth, the two of them couldn't get over there fast enough. I think Brit got a sausage, egg and cheese McMuffin, a hash brown and an apple juice, and Jo-jo got a couple of chicken biscuit things. As they were two for three dollars, he gave me one of them. I have to say that I like almost every biscuit that I meet. I'm not saying that I would go out and get one of these things again. I am saying that I love biscuits.

For the next couple of hours, the three of us wandered the streets of Hyannis. We found this kick ass record store that was a lot like Newbury Comics in Boston. It sold quirky t-shirts, bobble heads and other nick nacks. What actually brought us into the store was a t-shirt in the window that I ended up buying. I'll post a pic of it later. I also found a couple of CDs to buy. I found Arrested Development's "3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life of..." for five dollars, and what I thought was Ben Watt's "North Marine Drive" album, a record that I have been searching for for a while. It's an old import and completely out of print. Two things sucked about buying these CDs. First of all, the Arrested Development album wasn't nearly as good as I remember it being. Second, when I opened the Ben Watt album, I found the motion picture soundtrack to Twelfth Night. Luckily I opened the CDs while I was still in Hyannis and was able to return it for a full refund.

I ended up meeting up with Sam around eleven o'clock. We walked around for a while and then settled down to have some lunch. I wasn't really all that hungry seeing as I had eaten a donut and a chicken biscuit, and drank a large coffee. We ended up sitting on the patio of this restaurant for three hours just sitting and talking. In that time, we ordered two salads and three beers. We were the most unexciting deuce that this restaurant had ever seen. It was totally worth the cash and the travel time to just sit there and chat with someone who really knew me. It seems like I don't really have anyone here like that yet.

The three of us left on the three thirty flight. The CNN station in the airport on the way back had reports of a propeller plane crashing in Atlanta, GA. To be honest, it kind of wigged me out. I'm not a big fan of prop planes. I mean, if you can name people who have died in prop planes, then that's a lot of people. Off the top of my head, I can name, JFK Jr., Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Aaliya. See that's five people there. I'm lucky that we didn't make it onto that list, but I told my two cohorts that if the three of us die like Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, I get to be Buddy Holly.

When I got back, I quickly dropped my gear and headed into town. I was on a mission to find a sandwich and a half bottle of wine. All week long, there has been free Shakespeare on Children's Beach. I was excited. I was hoping that it would be as good as the Shakespeare on the Common is in Boston. With my in-town missions accomplished, I headed to Children's Beach. When I got there, there were only a few people there my age. There were a lot of older folk, folks with kids and, well, their kids. I tried to convince some of the front of the house people to come with me, but no one was up for it or they blew me off. Bastards.

The show itself was only okay. The acting was mediocre and the costumes were, well, not much of costumes. The interpretation of the text was pretty straight forward. There wasn't any fun twists. Oh, by the way, the play that they were performing was "Much Ado About Nothing." I think that another time during the Nantucket Shakespeare Festival, "The Tempest" was performed. I like that play much more. I hope to get back up to Boston in the next few weeks where they're performing "As You Like It."

Anyhow, work has been crazy busy over the past few days. We've been feeding anywhere from 150 to 200 people a night and I have been feeding at least three quarters of them. That's right. At least three quarters of those people were ordering off of my station. For the past three nights, we put a striped bass special on the menu. It was pan roasted striped bass on potato risotto, ragout of Nantucket oyster mushrooms, basil pesto, truffle foam and fresh shaved summer truffles. It was a pretty bad ass dish, and we sold out of it. Last night, we sold 48 orders. Tonight, we sold 52 orders. So with that dish alone, I'm feeding at least a third of the diners. I can say that I sold around twenty guinea hens tonight, and twenty six last night. Twenty seven tunas last night, and fifteen tonight. I think I sold around twenty five or thirty each night. So I'm probably putting up at least a hundred and fifteen meals.

