the body keeps score (michelin part 4, physicality, dexterity, energy)

This is a re-sharing of a culinary experience that I had back in 2022, working at a 2* Michelin restaurant, Birdsong SF. I posted an eight-part series on Twitter at the time, but it was never formalized in a longer format. I'm doing this to sort of immortalize the experience here since it was some of my earliest beginnings of living according to my values, doing what I found interesting, and finding beauty.

It's an experience that helped shape my first sabbatical and I'm revisiting some of these learnings as they mix with conversations and readings in my current sabbatical.

Each part will be about the same with some grammatical and intonation fixes, plus an updated reflection at the end.

This is part four. Enjoy 😌.

the body keeps score

Before starting at Birdsong, I had the distinct thought that I would be capable of the physical output necessary to work in a kitchen. After all, I was far from a couch potato, was in fighting shape, and had been training jiujitsu and lifting weights for a good half-decade.

I got humbled. To keep up is one thing, but to work with speed AND accuracy takes focused training and practice.

The prep chefs had an energy and output over time that was pretty much unmatched. I recall a time when we were wrapping twine on quail legs so that when guests used the leg to eat, they wouldn't get their hands oily. In the time I was able to wrap one leg, the other prep chef working alongside of me had finished four. I always knew that working in kitchens required a degree of sprinting power, but these prep chefs had something else.

By the third consecutive day of each week, my feet ached, my back hurt, and I was genuinely tired. My partner said each night I was out like a light and snored like a locomotive. I've never been so close to falling asleep at the wheel when driving home.

Bodily efficiency matters. They say you can only prepare for something by doing it, and cooking was no exception. Constantly on your feet for hours wears on the body in a different way. I understand now why they consider this a lifestyle, not just a career or a job.

Most of the chefs, when they arrived, came in with a smile and enough energy to fuel a small economy. I'd always give them a fist bump and ask them how they were doing.

"Best day of my fucking life, thanks for asking! I see you're breaking down chickens - I love it."

"Best day of my fucking life", "fucking fabulous", "fan-fucking-tastic", were very common responses. Some might think these were borderline sarcastic or slightly disingenuous, but after observing this multiple times, I got the distinct feeling that maybe it started out like that, and eventually, became a coping mechanism that became wildly true to them.

Despite that, it's an attitude I'm coming around to. Today was the best day of their life. They're living in the now. They're not stuck in the past or floundering in the future.

"Yeah, I'm fucking tired - I get about four hours of sleep a night", my saucier said. He brushed the hair out of his eyes while basting cauliflower and checking the oil levels on one of his sauces. "Look at this oil to sauce level - it's perfect."

He whipped around and slipped the sauce pot on a rubber coaster. "Lamb sauce, Chef."

He turns back to me. "This is what I do. My knees are fucked though." He smiled. His complaint seemed more like a badge of honor than anything else.

Normal people would've quit a long time ago. They acknowledge the pain but some kind of beauty on this journey allows them to endure all the heart-wrenching shit sandwiches thrown their way. It's a weird mix of Stoicism and endurance mixed together in one. Everything was "yes and". You fucked up? "Yes, chef - it won't happen again, and I'll do better." Too slow? "Yes chef, I'll move faster." Every compliment, accomplishment, failure, and setback, was met with acknowledgment, optimism, and a persistence to do better.

At the end of some difficult nights, I've been asked "so Frank, why do you come back?"

I think the answer now might be slightly different than before.

2024 reflection

When I started back in 2022, it was to allow myself to have an experience I was curious about for the better part of a decade. Part of that was not reneging on my commitments. I had developed the maturity to stick it out through the hard shit, especially for things I cared about. If I said I was going to show up, then I would be there. You get far in life when you show up and close out.

While that holds true, it's 2024, and I'm not in the industry right now.

Bill Buford, the author of "Heat", and "Dirt", wrote his memoirs of a similar experience cutting his teeth in French kitchens abroad when he was almost 50 years old:

"When I'd begun this whole business - what I'd come to regard as my excursion into the underworld of the professional kitchen - I'd been a visitor. I'd been a tourist, and, like many tourists, I'd been able to throw myself into my journey with such abandon because I knew it would end."

…

"Then I had crossed over. I was no longer on the outside looking in. I stopped being an author writing about the experience of the kitchen. I was a member of it."

I think only the first part of his quote holds true for me. I was a visitor for a short period of time. I did surprisingly well. I lived through this period of chaos, excellence, and beauty in a kitchen that I loved both as a chef and as a patron. But I think when the specific time came to truly "cross over", I didn't take the call, and I think it's because I wasn't able to relinquish whatever it was that my life looked like before.

caught transitioning between dimensions

In some sense, Bill Buford didn't either - he remained a journalist at heart, but it seemed he was in and out of kitchens for years after his experience. Perhaps our identities are a little more fluid and forgiving, based on the seasons.

I oft think on what keeps people coming back, and perhaps it's the idea of kaizen, of constant improvement, of this optimistic view of the now, and the camaraderie one experiences in the kitchen. I feel it a lot when I do jiujitsu. It's a necessary attitude for a steeper growth curve.

The optimism of the kitchen rubs off on you, and it's something that is tough to find today and even tougher to live out (or maybe I'm not looking in the right places). The chef standing next to you learns from, relies on, and influences you, and you to them. You best not let them down.

I've talked to my friends and family and have openly said that this experience actually destroyed a little bit of my culinary passion at home, but I think it's recovering with my travels to Europe and to Asia to re-capture some of my beloved family childhood recipes through my mother and grandmother.

I think if I had found cooking in my younger-younger years, things might've turned out differently, but "shoulda woulda coulda". For now, I wouldn't dare call myself a chef, even an ex-chef. Just someone who was a visitor, saw some shit, learned some stuff, got inspired about hospitality, and has a high likelihood of coming back to revisit some of that beauty. 😌

<- part 3 | part 5 ->