Life, on the Line (4 page)

At 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 eased off the gas slowly so he wouldn't hear the popping noise coming from the cherry-bomb mufflers. I wasn't speeding and the radio wasn't even on—I had no idea what the problem was. The officer explained that the back bumper was too high off the ground. I told him that it needed to be that high to make sure that it didn't rub on the oversized wheels. “Get smaller tires,” he suggested, without missing a beat. He then promptly wrote me a ticket before pointing out that he'd also be writing me up for my tinted windows. “You do realize that tinted windows are illegal in Michigan, son, right?” Well, no, I hadn't, and now I was twenty minutes into my solo driving career and had two tickets.

At the urging of my friends I decided to press on, taking a few laps in town with the subwoofer thumping out Sir Mix-A-Lot. I headed to the school parking lot, then pulled a U-turn and headed toward a long, straight road right in front of the school.

I slammed my foot down on the accelerator and instantly the car slowed down. The tires were just spinning in place, smoking like crazy. Huge plumes engulfed the car.

The tires heated up and gained traction, and we shot forward like a rocket. My foot did not come off the gas until I had to brake hard for a stop sign at the end of the road. We could see the cloud of blue smoke trailing behind us, and we were positively giddy for about three seconds until my friend Mike saw the police car directly in front of us.

“Uh-oh.”

When the cop looked at my license he shook his head disapprovingly, “First day, huh?

My maternal grandfather was a retired fireman in St. Clair, and in his house you could always hear the blare of the police scanner. It didn't take long for my mom to find out what we were doing that day.

The cop, too, must have figured out who I was, because he let me go with only a stern warning. Either that or he figured two tickets and a near miss were enough to set me straight. We resumed driving around town—very slowly—and ended up in the Burger King parking lot, chatting with some schoolmates and trying to find some girls, when my mom came rolling up to us.

She lowered her window, looked at me in the eye, and said, “Grant, you take that car home, and I mean right now!”

I was deflated and embarrassed in front of my friends and schoolmates. It had the intended effect.

 

On the weekends my friends and I organized camping trips on land that my parents had bought on Puttygut Road. It was an easy way for us to break free from the supervision of protective parents and stay out all night. We'd stock up on supplies at the Achatz Restaurant on the way out of town, eating dinner first then grabbing coolers full of eggs, milk, cheese, butter, sausage, bacon, and bread. We did it so frequently that my friends just walked in the back door like they owned the place. It was as though they were coming by my house.

I was the obvious choice to be designated the campfire cook. We would sit around the fire and talk about life in St. Clair. Most of us wanted to get out of there. Within our group, guys were applying to colleges, considering the U.S. Air Force, or taking computer classes in AutoCAD. There was genuine angst about what we wanted to do with our lives, how we could see the world beyond Michigan. But whenever talk came around to my ambitions, no one understood why I wouldn't just take over my parents' restaurant. They saw that I had plenty of toys, and my parents seemed relatively well-off. And they knew I was capable of running the place.

I assured them that that was not the case, and that I wouldn't be staying in St. Clair. I had started thinking about culinary school and had read about the Culinary Institute of America in New York. I explained that I wanted to cook fancy food and one day own my own restaurant—a great restaurant. But my friends, who wrote me off as a deluded dreamer, laughed. Soon we were all wailing with laughter. But I thought, “If you can fly a fighter jet, great. But I'm going to own a great restaurant, a famous one.”

 

I had one long-term girlfriend throughout my school years, Cindy Morgan.

Cindy grew up on the other side of the metaphoric tracks. Her family was upper-middle-class, well educated, and fiercely Catholic. Her father, John, was a successful civil engineer and former Air Force pilot. She had two older sisters and a younger brother, all smart and engaging. The Morgan home was “on the river,” as was said in the town. The affluent families gathered along the St. Clair River in large homes situated close to boathouses, docks, and piers. Cindy and I started out as mutual friends of my first real crush, Stephanie Petrone. After Stephanie and I had a falling out, Cindy and I grew closer, transitioning as we grew older from friends, to best friends, to boyfriend and girlfriend.

I always felt slightly discomforted by Cindy's family. They had an overt awareness of religion, social class, and educational achievement that made me realize I had a very different upbringing. I was a cook, after all, and that wasn't—in my mind—a manly or lucrative career. Cindy always told me that it was my own insecurity that made me feel that way, and of course she was right. But I never liked going over to their home. I always felt like I didn't measure up.

Knowing that her family was incredibly important to her, though, I always made an effort to spend time with them. In an effort to prove my worth to her father, or perhaps to myself, I offered to cook dinner one night.

Earlier that week I had learned a new recipe from watching Jim cook a dish he was running as a special. He had worked at some of the nicer restaurants in the area and I always looked at him as a Chef—capital “C.” One night he was preparing a simple chicken stir-fry when he leaned over to me and said, “Watch this. This here is the secret.”

He grabbed a spoon and stuck it in a jar of apricot preserves, removed a dollop and snapped it into the sauté pan. He shook the pan and tossed the vegetables in the air with a bit of showmanship. Then he poured a splash of white wine in the pan and it burst into flames.

I thought that was pretty damn cool. And it tasted fantastic.

Armed with the amazing technique of adding sugar and booze to a pan of vegetables and some chicken I felt confident that I could impress the Morgan family. I set up shop in the kitchen while Cindy and her mom went to the living room to read. The rest of the family wasn't home yet. I was plowing through my prep when I heard Mr. Morgan come home and Cindy's mom mention that I was in the kitchen cooking them a fancy dinner. I tensed up.

I had all of the vegetables washed and the rice cooked when I pulled out the only chef knife they had from its wood block holder. I ran my thumb over the eight-inch knife's blade and winced. I couldn't tell the sharp end from the back of the knife. I walked into the living room to find most of the family reading and her brother, John Jr., watching ESPN.

“Uh, do you have a steel?” I asked.

“A steel?” Mrs. Morgan replied.

“Yeah, you know, a round metal tool used to sharpen knives.”

“Oh. No. We don't have a knife sharpener. Never needed one.”

“Great,” I thought to myself.

I went back to the kitchen determined to make do and started slicing and julienning the vegetables. I worked my way through the red bell peppers and moved on to the carrots. As I neared the end of a large carrot I took a hard downward rock that the dull knife required and was all of a sudden struck by intense pain in my left hand. I immediately dropped the knife and clinched my hand into a fist and jammed it into my waist. My nausea intensified when I looked down to see a chunk of my index finger, nail still attached, lying there next to the carrots.

I tried to compose myself, but my forehead was beaded with sweat and my hand pulsed like my heart had relocated there. I knew I had to walk through the living room, past the entire Morgan family, to get to the bathroom. I scooted past everyone quickly and closed the door behind me. I flipped on the cold water with my good hand, opened my fist, and the sink turned red.

“I am so screwed.”

I riffled through the medicine cabinet and under the sink. No Band-Aids.

I mummified my finger in toilet paper, sat down on the toilet, and raised my arm above my head. I had to get the bleeding to stop.

“Grant, are you okay?” It was Cindy checking on me. I must have been in there for a while.

“Um . . . yeah, yeah. Fine. I nicked myself with the knife, just running some water over it and getting the bleeding to stop. Um . . . yeah. Do you have any Band-Aids? And I think I'll need some gauze, too.”