Hi everyone, welcome to pot luck food talks. Today we have a new episode of The Line, where human misery can be funny. Where we laugh about our own trauma and the trauma of other people. So what else is there? What other depths of your psyche haven't you unveiled to us? Have you ever been in a restaurant where in the middle of service the restaurant runs out of electricity or gas or these kind of things, these kind of situations? Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, just very recently.
Very recently. Yes, actually, yes. Last year I helped out in a restaurant. It's a very great restaurant, very good chefs. They do great food. And they were part of an old building. It used to be a pharmacy, like a really old pharmacy, you know, like with like glass bottles and stuff. And the building is really cool because like the downstairs area is like old cellars where they used to like mix the medicine and shit. But it's not really a building for a restaurant.
So if you have a small kitchen with loads of electronics running at the same time, a dishwasher, several fridges, some freezers, an oven, you know, two ovens, you know, a stove, etc. It's a lot to take for an old house. So the electricity used to, I think, break once every day. And then most notably one time it was just an absolute shit show because we're in the middle of busy service, super, super busy. And the electricity just goes, which also means the extraction went nowhere extraction.
So it's just kind of like it's like a domino effect. The light goes, we're like, shit, OK, anyway, we keep going. Then the extraction goes, the restaurant starts filling up with smoke from the grill, you know, and then the fire alarm starts going off. Wee, wee. It's just mayhem. And the guests are sitting there in a dark restaurant with the waiters lighting candles, filling up with smoke. And then suddenly the alarm goes off. They're like, should we should we stay? Should we go? What is it?
Oh, man, that place was a nightmare. Well, you know, that happened to me when I was in Mugaritz. It ran out of back then. This was before the fire. The kitchen worked with gas back then. And the kitchen ran out of gas in the middle of service. So there was like this grill, charcoal grill outside the restaurant. And can you imagine in the middle of service, people queuing with their pants for the. You know, to cook those things and open fire. OK, I'm next. Let me go first. That's really funny.
And everything was managed so that no no guests perceived any difference, which was absolutely crazy. Yeah, that's really crazy. You think that was the moment where Andoni thought to himself, that's it. I'm going to set fire to this restaurant to renovate it. Probably, probably. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. Leave it in. Let the truth come out. Everybody knows anyway. I heard a story of a guy that was there during the fire. And how was the story? It was something like.
Yeah, there was someone, you know, like Mugaris, at least back then, you had like on the second floor, there was like the apartment for Stagier. Yes. And of course, if the restaurant burns, you're in the same house that is burning. And then in the middle of the burning, there was one of the Stagiers that was super drunk. Of course. They brought him down to the street and he was like completely drunk. And the next day, when he woke up, he was like, man, I had this crazy dream.
The restaurant was on fire. Talking about misery or miserable stories and Stagiers. It was recently speaking with a friend and he tells me this story that he was working at this restaurant that was kind of like, you know, this hotel restaurant that sometimes the hotel restaurant is on the rooftop. And then you have maybe a kitchen on the fifth floor and, you know, like a storage room on the basement, this kind of thing.
So they had like a production kitchen and different floors, not in the restaurant. And there was, you know, when a trainee comes with an attitude like, OK, and I'm only allowed to work four hours and here's my permission, so you need to leave me go and this kind of thing. I mean, if you're done with that attitude to a top level restaurant, don't expect, you know, like to have a nice experience. I don't know how to put it. So apparently this guy had like super hairy arms.
So they would be like the chef would tell my friend, like, where's this guy? Don't let him go to the kitchen where the customers can see him. Because this was the thing when they someone found a hair in a dish and everybody turned to the hairy arms and it was it was you. This is the fuck. Poor guy. So they never allowed him to go to the service kitchen again, only the production kitchen. And they would make him wrap his arms in plastic.
So it was always like every time and today I need to go one hour. OK, OK, OK. Wrap your arms and go to your corner and everything is going to be all right. That's really mean. I have a different story about somebody wrapping himself in cling film. So one of the very first kitchens that I worked in was this like very French Michelin star kitchen.
And they had the tradition like many other kitchens that were old school kitchens anyway, that when you leave after a certain amount of time that you get hazed, you get food thrown at you, you know, sauces, whatever, you know, you get maybe picked up and put in the sink. Sounds very mean. Often wasn't mean, actually. It was just like a like a rite of passage kind of.
Because if somebody didn't like if the team didn't like you, you'd really just usually just go and nobody would do anything because everybody's like, you know. But if they really liked you, they would like, you know, anyway. And so this guy had finished his apprenticeship and he knew he was very liked. He was a very likable guy. And he was on his last day. He was like, man, I don't know, man, what are you going to do? It's going to be awful. It's going to be horrible.
