Article by Josh Gregory
Illustration by Greg Steele of Harrington Comics
The middle; it’s name refers both to the physical space it occupies as well as its position in the hierarchy of stations. The ebb and flow of both the food and the attitude of those cooking it are directly impacted by the individual manning the wheel. If he got laid last night? Smiles for everyone, cracking jokes putting English on plates as they roll through the pass. He’s hungover and went home to spend his night by his lonesome with his right hand and a thirty five minute visit to Porn Hub? Abandon all hope ye who enter here. You might as well pull the box of Spongebob themed Kleenex from your purse now.
It’s fucking hot, in the middle.
You’re surrounded by heat, a three level Blodgett oven that’s cranked to maximum heat as soon as the daily bread comes out of the oven. Give us this day our daily bread; so that we can jack the temperature up, a final prayer before baptism by fire. There’s a burner underneath a steam table that predates my grandmother by several decades, and it’s connected to a long piece of stainless steel that runs the length of the counter. The heat transfers, keeping the plates warm, and burning your finger prints off, ala Will Smith in Men in Black.
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Underneath the table is a plate warmer, because the masochism associated with working in the kitchen reaches it’s apex in this stretch of three feet. It’s the last threshold the food faces, coming off the grill to your right and saute to your left, before being garnished with parsley or flowers or whatever else the chef has chosen to whore up the suffering and often times pain that goes into that hunk of beautifully aged beef that’s staring back at you. It’s judging you for ordering it medium well, the rest of the kitchen is too.
The space between the table and the oven consists of a narrow four feet. With my sponsored by Miller Lite beach body I’m sporting a half Mario, plumber type situation, as I bend down to light the steam table. I’m not as young as I once was and as I rock back, forgetting my surroundings, my bare ass sears on the oven, leaving me choking back obscenities. I hold my posterior like a small child who just got the yardstick from vindictive Irish nun who probably just needs to get laid. Dinner service enters a weird corner of the time space continuum as it both flies by and takes an eternity to surmount. Plate after plate is handed through the pass, up to sixty at a clip as the cold side guys drop parsley and flowers on top of the physical representation of the cuts and burns we wear on our arms like tattoos. Chicks dig scars right?
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