Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

fourteen I graduated to cooking on the line and was scheduled for three to five shifts a week, just like the other cooks. I was given unusual responsibility for my age—I had a key to the restaurant and the alarm code. I would head over after school around 4:00 P.M. and work straight through closing, which by the time cleanup was over was around ten.

The Achatz Restaurant was all about volume, and like all restaurants, profit margins were low. But here, in a small town where prices had to be kept as low as possible, the margins were razor thin. My parents knew well that in order to make money the place needed to keep people flowing through constantly. They also knew that the people of this tiny farming community didn’t care if an orange slice or a sprig of parsley adorned the plate for decoration. They wanted a big mound of hot, tasty food for little money, and they wanted it fast. My dad ensured that they got that, and that he kept a tight control on costs.

I learned quickly that in order to be a successful line cook in a high-volume operation you needed to keep your cool and be highly organized. It wasn’t that different than building the GTO: sort things out, keep them straight and organized, and plug away deliberately.

In the summer of 1991 I was given my first opening shift. I had to get to the restaurant by 5:00 A.M. to open at 5:30. I was pretty terrified at first since the restaurant was now solely my responsibility. But I quickly got used to the pressure and grew to love the feeling of opening up and letting the staff in.

Sherry, the opening waitress, was the second to arrive in the morning. The early risers would then trickle in for the first few hours. These were the hard-core regulars, the guys you saw nearly every day at exactly the same time. They walked over to the same seat, nodded hello to Sherry and their neighbors, and simply waited for their food to come. They wouldn’t even have to order because Sherry knew what they wanted. She would head to the window and say, “Rycer is here.”

“Got it.”

Rycer’s extra-crispy bacon, which for him meant that it was basically burnt, was on the griddle at 5:12 A.M. every day.

The next guy in was usually the kitchen manager, Jim. Jim was a short, stocky guy of Scottish descent, complete with the reddened cheeks and neck. My dad hired him to take over some of the kitchen management responsibilities in order to loosen up his schedule. Jim would arrive early and spend the start of his day preparing the daily specials, then transition to service around late breakfast time to help the opening cook push through the busiest moments.

Jim and I connected right away. He was fourteen years older than me, but he still knew how to have fun. He told me stories about his days cruising Gratiot Avenue and tall tales of hunting misfortunes. I soaked up these stories like he was my long-lost older brother, and he responded by calling me “Junior.”

It was my goal to have the place buttoned up by the time Jim came in each morning. All of the produce and meat deliveries that arrived early needed to be put away, the kitchen had to be cleaned, and the mise en place for the breakfast run was set. I had to focus and move quickly from the moment I opened the door until Jim showed up.

The menu at the restaurant was vast. Breakfast was served at any hour, and the rest of the menu was diverse. That required a long line, about thirty feet, that held two griddles, two deep fryers, a twelve-burner stove, a char broiler, steam table, and a couple of stand-up refrigerators. Cooks had to run from one end of the line to the other whenever they were working on several tables at once. I learned very quickly to prioritize my steps in order to reduce movement and to not waste time running around in circles.

I began playing a game, challenging myself to see how long I could run a service by myself while Jim worked in the prep kitchen. He would be back there prepping the specials—Cajun meatloaf, Salisbury steak, Stroganoff, and soups and gravies—but he kept one eye on me in case I started “going down.”

“You okay over there, Junior?”

“Yep. Never better,” I would shout back while juggling four sets of over-easy eggs, pancakes, hash browns, and a BLT while dropping an order of fries in the fryer.

I spent my free time with a close group of six friends who shared the same interests: girls, cars, four-wheel-drive trucks, motorcycles, and sports. We were a clean-cut group. I never drank alcohol, did any drug, or even tried a cigarette—it just wasn’t part of our program. We found other ways to get in trouble.

We rode around on ATVs well before we got our driver’s licenses and thought nothing of driving them straight down the middle of the road. The police frowned upon this behavior and would escort us home. But on the fifth or sixth offense they made us stop in our tracks and called our parents to come pick us up—regardless of where we were at the time. They figured if they made it highly inconvenient for our parents that maybe they’d have an incentive to stop us. It did not, however, seem worth a ticket, since it was such a common offense.

Right after my sixteenth birthday I took the GTO out on its official maiden voyage with my buddies. My parents watched from the door as I pulled out of the driveway to gather my friends, who fought to see who rode shotgun.

I didn’t get pulled over once during that first day. Nope—I got pulled over twice.

I was driving toward the highway at a very reasonable speed when a police car swooped in behind us. I