Dishwashing (file under the Art of Getting Clean)

A perpetual problem for Chefs and owners of Restaurants is to find adequate if not good solid help when it comes to the dish pit. At Reservation every once in a while I would be asked (read required) to do some dishes. No big deal as in order to be a Chef you have to be able to do everything in your kitchen. Dishes being an intricate part of what we do it is therefore important for a Chef to lead by example and jump in the pit every once in a while.

Now, the love of my life C, she can tell you that I am not the best cleaner. Or at least I wasn’t. However, since starting my work in the kitchen I have found myself on more than one occasion doing dishes. AND LOTS OF THEM.

When I started at Without Reservation we were without a dishwasher. Chef looked around and asked for a volunteer. Naturally I was more than happy to jump in the pit. That first week I probably spent at least 15 hours doing dishes. I’m quite certain that some of you don’t spend fifteen hours a year washing dishes care of a dishwasher. Well, that’s me. Or at least it is if we don’t have a dishwasher and the job needs to get done.

There is a certain Zen like state that one develops when they are stuck in a dish pit and when no matter how quickly you go there is always another tell tale slap of a plate signifying that more dishes are ready to be done. The Zen like state involved finding your happy place and concentrating on something other than the task at hand. In as much as you can seeing as you had better make sure that the dishes are clean.

I remember being asked whether or not I minded doing dishes and I harkened back to a conversation that Executive Chef and I had had which illuminated the point that I made in the first paragraph. I chuckled to myself as I remembered back to the first dish that I washed this year. I for a moment was lost in that wholesale nostalgia that is usually reserved for some life altering moment like your wedding day or your child’s first day. I started to laugh louder as I realized that in fact the dish pit was the very embodiment in a practical way of the journey that I am on and the things that are required to get there.

Does that mean that I enjoy doing dishes? NOT REMOTELY! However, there are things that we need to do which are the reinforcement of the larger picture. And in my case. As a budding restaurateur it is necessary for me to get my proverbial hands wet. And believe me get wet they do.

So for that first week I spent a lot of time at Without Reservation in the dish pit. Of course I had to perform my line duties too. So not only did I have the caked on smell of doing line work seeping through my pores but I added to that the dish pan hands that plague many a house wife and duteous husband or chore laden child. But I looked at my hands for a moment and realized that every dish I wash brings me one step closer to my reality. A dream that was set in place a long, long time ago in what seems like a lifetime ago in a galaxy far away.

As the days have passed I have found myself in the pit quite regularly. I am not asked to be there. I go of my own volition. I’ve turned it into a kind of learning experience (not to mention humbling). So what am I learning? Good question. I’m learning what sticks to plates. What makes the most mess? Which dishes require a different complexity in cleaning the dishes? I’ve got it down to an art. Another benefit of working the pit is that I can see what comes back. How much was eaten. What was eaten on the plate and what wasn’t? I watch wastefulness as things that are left on the plate just go into the trash.

To the laymen these may seem insignificant. But the margins in restaurants are not nearly what people think they are. As such any knowledge that I can take with me now, making note of, and use in the future enables me to be a better Chef, a better restaurateur but to my view even more importantly, A BETTER HUMAN.

So what is the art? First is to ensure that you get all the dishes wet with the sprayer. Then you take steel wool or a green scrubbie and get off all the offending dirt. Another spray with the hose, both front and back and then into the rack. You send it through the sanitizer and then examine the result for any defects. Repeat as necessary. Stack and put away. SIMPLE!

All these lessons, no matter how seemingly small, are all the cornerstone and building blocks of what will make me successful. What will make me become more than even I had ever hoped. It is that attention to detail, that very act of being willing to do the smallest or grandest job, that will make my dream, all the more fantastic when I get there. And the dish pit is just one example of this.

Paul Carvel once wrote; “He who wants to change the world should already begin by cleaning the dishes.” Interesting quote don’t you think?

Are you dreaming big and inspired?

A la prochaine

SDM