I wouldn't call it a bad job, but a great many other people in my life called it just that. I had a 90 or more hour work week, I was pretty much on call 24/7, I had no vacation time, sick time, health insurance, or retirement plan. I was paid far less than minimum wage for no more than 40 of my hours, I got chased around a work bench by a deranged Japanese chef wielding a knife sharpening steel, and I was required to live with my co-workers, all 30 something of them, in a crowded house in the suburbs of Boston.
Here's the funny part - I loved that awful job!
I had moved to Boston with my masters degree in pure mathematics to find a programmer's job, and taken a temporary job as a dishwasher in a macrobiotic restaurant, Sanae on Newbury Street. I remember that Huey was the manager of the restaurant at the time, and boy was he happy to see me when I came in on a moment's notice to wash dishes that first day. The restaurant was slammed, and the dishes were piled to the ceiling, literally. I knew what to do, having worked for a few years in a bustling fried chicken joint as a teenager. Both Huey and Claude, the current chef, were most grateful and impressed.
Sanae, along with a second small restaurant in Harvard Square named "The Last Chance," was a satellite restaurant to The Seventh Inn, a large and elegant macrobiotic restaurant in the heart of downtown Boston. The restaurants had originally been opened by none other than Michio Kushi himself, generally considered the founder of macrobiotics, Erewhon trading company, and the East-West Foundation. After some time, Kushi hired a master chef from Japan, Hiroshi Hayashi, to step in as chef of all operations.
The restaurants were staffed by apprentices to Hiroshi in a program that lasted about a year. During that year, the apprentices progressed through every kitchen station in the restaurant: first washing dishes, then on to making salad dressings, cutting vegetables, preparing meats and fishes, baking breads and desserts, garde manger, the line grill and stove, tempera fryer, line expediter, and finally head chef of the entire restaurant.
I was so darn good at washing dishes that first day, that I was encouraged to join them, as an apprentice. With stars in my eyes, I gladly did so. At the end of my very first week, the chef at the time, Andy, asked me how I liked my first 90 hour work week. I said "I love it."
And I did. I loved every single task I had to do for that place. I even prided myself on being able to carry a 100 pound bag of flour up two flights of stairs!
There were very few power tools or fancy tools in the kitchen. We made mayonnaise with whisks, peeled vegetables with knives, and kneaded breads by hand. We learned how to toss the contents of a hot saucepan by flipping saute pans of cold dry rice. We learned how to use chopsticks by transfering navy beans one by one between vessels. During our first days as chef, we were only allowed to season with salt, soy sauce, or miso. We worked hard, and learned a tremendous amount.
It could get hot in that kitchen, in more ways than one. Hiroshi was the one who chased me around a work bench threatening me with a sharpening steel. Good times.
Despite all this, I would call it the most influential job in my life, because it took me off the path of computer programmer, which I now know I would have hated, and put me firmly on the path to becoming a restaurateur.
Information on any of these restaurants, or about Hiroshi, is scarce online, but here's some info I found on two of the restaurants from about eight years before my time there.
http://www.michaelrossoff.com/original-menus-from-sanae--seventh-inn-restaurants.html
I'm over 700 words for this post, more than double the minimum. I could go on and on I'm afraid, there is that much more to tell! But I will stop here. A great many people worked there over the years. Perhaps some of the readers are among them, and we can reminisce
This has been quite the walk down memory lane for me, thank you for accompanying me on my walk.
This is my entry to @galenkp's weekend engagement challenge. I chose to write about a bad job in my past, and what I learned from it.
What a great story of how life can take us in directions we don't always see ourselves taking.
One thing...the 700+ words and going on and on...I think there's a lot of stories that you should reveal about this place; a short series maybe? Please think on it.
hm. It was fun to write about. It was a best of times worst of times kind of place, and eventually the only way out for me was to flee. hm. I'll think on it, thanks for wanting to know more. And for the support!
I felt how important a time it was for you and that you enjoyed writing about it so thought to suggest a post or two on it. No pressure of course.
Ohhh yes, the stories that could be told -
I think one has already emerged (see: the we-write, hosted by @owasco).
I love this!! To be so busy, so hard working, yet loving it (and able to lug a hundred-pound bag up all those stairs). I want to join you in a parallel universe.
This is such an amazing story! It's crazy how we seem to happen on some of the best things in life "just by chance". But you know they're not random, because afterwards you could never imagine your life without them.
