In this day and age, no matter what your politics, if you are going to work in a professional kitchen, you need to speak and understand Spanish, if you want to get anything done.
Here is a perfect reason why...
It was my first job as "The Chef" at Blue Plate Restaurant on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
I needed Carlos, my prep cook, to clean the shells off of the shrimp for dinner that evening.
I asked in my broken Spanish, "por favor, limpiar the camerones" (clean the shrimp).
I went back upstairs to the kitchen to continue my own work. When I went back downstairs to check on Carlos, he had indeed cleaned the shrimp.
In a bucket of warm water with soap!!!! They were clean and shiny all right.
So, unless you want soap in the shrimp...Halba Espanol!!!!!!!!!!!!!
About Me
- Chef Barb
- I am the youngest of 7 children, big Irish Catholic family. My memories of the dinner table are happy, lively and loud, with good food along the way. It made me who I am today. Tough, loud, funny, interesting, interested and a good listener! I started cooking for a living at 29 years old in an Irish bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After learning the ropes "on the line" at EJ's Luncheonette two doors down, I moved on to Mesa Grill with Bobby Flay. This was in the early 90's and his star was just beginning to rise, an amazing time in my life and career.There is life before Bobby and after Bobby. My cooking took on a whole new level in a business I would come to love. After a few more restaurants in NYC, off to Portland,OR and then back home to the suburbs of Philadelphia. Not afraid of a challenge or to take a chance is the way I describe myself on any given day. Now I live with Doris the Wonder Cat (he is a boy, but very comfortable with his sexuality) and work in the most interesting place one could imagine.
Pinchi Cabron,
ReplyDeleteSpanish is extremely important to know in a kitchen especially one in NYC. On my first day working for Francois Payard he started yelling at me in french and called me a cochon and an imbecile. Seeing as he was talking french to me, I cursed him out in Spanish which I am fluent in. He had no idea what I was saying to him but out of the corner of my eye I could see our dishwasher falling over laughing. So with a well hidden smile on my face I went back to work. It’s the little things that help you get through the day when all around you it’s raining caca.