Chefs, naturally, spend a lot of time in restaurants – not eating in them, but cooking in them. Still, on the odd occasion when we do have an evening off (which isn’t a Sunday or a Monday, when lots of good restaurants are closed), we, too, like to make ourselves a reservation somewhere – and when we do go for dinner, we do it better than you. Due to the fact that chefs are blessed with God-given swagger and mounds of sex appeal, when we arrive for dinner, we look good.
We rid ourselves of our heavy workwear, rinse off the kitchen grease, and put on our nice clothes (which are in excellent condition, because we never get to wear them). Upon arrival at our chosen establishment, we enter the dining room like polite housewives visiting their neighbours’ house in the 1950s. We sit down and peer around, absorbing every minute detail: how the tables are set, how the menus are arranged, how the front of house acts.
We smile at the general manager, because we know her secrets; we know the restaurant is not as together as it seems – that beyond the kitchen door, some form of chaos is inevitably unfolding. When a waitress arrives at our table and asks us how we are, we ask her the same question in return, and we listen to the answer. We remember that servers are, in fact, human beings, and recognise that a 19-year-old-girl working full-time in a restaurant likely wants to pursue a different career altogether, but is having to fund that dream by waiting on gentrifiers and gout.