For as long as there have been professional kitchens, there have been industrial quantities of trim and scrap. Sometimes these bits manage to make their way onto the menu (see: boulliabase), but more often than not they wind up being enjoyed by the kitchen crew as staff meal. I spent about three years on the line before finally working in a restaurant with a formal staff meal, and I’ve been singing its praises ever since.

You see, the line cook’s skill set doesn’t easily lend itself to home cooking. I learned this lesson the hard way after deciding to bring home a rabbit for dinner, which I managed to destroy in less than an hour. I was young, and very much under the impression that I could do no wrong.  I have since done some aging, and also some more wrong along the way. A couple of years ago, upon accepting a position at a nice little restaurant in Vancouver, it became part of my job to feed the staff 5 days a week at 4:30, half an hour before the doors opened. This, as far as l know, was the point when I actually started learning how to cook. For real. I can tell you without a stutter that cooking staff meal was the best part of the day, every day. I loved it. I loved the responsibility of providing nourishment for my co-workers, and also the pressure of feeding my considerably more talented boss. Sometimes I would create a big bowl of delicious, and occasionally I would do the opposite and prepare a heaping plate of disaster. While the gratification one gets from making a successful staff meal is wonderful, the shame one can experience from dishing up an awful one is considerably more potent. By cooking staff meal, and by actually eating my own food as opposed to just tasting it (there’s a difference), I became a better cook.

The kitchen that I currently work in doesn’t have a staff meal “program” per se, but we do manage to feed each other on a semi-regular basis. Some nights are an absolute free-for-all, with cooks scavenging upon one another’s stations, feasting upon whatever they may fancy. On other nights, an individual is “chosen” to make a meal for the team. I vastly prefer the latter scenario, even if the finger gets pointed at me. I will gladly run around like a single mother, making dinner for the starving brigade. It humanizes the process of what we do as machines for the duration of service. To step back and actually put thought into the processes that we’ve honed into reflexes is nice from time to time, and I would likely go crazy without the opportunity to do so. We tend to do our eating at the end of service, while our pre-service snack is almost exclusively a fistful of freshly baked bread smeared with an unreasonable amount of butter.

Besides common nourishment, staff meal also provides an opportunity to gauge the skill level of a fellow cook, perhaps somebody who is doing a “stage” (basically a try-out). In short order you find out if the person can: a) season things, b) be any kind of resourceful, and c) be tidy. A good cook must sometimes be more Macgyver than Morimoto, meticulously pouring over the often meager resources only to create something that’s both delicious and almost free. Sounds reasonable, no?

So you’re probably wondering what it is we do eat when and if we actually get around to it. It typically isn’t fancy. Instead it’s some terrific form of comfort food. The “one pot” style of cooking is best for this purpose, so we eat a fair amount of pastas and stews.  Alternatively we make the deep fryer work a little bit harder than usual, feeding it battered cheeseburgers, slices of pizza, or a some kind of fish/chips combination (served with mushy peas/tartar sauce). If by some chance the meal is sub-par, those concerns are quickly washed away by whatever water/yeast/barley/hops combination that has been provided to us at the end of the night.

I’d actually go so far as to say that I wished that I could order staff meal as a customer, or even sell it to you as a customer. I want what they’re having, and I can tell you that you want it too. It’s the most honest food around, and it’s capable of healing when done properly. Unfortunately this will never happen. So in order to get your mitts on some of those tasty morsels, you’ll actually have to work in a kitchen. If that doesn’t suit your fancy, then you can just to pay me to smuggle some for you. The bidding starts at an Xbox 360 and a six-pack of something amazing. I’m fond of ales, the redder the better.

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Line Cook,
Jacob Galbraith