This the season for football analogies and from September to February I use them extensively. If there are consistent measures of a great quarterback vs. a good one, it might very well be their ability to read defenses and instantly modify a play (audible) at the line of scrimmage. Sure, throwing a perfect spiral, having courage to stand firm in the pocket knowing that they are about to be pummeled by a blitz, and pump faking a pass that leads into a quarterback run for the first down are essential, but things can go wrong, plays may not work out, a spy might have his eyes on your every move, and a great QB is able to process all of that and shift directions in a few seconds to avoid disaster. When coaches watch film from previous games and analyze the effectiveness of their team offensive leader, this is what stands out – can they adjust?

         Line cooks in a restaurant can be classified in three different silos: 1. learning the ropes, 2. organized, efficient, and effective, or 3. mastered the craft and able to make things work – no matter what. If you are starting out, the complexity of line work can be daunting. Organization, multi-tasking, mental awareness, building your flavor awareness, teamwork, and finesse come in time and are ripe with fear and anxiety until you are competent. If you are seasoned and reasonably confident, those skills are second nature and although the anxiety never leaves you, you can face the day with determination and trust in yourself. However, all of this works well if everything goes as planned. But, alas, in the kitchen, and in life, things don’t always go as planned and the unforeseen can easily take charge of your fragile confidence.

         If you have worked for some time in a busy kitchen, you have seen it happen on occasion (maybe too often) – that well organized plan, that clear head and that macho confidence start to crumble. Occasionally it happens over time, building up to a meltdown, while other times it occurs in an instant. A dropped plate, a hand burned on a fire red panhandle, a cut finger in the middle of service, a run on certain ingredients leading to depleted mise en place, a re-fire, a missed order on a dupe, or an over-cooked steak start to cripple the line, holding up orders, and confusing your teammates. Suddenly, it’s a cascading problem leading to additional miss-steps, mixed up orders, missed calls for plating, confused degrees of doneness and then the entire line hits the wall. An experienced expeditor might be able to calm the storm and talk the line back from Armageddon, or the chef or sous chef might be able to jump in and take over a station in freefall, or sometimes it starts to look like a 10-car pile-up on an icy highway. Can you picture it?

         So, the once confident and highly competent line cook starts to stare off in space. His or her tank is empty and they are waiting for someone to push them off to the side of the road and wait for AAA to come and drive them away. There is no Plan-B, nowhere to turn, no coming back from disaster. Just like the quarterback who fails to see the blitz and winds up on his back with a fumbled ball bouncing into the hands of their opponent who runs sixty yards in the other direction for a touchdown, the line cook feels the same confusion and pain.

         The accomplished, always prepared line cook is one who has experienced enough failure, has made the mistakes and done the follow-up work to better prepare in the future, who has been on the side of the road waiting for AAA to take them away, and has stored all of those mistakes in a mental databank as a reference for the future. When they see the signs starting to creep in – hands burned because a sauté cook grabs a wet towel to pull a pan out of the oven, dropped ingredients, a missed order or burnt steak, maybe a few orders starting to return from the dining room for re-fires, etc., this line cook takes control and audibles on the line. Maybe a nod to the expeditor to step in, telling the cook to take a break and clear his head, jumping in to catch up mise en place for another station, or sending a message that the maître d should slow down seating new guests or even send a free drink or appetizer to a table until they can catch up and avoid having the line collapse. The signs are always there in advance. The problem develops when no one knows how to deal with them and adjust.

         So, if you are learning the ropes, remember that mistakes happen – pull them into your mental databank, learn how to cope with them in the future, and build confidence knowing that you can dig quickly into that well of knowledge and access solutions. Ironically, that one cook who can solve problems in the moment will help the entire kitchen adjust and feel that they can handle any problem that comes their way. Be that cook!

PLAN BETTER – TRAIN HARDER

Learn to audible on the line.

www.harvestamericacues.com – BLOG

https://paulsorgulebooks.com – Author website

Have you read my latest novel: A Cook on the Run?

Available through Amazon, iUniverse, and Barnes and Noble