Yeah, I landed there so easily, I knew it was the right thing for me. Foodies can be akin to cultists. The chefs have to be obeyed exactly, revered. But even after I opened my own restaurant, my father would still ask me when I was going to get a real job.
🤣🤣 "real job"...restaurants are soooo much work!
If you love it, as I did, it's a cause. The food cause. You work with purpose and pride. Until you get sick to death of it!
Fantastic. I didn't know you had degree in mathematics or were a restauranteur, two things I'd love to know more about from you. It sounds like a wonderful place to work, fast paced, energetic, fascinating. I've worked with a lot of chefs and they are always a challenge. I'm not sure I could go back to hospo again, as they call hospitality here.
It strikes me I'd quite like to come to your house for dinner. I bet you could cook up a mean Japanese dish for us. There's lots of good Japanese restaurants in Melbourne.
Oh! What I wouldn't give for a meal in a good Japanese restaurant! I had a decent meal at Obu in Nashville not long ago. Yum.
The secret of my past. Once upon a time, my name and businesses appeared regularly in the New York Times. Before that, I was a math whiz, back when women did not do math. Now I'm a nobody.
Unfortunately, thirty years in the biz pushed my love of cooking right out of me. Now, I look for the simplest recipes (which I do not follow) and the easiest things to make. Give me kimchee and a good avocado, and I am all set. But I do still use the skills I learned at this job. Just made a nice soup with brisket, sweet potatoes, garlic, ginger and chicken broth. All organic, pastured. That is my focus now -quality ingredients, for health.
But you've inspired me to see if I could find anything about my (our - my husband's and mine) final enterprise. I've found this. I haven't been able to get to the actual review.
https://mouthfulsfood.com/forums/index.php?/topic/779-relish-in-sparkill-ny/
You are even more amazing than I thought!! That review is tantalizing... Yum! Something of which to be proud. I understand why you don't cook. If I didn't have Jamie I think I wouldn't cook much at all. When I was on my own i used to live on miso soup with veggies and noodles or a pot of dal.
Very entertaining! I'm sure your master's degree in pure mathematics was a great boon to you:)
It was mostly completely useless! I did teach math for a few years there, and loved relearning high school math well enough to teach it, which to me meant knowing it perfectly. Math is perfection. I found that comforting. I could do perfect. It was those subjects that got into grey areas (everything else) that I had trouble with.
I did an arts degree intending to teach but obviously, my fate lay elsewhere. I'd've made a terrible teacher anyway. Maths always boggled my brain. I found it anything but comforting.
I loved math. On Saturday nights, you could find me in the math lounge with a couple other math nerds, doing proofs together on the chalk board. Really loved it! Would have gone for a PhD, had I not taken my first ever dance class to satisfy a gym credit. Once I got a taste of the stage, I was outta that math lounge. This is fun talking about me me me.
So on to you. I would have guessed that you have art in your background. Art teachers work harder than anyone else!
Curiouser and curiouser...you do sound like a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.
My degree is in Arts... English and history as opposed to Art. I can't draw for peanuts.
Oh yes you can! I've seen your drawings!
Hahaha, yer gas! I always fancied myself an artist...the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak:)
That's fascinating.
Great story.
What a way to find one's true call or vocation.
I don't cook much. I admire people who do and can handle that kind of pressure. I guess no matter how stressful a job may look, if one loves it and has the skills, then it's just a game one feels comfortable playing and being challenged at.
I'm guessing you never worked in math/programming, then?
Oh yes, the crunch times in a restaurant require a great deal of skill, and can be invigorating and extremely rewarding. Boy did I feel good about myself after a rousing couple of hours cranking out meals! Or an early morning;s cranking out of breakfast pastries and bagels. Or standing in front of a couple of cooling racks loaded with cookies, breads and cakes. I felt very accomplished and valuable. I wonder how people go through life without feeling this about themselves.
Wow, what an experience! I'd love to read more tales from this part of your life. Isn't it interesting how we often go to school for one career and end up in another? I earned a BA in education in college, only to discover I didn't like teaching public school at all. However, home schooling my own kids was just fine.
I taught in a private school for a few years. I loved the teaching, but everything else about that job was unbearable. It would be even worse in a public school I would imagine, which are pretty much prisons for everyone in them, especially the children.
Good for you homeschooling. So many of my family's problems stemmed from schooling in the first place. It must be much much worse now.
I have been thinking about continuing this story. Thanks for wanting more!