Summer in the World of Food

It's a beautiful springlike day and while spring is not quite here, it's definitely on it's way. Seems most people in the South LOVE the summer. The thing is, most of the people I talk to that LOVE summer work in air conditioned offices. The most heat they are subjected to on a regular basis is walking to their air conditioned cars after work to go home to their air conditioned homes!

I grew up in Mississippi. I have never been anywhere that is more miserable during the summer, although I hear Louisiana is quite rough. Mosquitoes in MS are the size of hummingbirds! I remember one year, the mercury was pegging 105°, the humidity was 100% and there wasn't a cloud in the sky! "Luckily" I had football practice that day and Confirmation that night. I passed out in the shower after practice and during Confirmation the Bishop had to catch me before I hit the ground! And so started my "love affair" with summer...

The first professional kitchen I worked in was a family owned Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh, where I attended Culinary School. The recipes were written in Italian on paper that had turned yellow with age and the owner was Marco Sacco, a gumba from way back. Capiche? His previous job description included the task of "breaking knees"... 'nuff said. The kitchen was about the size of a suitcase and the dish machine was in the corner so luckily it contributed even more humidity than the 3 Rivers already had! The ambient temperature of the kitchen during service was between 150° and 170°. I would routinely drink a gallon of water during a shift and still be dehydrated by the end of it. Between the heat and Jerry's (the Chef) bickering with the servers it's a wonder no one died... from a knife wound!

From Pittsburgh I moved to The Ritz-Carlton in Tyson's Corner, VA. That was a dream kitchen and one you don't often see except in large, very nice properties. The a/c actually kept up with the heat and I probably only broke a sweat twice the entire time I was there! It was nice, but I was ready to come back home to GA.

After a stint in a very nice private club here in GA, I decided to go into management and joined the team at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. They immediately shipped me off to IN. While there they sent me to Detroit of all places, during the months of January and February of all times. The property was old and the kitchen was small and hot, even in the middle of a Detroit winter. There were many times I would step outside for a break in the freezing cold and wouldn't even think about taking a coat. It was COLD out, but I couldn't even tell because the kitchen was so HOT. After a stint in Charlotte, NC I came back to Atlanta and got a job as sous chef at Ray's on the River. Ray's was a 450 seat beast of a restaurant. On busy nights we would have ten men on the hot line manning 2 convection ovens, a 10 burner cooktop with 2 more ovens, a salamander, a 6' wood burning grill, a flattop, 2 fryers, numerous heat wells, and a 6' window with heat lamp. The heat was pretty bad under the best of circumstances, but in their infinite wisdom, the management company decided to remodel the kitchen, which was good. The problem was they didn't budget correctly and ran out of money after they had removed all ventilation on the hot line... and it was April... Who were the Fools here? By the time summer hit it was miserable. The line cooks brought in an outdoor thermometer and on numerous occasions the thermometer pegged at 190°. On a particularly busy night our grill cook took a break and had to literally ring his t-shirt and chef coat out before he could come back to the line. My station was directly behind him. We basically worked back to back. It wouldn't have surprised me to have seen Satan himself walk onto that line. That was my last "normal" job in the culinary world.

We have our own kitchen now and it's not nearly as bad as some of the "hell holes" I've worked in, but I'm a bit older now. 10 or 12 hours in 80° temperatures isn't real fun. I could keep it cooler, but I'm... frugal. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm so old I CAN'T take it. I just don't WANT to anymore! When you work in kitchens, the last thing you want is to walk outside into even more heat and humidity. From May to September it's like being very slowly braised!

That's why my favorite times of the year are Fall, early Spring, and Winter... You can keep summer thank you very much! Enjoy the summer and think of me while you're sitting at your desk wishing you could be outside in the summer heat!