It's also been as hot as balls up in the kitchen too. It's almost as hot as it is when you stand next to the flat top at Chez in the middle of the summer, but not. It's about as hot as the saute station at Chez, but not as hot as it is at the grill and hot apps station at Chez during the summer. But hot nonetheless. So it's hot and busy. So you have to powder up so you don't chafe, and you should lube up and get ready for the ass fucking that is every night's service during the summer.

Last night, Pies was being a little bitch. He was tired, and was just a douche all day long. I tried to pump him up during service, but he really wasn't having it. At the end of service he was continuing to be a little bitch by throwing shit around and putting things where they didn't belong so that other people had to shuffle things around. Finally I had enough of it. So I said out loud in a crybaby voice, "Awww. Pies is tired. Awww." To that, he said, "What? I'm not allowed to be tired?" And to that I responded, "Not when you're just being a bitch to everyone." To that, he said, "I'm not even being a bitch, but if you want me to be a bitch, I can be a bitch." That completely pissed me off. Since Seany sous-sous left, Pies is the new sous. He's management. He should be the one trying to get people through the day, not the other way around. He should be the one leading by example, but instead, he bitches about the heat and bitches about being tired. He throws his shit around. It's not right. I dunno. You never hear me complaining about the heat, being tired or being hung over in the kitchen. I never let it affect my work. I don't think it should affect a sous chef's work either. I like Pies a lot. I think he's a good guy, but he has a lot to learn about managing people. Hopefully he'll learn the lessons that he needs to learn sooner rather than later.

Also in recent events, my friend Mark has been on the island for the past few days with his family. He recently finished working as a chef at a place in Central Square, and is currently jobless. I'm putting the full court press on trying to get him down here for at least a few weeks to work. He left today, and told Chef that he would call on Monday or Tuesday with what he has decided. It's kinda good that he's gone for now though. I have been out every night for the past four nights. I don't need to be doing that.

Anyhow, it's late. I need to be going to sleep. Hopefully I'll get better sleep tonight. I woke up sweating at half past six in the morning this morning. Ugh. It sucked. But I'm gonna crash hard tonight. Feeding at least two hundred and fifty people by yourself over two dinner services can wear you out. So I'll leave you with some images.


My new tee.


Brit and I on the prop plane to Hyannis.


Jo-jo and Brit psyched about their fast food.


The tattoo Jo-jo got while in Hyannis.


Sam and I in Hyannis.


A view of Nantucket from a prop plane.


The baptists in Hyannis say...

Day 54: TRAUMA!

Listening: Don't forget to keep your head warm. Twinkle twinkle, Uncle Floyd.

What's my problem? We're short staffed!

It seems like this summer is the summer of calamities here at my restaurant. Chef assures us that it's not usually like this. Let's recount what has happened thus far at the restaurant.

1) Pies gets sick. He has to go to the hospital. He's out for a day.

2) Jo-jo gets sick. He's out for a day.

3) Mikey gets sick. He has to go to the hospital. He's out for a couple of days.

4) Matt the intern arrives. He sucks. He's bounced a week later.

5) The graceless rhinoceros arrives. She sucks. She dips out on 10 minutes notice. Glad to see her go, but she leaves us in the shits staffing wise.

6) Mikey has a panic attack on the line. He has to go to the hospital.

7) Jo-jo gets an oil pop in the eye. He has to go to the hospital.

Now here comes the shocker, and I don't mean a pinkie in the ass.

A couple of nights ago, Pies, Mikey and Papi are drinking after work one night. Mikey is the only one of us who doesn't live in the compound. So he decides that he's going to get on his scooter and go home. This has happened countless times. He gets trashed, but can still scoot-scoot home. He always gets home safe, and there's never a scratch on the scoot-scoot. This night was different though.

