The beginning is the end is the beginning is the end

It’s been a while, but for the last few months I’ve been going through a bit of a crisis: do I really want to do this?

There have been days where I’ve been elated to work at what is one of the best restaurants in New York. There are days when I am envious of “normal people” and their ability to enjoy weekends and daylight, rather than spending their time indoors.

And then there are days where I’m terribly depressed at how shitty a cook I can be (a fact that is sometimes verbalized by my peers, although not so directly). But mostly there is a monotonous repetition that I’ve settled into at Marea, which has numbed me to a lot of my angst.

My usual day consists of arriving just before or during the lunch rush, and hitting the ground running with the massive prep list. Often that means picking through crab (very tedious, as the peekytoe meat we get is riddled with opaque, celophane-like shells); killing and cooking upwards of twenty lobsters; cleaning said lobster shells for soup/stock and portioning the meat; making the Granny apple gelee for the crab; making the salmoriglio sauce and salsa verde; candying fennel; butchering hamachi and rolling into roulades using our “meat glue” active; making chive and basil oils; and too many other tasks to list.

Some of these duties are kind of relaxing. For example, I enter a state of zen while slicing paper-thin sheets of lardo for our sea urchin crostini appetizer. Other jobs are very laborious, like the salsa verde, which is essentially gremolata. It involves washing and fine-dicing seven bunches of parsley, as well as tarragon, basil and mint, then making a paste out of lemon zest and garlic, mixing that with anchovy paste, and combining it all with olive oil. A lot of prep for something that is doled out on the side with our whole fish.

And it all begins anew the next day.

Repetition has helped hone some of my knife skills, though I am still far from good. It has also helped improve my plating so that I can get out almost every dish on my station well under a minute (the sea urchin crostini takes time, but toasting bread can only be done so quickly). But it also causes boredom. There are only so many times you can wash lettuce before you get bored. Fortunately, dirty joking with the Latinos in the prep kitchen and mariachi music gets me through those times.

The other plus is that we change our dishes every month or so, which means I get to watch as the chefs dabble (some of them have come from molecular havens such as wd-50 and Eleven Madison Park, which is why we sometimes incorporate chemical cooking into our routine). And I also get to pick up new techniques, also a plus.

After all the soul-searching I’ve done, I am back firmly routed to my “gunna be a chef” path. That may still change—I am debating with wifey a six-month trip abroad to work in a foreign kitchen, either Italy or Asia, and I’m still thinking about corporate cheffing or food writing eventually if and when I want to have kids—but for now, I’m going to stick it out.

There will surely be ups and downs in my career, and I’m now more than ever convinced the culinary lifestyle is a breeding ground for alcoholism, sex addiction, drug abuse and mental instability. I’m sure I can come out the other side without having to worry about those things, but hopefully I also come out with a greater appreciation of food, rather get burned out by the repetition of simple tasks.