Yes, Chef

If you are like most Americans, your first job was in a restaurant. Some of my earliest memories of amazement stemmed from experiences I had inside a restaurant. I remember being the curious, dreamy-eyed kid peering into the kitchen to watch sweaty, oversized men tussle with steel and fire. Chef whites, Japanese cutting tools, sweat, blood, swear words, and tears.

Funny story, I staged (French word for apprentice) in a three Michelin star restaurant when I was 16 and sliced open my palm on a mandoline on my second day. To treat the wound, they shoved my hand in a bowl of salt. A belt to bite down on wasn’t in the first aid kit, I guess.

Grace, three Michelin Star restaurant on June 20, 2016

The next 7 days was filled with the venom of the restaurant world, a real-world wake-up call demanding a question of life,

“Is this what you want to do?”

I was in turmoil whilst doing dishes for 10 hours straight in a silent kitchen. I was in even deeper disarray when I dropped a cutting board in the dish pit during peak service and the sous chef laid into me with a barrage of insults and attacks on my character that would make any grandmother fall over.

Nearing the end of my stage, I found myself de-pitting cherries. I remember my instructions clearly.

“They all have to be perfect.”

There I was, slicing around the circumference of 500 cherries, carefully extracting the pit from their trenches ensuring that there is no bruising or tears in their skin. Over and over, I de-pitted cherries as my eyes trotted into the dining room through the thick glass panes that divided elegance from shitstorm.

And then I saw a little girl. Her eyes sparkled with the same curiosity and amazement I felt when I was her age… and then it hit me—I achieved my first dream.

To answer the first question, “Yes.”

There is a phenomenon in the fine dining world called unreasonable hospitality. Essentially, it means that if a guest wants something, you’re going to get it done no matter the ridiculousness. My last bout of unreasonable hospitality was retrieving a highchair for a girl’s doll.

Suffice to say, this girl couldn’t give a damn about what was going on in the kitchen. She’ll grow up into a fine dining regular that shews away staff or maybe she’ll grow into her own. That’s neither here nor there.

On New Year’s Eve, a large vase full of plants went into a blaze, smoke billowed out into the patio over the VIPs and oh boy what a sight that was. Brenna Whitaker and her 7-man band blared through the place, the commotion was at an all-time high, and Beverly Hill’s finest patrons couldn’t give a damn either.

High fives, hand-shakes full of cash, smiling faces, flustered geriatrics, cigarette-stained lips, funky regulars, pommes aligot towering high in the sky, and servers hastily looking for their bussers… Spago is home to the extremes of contemporary fine dining. It gave me everything I love about fine dining and everything I’d rather stick my sliced open hand in a bowl of salt over.

Now, only a single day after leaving the restaurant I find myself in a reflective haze most likely attributed to the fact that I have had more to drink than shut-eye in the last week.

But in all seriousness, it is not the atmosphere or the patrons or the undoubtedly incredible food that makes Spago what it is—it’s the people who work there. The chefs and cooks, to the dishwashers to the expediters, managers, servers, bussers, runners, hosts, and polishers. It was truly a great team of many kinds of individuals.

I could always count on Alfredo for a joke of the day that I often would begin smirking at before the joke even started full well knowing it was going to be crasser than the previous one. Or maybe I’d shout “Normand! Are we stormin’ the beaches of Normandy tonight?” at Normand, Juan, and Rodolfo as I incessantly shouted “Atras! Atras!” so I could wash my hands in the tight crevasse that is the dish pit.

We all had our daily routines… dropping off barely opened bottles of Pellegrino for Idalia in the dish pit, buying carne empanadas from Luis at the end of my shift, conversations about Israel, art, and ideas with Jason E. out on the patio right before the hosts would quadruple seat us, full-blown bouts of banter throughout the bussing team, and staff meals out in a dirty Beverly Hills alleyway. I relished these moments because they were a reminder of everything I legitimately enjoyed about the hospitality world.

Times were rough and morale came in ebbs and flows, but many things remained the same, and for that I am grateful. Even when I was having a bad day, I’d answer “todo bien” and down 4 cups of coffee and sneak in an espresso here and there when the opportunity presented itself. When it got slow, I’d find myself wandering back towards the alley only to find the usual suspects, Gerhard and Dakota, sparking up their American Spirits and joining for a quick 10 when our servers were probably starting to wonder where we were.

There is an unacknowledged connective tissue that exists between restaurant workers that I can’t explain. Day in and day out you suffer through the same messes, have the same arguments, scorn the same guests (privately of course), help each other when you’re in the shits, and break glassware like it’s a science. Whether or not you have had full-fledged conversations with every single person in the restaurant, there is a level of care that we hold for each other that you don’t get in the office world.

The “I help you, you help me” is the foundation for much of what we do in the front of the house, and it truly is a metaphor for the work that I do through MAXIMA and with artists in a holistic sense.

I have a theory that regardless of how you came into the service industry, you either leave as an optimist or a pessimist, with a little grey area.  

Let’s go back to the first question of life,

“Is this what you want to do?”

I think my answer is evident. But the service industry has taught me everything I know about people, relationships, and what good, honest, hardworking people look like. No matter who you are or where you come from, if you can learn the ins and outs of a restaurant, you can tackle just about anything.

Whether it was dealing with unruly, rude, and arguably exorbitantly insane guests to ironing innumerable table clothes and schlepping tables, chairs, couches, rentals, candles, Christmas trees, and 1,000-pound bronze sculptures through every nook and cranny of the restaurant floor, it was always the motley crew of misfits that I worked alongside that made every second worthwhile.  

As always, thank you for being here, and cheers to 2024.

Eli Bucksbaum, MAXIMA