Who I work with

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I definitely missed it a little here, but instead I went to Mac Dario's (scroll all the way down for menu) instead and had a feast of some of the finest meat you can find in Tuscany (if not all of Italy) in the lovely company of Josh, and I was happy (and so, so stuffed!).

In other thanksgiving news, if you want to know why it might be fun to be a food scientist, read this post which entertainingly details part of the scientific method of how to cook a great turkey and along the way discusses flamethrowers and dragons. That blog in general is terrific, but this post was just fabulous.

So I started work last week, and I thought it would be good to introduce you to the cast of characters. Running the kitchen is Giovanna, who requests that she be called "la cuoca" (the cook) rather than "la chef", and while I think this is somehow related to hubris and her desire to not be obnoxious, I'm going to ignore it here and refer to her usually just as chef. Life is simpler that way.

She really runs the kitchen like the matron of a family. At this point all of the daily work has been delegated to her two cooks, and she just oversees things and puts her nose in where she feels like it. Generally speaking she is extremely jovial, and you can tell she enjoys the work. She personally prepares staff lunch almost every day, but that's about the only thing she always does. Usually during prep time she will come in at a certain hour and start standing by the stoves. There's a little workspace there where she will slice things for sauces, and she takes complete control over all sources of heat for a portion of the day. It actually is nice because the prep area is not near the stoves, and so if you put something on and need to check it constantly, she will do it so you don't need to constantly be interrupting your work to run over there and see how things are going.

I guess its the way she approaches staff meal that makes me think of her more like the mother cook in the kitchen than anything else. She always cares about it, and if I stay working for an extra minute or two to finish a project before going to eat, she scolds me and tells me to stop and get some food. As well, she has an opinion about everything. In the first week she has delivered lectures on why black truffles aren't really good, the differences between various kinds of prosciutto (gray and red, I think), why chefs in American restaurants don't work in the kitchens anymore (hours are too ridiculous), why you shouldn't do pasta for an entree when serving lots and lots of people at once (though we did it), and I'm sure you get the picture.

Furthermore, she's a short, very large woman, who always wears this kind of work dress that is probably actually a maid's outfit. It is short sleeved, khaki colored, and stops just below the knees. She always wears hose and a pair of black mary-janes.

Susanna is from somewhere in South America originally (I couldn't get her to tell me where exactly), and has been working at the restaurant for about three years. For all intents and purposes she's the sous chef, and as such she always knows what's going on. She likes to ask me lots of questions when we're working (what are you doing for christmas? where is the rest of your family? do you like x?) and got very interested in the fact that I was Jewish a while ago (so you guys believe in the trinity but not christ, right? umm.....that doesn't even make sense) and I got questions all day long on what that's like. She was especially curious about what I do on christmas day if I'm Jewish (Japanese food).

Her workstyle doesn't remind me much of the cooks at home. She has intensity but for some reason lacks that kind of smooth confidence I associate with someone who has been doing their job for a long time and thinks they know it well. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to be in more of a leadership position, but something about it strikes me as a little strange. It's probably just me. She too is really short, which means that in my clogs (2 in platform) I actually tower over these women. Its a really strange sensation for me.

Keiji is the other person who works in the kitchen, though his Japanese accent is so thick and he talks so quietly that I often have trouble understanding him, which means we don't talk too much. But he's a really nice guy, and always smiles. He works hard, well, and has a good attention for detail which Susanna sometimes misses. It's probably for that reason that he's in charge of the pastry menu and doing our breads, and I think he does a great job at things.

So that's our kitchen! Small but kind, fun and relaxed. A very different experience than what I've had in the US, but I'm enjoying myself tons, and my Italian is improving so much!