Just kind of smiling to himself and all the chefs, even though they were just like on the station, like prepping, you knew they had prepared for the day. They had collected and accumulated several things. They had an arsenal ready, you know, hidden away in their fridges. And so this guy, you know, everybody was waiting for him to come up for his last shift.
And he comes up the stairs from the prep kitchen and he's wrapped himself head to toe in a sort of makeshift armor that he's made out of plastic wrap, aluminum tinfoil, cardboard, like a plastic lid, a plastic lid from a bucket as a shield, like fucking Robocop. You know, just came into the kitchen and everybody looked at him. They were all these like they always tried to be really mean and like mean looking these guys, you know, but they just all started cracking up.
And he was like, OK, I'm ready. Here we go. And they just went hammering in and it was just very funny. Very, very funny. I think that was a great that's a great last day to have as you as an apprentice. Then you want to talk about when when you threaten to punch me in the face, you want to talk about that, Phil, you remember that? No, I don't. I remember that I did that, but I don't remember what the reason was. I think it was the the beetroot cubes. Was it the beetroot cubes?
No, no, I I have actually told this story at job interviews. No, really? Yeah, really. I promise. Oh, no. They have asked me like, could you share an experience of a complicated moment you have to handle? Oh, no. Yeah, we were in the in the dishwasher pit, like, I don't know, washing some things. And there were I also have to put in context. Phil back then was an apprentice and he was like 17, 18 years old, something like that.
Yes. And he would he would get money on street fights on the weekend with Albanese mobsters. I would always lose. So I was broke. So it was not kind of the person I would want to get into a fight. So and there were these glasses in a corner. And I tell you, yeah, you have to put the glasses wherever. I just gave you like an instruction. Glasses have to go there in the well in the shelf in the back or something like that.
And you started to question it like, no, but they shouldn't go there because blah, blah, blah. And I tell you, could you please put the glasses there? And you said, no, but the chef said, and I said, like, put the glasses where I'm telling you. And and at some point, I you got over my patience. And I said, what's it like? Exactly. This was a big misunderstanding. I wanted to say, put them on the shelf and don't say anything or don't say nothing.
But apparently, what you understood was put them in the shelf. You are nothing. And then the mood completely changed and you were. What the fuck, man? What the fuck? You know, oh, no. You ever talk to me like that again, I'll fucking punch you in the face. And I was like, I had to, you know, like think fast, do something. And I put something in your chest like, here, watch this and shut up. That's what it. And it worked. It worked. Yeah, you want to go, oh, OK. Man, to my.
I also tried to punch someone in the face once. Yeah, yeah. To my defense, it's hard being a young like apprentice and everybody and everybody always is like, you know, like, hey, do this, do that, you know. And I remember because it was like, like, I was not really somebody who like, I mean, correct me if I was wrong, if I'm wrong, but I don't think that I was somebody who argued a lot with people. Like if somebody told me to do something, I wasn't like, yeah, but no. And I remember actually.
But that time you really got into a loop of no, no, no. Yeah, just because the head chef, he had like talked about it like very recently. And I was like, oh, but he just said, you know, but you're right. You know, in that moment, I should have just been like, yeah, whatever, you know, I'll just do it. But I remember I had two moments like that in that restaurant. And one was like also where this guy came in that we both know Max.
And he was my new chef, the party on the garden on the on the starter section. And he would just like, you know, I had worked there for like, what? Like a year and a half. So like just over a year or something like that. And he would come in like, be there for like two weeks and be like, no, this is completely wrong. And I'm like, well, like, I get it, man. You're a trained chef. I'm not yet. But I've been here for a year and we've always done it like this.
And the owner and chef said to do it like this every single time. You know, it's like, for example, this celeriac puree. I really remember that thing. Yeah, I also remember that. That guy was really interesting and like in a negative way. In a negative way, yeah. He had been like had been like in places and he was like kind of like methodic and disciplined, but with the wrong approach. Like he would, you know, follow processes, but the wrong processes.
You know, he would take the time or use a thermometer or whatever. But that celeriac puree, the one he cooked tastes like shit. Yeah. You know, and and man, it's easy to do a nice celeriac puree. You know, it's something super easy. It's like two steps. That's it. You know, the thing is that in this restaurant, the celeriac puree, it was meant to be a very vegetable focused restaurant. And the celeriac puree was meant to be very light.
You cook a very intense celeriac stock out of all the trim of the celeriac and celery, and then you sweat down the celeriac. You add the stock. You at the very end, you add a minimal amount of cream and then you blitz it. And it was like very light, very intense. And this guy, he just delicious. Yeah, yeah. And this guy, he just took the celeriac, filled it up with cream, pure cream, reduced it down to the bottom and then blitzed it. And it was like super heavy and like and it was like brown.