He leaves and a little while later, Pies gets a text. Mikey texted him saying that he had been hit by a car on his way home. Pies tells Mikey to stay put and hops on his bike and races to where Mikey says he is. When Pies gets there, Mikey is nowhere to be found. He calls Mikey again. Mikey says that he's walking the scoot-scoot home, and that he's down the road. Pies, again, tells him to stay put. When he gets to the next point, again, Mikey is nowhere to be found. This is when Pies' phone dies. He goes up and down the street looking for him and doesn't find him. At that point, there's nothing more that he can do, so he comes back to the compound.

The next day, yesterday, Mikey comes in later than usual. He's usually in around half past eleven or so, but this day, he came in at a quarter to one. He seems fine. In fact, I didn't even know he was in an accident all day long. He takes Chef aside and tells him that he has been in accident. Chef tells him that if he needs to take the day off, he can. Mikey says no and continues to prep for the day.

It was a weird day all of the way around. I didn't have a lot to do, but I was kind of in the weeds. I was working hot apps after a few days on saute, so I had to check all of my mis en place, and Jo-jo didn't bother to clean the fryer, so I had to do that as well.

At five, we break for dinner. We always have around a half hour or forty five minutes for dinner. Mikey tells Pies that he's going to go to the store and asks if Pies needs anything. Pies tells him to grab him a Gatorade. And off Mikey goes.

At half past five, we all come back to the kitchen to set up our stations and get ready for the beginning of service at six o'clock. One by one we all come back. I was the second or third one back into the kitchen. At twenty to five, Mikey hasn't shown up. I start setting up his station, because I want to organize the reach in refridgerator with my own proteins and things. At a quarter to six, Chef and Pies start to wrap the tuna with the shoestring potato. At ten to six, Pies, Chef and other people from the restaurant start to try to call Mikey. No answer. We call the hospital and the police. The pastry chef who left the restaurant hours ago hops in her car and begins searching the island.

At six o'clock, Chef makes the call. I'm to move over to saute and Jo-jo moves over to hot apps and Brit comes in from her day off and works garde manager. But still, the question remains. Where is Mikey?

We call his roommate. She says that she looked in his room and all of his stuff is packed. We find out that he made comments to her last night that he feels unlucky on the island this year.

Minutes after hanging up with his roommate, she calls back and tells us that he's on his way to the airport. Chef's wife immediately hops in the car and finds him there. He's on his way home. By home, I don't mean his apartment on the island. I mean home as in upstate New York.

We're all worried as hell. We don't know if everything is alright. We don't know if he hit his head really hard when the car hit him and he isn't thinking straight. All we know is that we're staring down the pipe at a hundred and fifty dinners, half of the cooks on the line are now working a station that they weren't prepared to work that night, and something is wrong with our compadre.

It was a tough night. I killed three proteins. I overcooked two trout and a flounder. We were all sweating bullets and to make it worse, it wasn't two turns of the dining room. It was one HUGE push. At seven o'clock, we only had orders for ten people.

Apparently when Chef's wife saw Mikey at the airport, she asked the police to not let him get on the plane and to take him to the hospital, because what he was doing as so out of character for him. Right before he got on the plane though, she asked him, holding onto his shoulders and looking straight into his eyes, "Do you know what you are doing?" His response was, "yes."

So here we are, two men down in the kitchen. Chef decided to close on Tuesday so that we can all sort of recover from all that has happened, and so that we do all get a day off.

It sucks. We all really like Mikey. Pies said it best that he feels like one of his best friend was killed in a car accident, but is still alive somehow. Mikey added a lot to the kitchen and I really do hope he is alright. We know that he's not coming back though. For me, it definitely has kitchen repercussions. This makes me the saute guy seven days a week, and I'm the only guy who is going to be thinking up staff meals. No one else really puts much effort into staff meal. One guy does nothing, even if he's assigned to help with it. Another guy just has shitty ideas and shitty execution, so I don't want him doing it.

So, that's the news from the Gray Lady. We're living in interesting times here, and hopefully they'll calm down so I can enjoy my working vacation.