I am a cook in an open kitchen, and yes, we talk about you

By Chasen Novak

It’s 5 PM on a Thursday and my stomach is bursting from the chicken tenders we ate at the staff meal for the third time this week.  I still have about 20 minutes of prep to do.  Technically we’re open, but in the books, we’re only doing 80 covers tonight and our first resy isn’t until 6 pm, so I know I have some time to digest, finish up some knife cuts, and maybe run across the street for a cup of coffee before things get hectic.

Then you walk in.  You’re early.  Smiling, fresh off work, and ready to fuck up my plan. I am a cook in an open kitchen, and yes, we talk about you.

In all fairness, I chose this life.  Not to be a cook – no, unfortunately, that chose me after years of failed internships in other fields.  I’m talking about working in an open kitchen.  I prefer it.  At least in an open kitchen, when I’m getting my ass kicked for 4 hours on a Saturday brunch shift, I get to see some sunlight.  Downstairs in a basement, you don’t feel the rush of a flat seating.  You don’t hear the ambient volume swell as the dining room fills up, echoing everyones’ voices off the brutal concrete walls.  And most importantly, you’re a long walk from the bar when you get a chance to pull your head above water and refresh your drink.

Unfortunately, these decisions have consequences.  And those consequences are you, the customer.  Loud.  Drunk. Happy-go-lucky. Not a care in the world except how fast your mango salad hits the table.

Not only do I work in an open kitchen, I work at a chef’s counter. I took it to the next level.  That means not only can I see your ass, I can hear your ass.  And therein lies the ultimate dilemma.  Do I trade in my surroundings for a windowless, white-walled, basement?  Or do I steel myself? Listen to you talk, night after night, about sports betting, your 401ks, or why your Hinge date went so poorly.

I’ll tell ya what, I’m far too stubborn to let you win that easily.  Plus I have a secret.  We talk about you.  All night long.  From the second you wrap your Canada Goose jacket around our busted, rickety, bar stools, until the moment you walk out the door, farting out the first bits of fried shrimp that hit your stomach.  Because here’s something you should know, we can hear every dang word you say.  And thanks to the hood vents, the clanging cast irons, and the duck breasts popping fat like firecrackers on the 4th, you can’t hear us for shit.

And unbeknownst to you, we exercise that opportunity like Michael Phelps in the lap pool baby.  We don’t get to watch TV while we work or go on walks while we take our calls.  We’re stuck behind the line, six hours a night, three feet from you. Listening. Nowhere to go.  And you bet we're gonna dish like a couple of queens in the workroom when you start talking about your annoying, banal, problems.

So next time you go out to dinner, here are some pointers for when you find yourself sitting next to an open kitchen, lest you be talked about by the entire line in front of your face.

First things first, please, for the love of god, do not talk to us.  It’s not a Benihana. We’re not paid to talk to you, and odds are we’re not getting tipped out.  The reason we work back here, and not in front of the house, is because we’re not ones for social interaction.  If we were, trust me we’d be out there schmoozing on the floor, making three to four times what we make now.  But since we chose this life of sweat and fire, please leave us be.

Types of people who will generally offend this first rule, the businessman who shows up five minutes after we open.  If you work in restaurants, you know the type. He shows up in his pressed white oxford shirt, bald head gleaming brighter than his pristine white teeth.  He’ll come in, order a fun cocktail, explain to the server that he can only have one before he hits the road back to Philly, or DC, and then of course proceed to have a beer with dinner.  He’s on a per diem, orders a pile of food with the salt content of a ballerina’s monthly diet, and always sits alone at the chef’s counter.  And he’ll be damned if he doesn't try and start up a conversation with everyone around him.  The servers, fair game, that’s what they’re there for. But us? We’re sitting ducks, nowhere to run.  So please, take your pent-up boardroom energy and your black AMEX and save it for your friends who love you for you.  Cause we’re either too tired, too hungover, or too buried in prep to answer the same questions we get every time.  Enjoy your khao soi and your fun cocktail, throw an episode of Freakonomics on your AirPods, and just enjoy the meal.  Because we have too much pent-up aggression to try and fester our way through a conversation with you.

The next thing you should know, should you happen to sit at a chef’s counter, is if you’ve got a big, annoying personality, we’re going to talk about you.  Not only that, but every time you say some dumb shit, we’re gonna run down and tell our friend working dessert how far you just jammed your foot in your mouth.

Offenders of this rule come in all shapes and sizes.  The rich woman at the end of the bar who polished off a bottle of wine, bragging about how she “wishes she was fired from her job so she could travel the world with her severance.”  

The pair of bros, who talk about their prop bets on the Gonzaga game from the moment they sit down until the moment they go googly-eyed silent when they see you start preparing their strip steak.  

The two friends who sit down to catch up after “too long,” one absolutely dominating the conversation because he doesn’t know how to ask questions to women.  The woman, nobly peppering him with questions all night as the enjoyment slowly drains out of her face, eyes begging for the check to come soon.

By the way, I swear this happens more than you’d think.  If there is a pair of people that sit down at the counter, and they’re not on a first date, there’s a 50/50 shot that one of them is going to talk the entire night.  Don’t be this person.  Learn how to ask a question.  Because I promise, based on the dozens of times I’ve heard you tell your story, it might not be as interesting as you think.  And I promise if that’s the case, the other person is just being nice.  They don’t actually want to ask a follow-up question about the shitty meeting you had at work today or that thing that happened to you at the shoe store.

There’s only one last thing to know, next time you sit down to eat at a chef’s counter – keep in mind that if any of us behind the line felt any stronger, we’d just find another job.  There are a million restaurants in New York, and we chose to work here.  So let us whine and moan, and let us talk about you.  Because at the end of your meal, you get to get up and walk away, and we have to stay here.  Making way too little money.  Working way too long hours. Three feet from your face.  And maybe the masochist in us, the one that chose a career in the service industry, just likes having something to complain about.