And it didn't taste like celeriac, like some caramelized cream. It was disgusting. Yeah, it was really was disgusting. Like I would be like, oh. And yeah, and I was like, man, this is like really not how anybody here has ever done it. And like I know I'm very young and inexperienced, but I know that this is not how we do it here. And he was like, no, man, you don't know anything. And then a couple of hours later, the head chef is like, tries to puree. He's like, what the fuck?
You know, look at this. This is shit. Well, that guy got fired, got fired a few weeks later. A few weeks later. I remember I also had like a confrontation with him. He once like got into my station and started like changing my things where they are. And he started like, you know, he would come into my station and start painting my dishes and tell me how to do that. And up to one point, I really screamed at him like, get the fuck out of my station. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You got to get quiet in the middle of service and everybody turn around. You don't let anyone get into your station, man. You just don't. Nah, no, that's that's a no go. You used to come in late, like an hour late and just come in like with a coffee in his hand that or we'd like be like prepping on the section. And you just come in and be like, what is this shit? And what is that shit? And, you know, and you'd always be like, oh, fuck, you know, fuck it. Fuck my life, you know.
And I'd be like, man, fuck off, you know, like. And I remember like one time he came in like and he was like two hours late and the same thing comes in like he's the fucking owner of the restaurant or whatever, you know, and he just looks at what I'm doing and he's like, fuck me, you know, like fucking hell. And I just like I remember I had a no. I just put my shit down. I was like, man, I was about to like talk to him, you know, and then another apprentice.
She like stepped in front of me and she was like, OK, OK, OK. Just calm down. And she took him outside and she was like, you know, and she actually said to him, she was like, hey, if you're not careful, this guy's going to punch you in the face if you keep going like this, you know, like this is not OK. Yeah. And he got and he got fired a couple of weeks later. And he came out of the office and he was like, I really don't know what's going on. I don't get it. Yeah.
What did I do? Yeah. Fucking idiot. I remember another one, similar thing, punching in the face and getting into your station. Those keywords. It was and I was working in this restaurant and there was a like the head waiter was like this again, like this bully guy that would be moody all day. And everybody had to be, how do you say, a recipient of his mood, whatever it was that day. Yeah. And I was head chef in that place and I was in the kitchen. There were like three cooks, whatever.
And he would always mess with everyone, with the cooks, with the dishwasher, with everyone. You know, I until that point, I never had a problem with him. And the guy comes into the kitchen and for whatever reason. And the guy was Italian and later when we settled off the things, he told me like, it wasn't meant to anyone. It's just a matter of temperament. And I was like, OK, I don't give a shit. But and I think he truly meant that he wasn't it was not personal with anyone.
But he had like a bad moment. He got into the kitchen and started screaming like, everybody in this restaurant are fucking idiots. Everybody are idiots. Idiots. Fucking idiots. And he left. You know, we were cooking. This guy enters, start screaming like that, like crazy leaves. And, you know, it leaves like like this vibe among everybody. Like, what the fuck is happening? You know, why does he? And you know, like it was really, you know, like not nice.
So then like five minutes later, the guy comes in again, like, just like nothing ever happened. And it was like, I don't know, grabbing some bread, trying to eat something. And he was just chewing the bread that he had in his mouth. And I come look him in the face and I told him. You ever talk like that in my kitchen again, I'll fucking smack in the face. He was like. But please, I'm fucking serious. You know, and he left and we had to talk a few days later about it.
But yeah, like never something like that happen again. You have to, you know, show your terrier to the terrier to the terrier. Terrier. I don't know. Terrier. Terrier. Terrier. Terrier. Like, yeah, you have to make a point that's your space, that you are setting the tone in that space. And you know, like you can't allow someone external to come in and act like that. Yeah, yeah, in general, I think.
And I think like, you know, a kitchen, like when we often talk about it being like a closed off environment, like a parallel universe, you know, like a different world, that often makes people kind of act in a way where they wouldn't necessarily act in a real world, because if you are above somebody in a hierarchy, you're the boss, you know, it doesn't just happen in the kitchen.
But you think that because people are working under you in this system that you somehow have more of a right to act in a way that's not OK. It's not OK to treat another human being like that, you know. And it's kind of like, well, think about if you're on the street, you know, and you just like start shouting at random people like, you are fucking idiot and you are fucking idiot, you're going to get punched in the face. Yeah, exactly. It's not my problem that you're having a rough moment.
Nobody gives a shit. OK, go to the fucking toilet, squeeze a tangerine and leave me alone, you know. Exactly. And, you know, it's the same thing. At some point, you're going to get a reality check because, you know, in Newsflash, everybody's fucking stressed out. Everybody's working hard, you know. You're not a special fucking snowflake. Exactly, you're not that special.