I wake up, all that pressure to succeed; all those other restaurants doing great things, and I think, who am I? And believe me, it is an uphill struggle to not conclude in the negative. Esteem waxing and waning. That voice, I hear it over and over again in my head, telling me, “and anyway, you’re just a cook.”

And a shitty one at that.

Then the drive to work, it’s quiet and my mind turns over flavors, textures, colors, tastes. When I pause the thoughts, life rushes in, with all the flotsam of wrecked ships drifting ashore and the heart combing through the lost content, saturated in regret, and I push it back out to sea and reclaim my focus on the process of making things. That quiet ride is never long enough and soon I am parking and consolidating the day’s plan, blocking out that voice badgering me into self doubt before busting through the doors that lead to the cocina.

I arrive in the kitchen and say, “BE FUCKING GREAT OR QUIT!”  The whole crew is afraid of what’s coming, where we’re going; they think Chef is loco, but they overcome their anxieties, too, and execute. We get better, we do amazing things and the days improve.

Except when we don’t.

When that happens, and we falter, motivational speeches can be a great way to get the team together and riled up for another shove towards success. When your crew is small it can be even better and the camaraderie more intense.

A few years ago, Chef Champ Warshaw brought me on board to be his Chef De Cuisine at his short lived kosher Italian gem, Et al Trattoria.

It was an ugly and stained establishment, old and neglected (there was no money to invest) but it had 26 seats and a small kitchen tucked into a strip mall in Milbourne, NJ. We opened it up in two days, hit the ground running on a Thanksgiving and cooked some great food there. 

The first few weeks of business the kitchen would sometimes reek like marijuana and we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. One day I stepped outside the back door and saw our neighbor from 7 -11 smoking something and noticed, also, the smell of marijuana again and thought I had figured the whole matter out.

A couple of days later, in the prep room, I found a shallow six pan stashed away up on a high shelf and lo, there were maybe, six or seven roaches, the butts of joints in it. Well, there was the source of the smell. The guys at 7/11 were smoking blunts and then depositing their stubs in our kitchen! I had to put a stop to that right away and went to the 7/11 but nobody there could understand me, they spoke neither English or Spanish.

I returned to the restaurant and made my way to the kitchen after talking to E., one of our waitresses, just an quick inquiry as to how she was, and my dishwasher was rolling a blunt right on the prep table, right out in the open.

“Shit, K., can’t those fucking 7/11 guys roll their own?!”

We had been having a few problems during service with waiters delivering food to the wrong tables. When it happened again, after a slew of remarks addressing the matter over a couple of days, I just asked the waitress to go out of the kitchen, “hey,  E., would you mind stepping out a minute I have to deal with something over here, in private.”

She walked out and I picked up my 14” sauté pan and struck the wall with it, hard. The other side of the wall happened to have faced the dining room where we had a packed room, it was the hey day, and also held a series of shelves holding glasses.

The drywall and studs shuddered, the pan left a 4” long divet, 1/2” deep in the gypsum and the glasses all shook making a brash ringing sound in the dining room. The whole room quieted, patrons were startled and looking about, my waitress ran in, “Chef, is everything ok?!”

“Yeah, I dropped a pan.”

All was settled until it happened again, later that night, and rather than smash something again, I decided to give a motivational speech the following day.

These events are great and happen before service, everybody generally looking forward to them. You can employ all sorts of techniques, but I like the the classic shout and pace most. I developed pacing skills over the years. Mostly in my late teens to mid twenties when I lived in a 2000 sq. ft. loft that allowed for hours of pacing and meditating and discussions. It hampered the maturation of my social skills as most of my guests felt at unease because I wouldn’t stop strolling about the place as we engaged in conversation. I couldn’t understand why it mattered until later. When you move around a lot and the other person is sitting, they feel like they’re not doing anything, like they should be busy. In a kitchen this isn’t a problem, it is a space full of pacers, of people who want to move. When I am at home, at family functions, it is much harder and I usually jump at the offer to “man the grill.” Otherwise,  I’ll bounce my legs and my ex, or my daughter, will ask, “why is the table, the floor, the coffee table, why is everything shaking?” They know the answer but ask anyway for the effect.

The end result wasn’t great, it seldom is when you are dealing with people who just want to get paid something and who would work at Walmart if it meant less pressure. My best waitress, whom I motioned at mid speech, signaling to her that it wasn’t directed at her, missed that signal and spent two hours afterwards locked in the bathroom, crying, refusing to come out. She eventually was talked into coming out only to disappear into the loo again and eventually she left for the night, unable to calm herself. She did ask for permission, breaking down between words with sniffles, and nobody laughed, so all things considered, it could have been much worse.

Returning to the kitchen, the  crew were still working but had overheard the event and I acquired another nickname, when K. called me ‘el Fuego Negro.’

E., who was hanging out by the line, wanted to know why my nickname was “the Black Fire.” Jas, my other line cook answered, “cuz Chef is a fiery nigga!”

This angered E. and she replied, “Chef is white, Jas. I am black and you treat me like I’m white. Why do you do that?!”

“Whoa,” I broke in, “what the fuck does that mean, E.?” But I started laughing a bit and couldn’t really get serious; I didn’t care about what she meant, black, white, whatever, they were just posturing during the down times. Jas goaded her more into a few extra hysterical reactions and K., my dishwasher/prep, jumped in free-styling a rap mocking E. for being white, which she wasn’t.

She angrily left the kitchen shouting, “Chef is white, not me!”

Jas grabbed her crotch (she was butch and soft packing) and shouted, “no he ain’t, you’re white, E.!”

The waitress, D., who had been deeply affected by the talk, sent a handwritten two page letter to the restaurant owner explaining the difficulties she had working for me. I remember it well. N., the other partner, came into the restaurant early, a week later, at the time when I was there by myself.

He asked me, handing me the letter, “Chef, what’s this all about?”

I read it with real interest since it displayed excellent penmanship.

“Oh,” I answered, “That was a motivational speech, I gave.”

“I figured it was probably something like that. Well, keep up the good work.”

I made a N. a hamburger and we talked about the condition of his other restaurant.

D. stayed on board and remained my go to waitress till the closing a half a year later, which was sudden and unexpected.

And that was that.