2.8.24

The late, great Anthony Bourdain likened working in a restaurant to serving on a pirate ship. I can say that if this comparison isn’t entirely accurate, it’s pretty damn close.

Butthole Surfers’ only Top 40 hit — Pepper, from the 1996 album Electric Larryland — was released in mid-April of that year, two days before I started working as a line cook at Cafe Espresso, a little Italian restaurant that used to operate in Williston, VT. It became my anthem as I fumbled my way through learning how to cook and stumbled into a wider social scene than I’d ever known before. The spring and summer of ‘96 were an eye-opening time as I found myself working and living outside the confines of a rural existence for the first time.

In the kitchen of the little pink restaurant, alternative music was blaring constantly. The sounds of Soundgarden, Beck, and Cornershop mixed with the banging of pots, pans, and pizza oven doors. Those of us on the app and pizza line would shout back and forth, to and at the cooks on the pasta and sauce line. And we’d all shout (mostly at) whoever the dish dog was. And of course, constantly yelling at the servers as part of the eternal between the front and the back of the house.

“Eighty-six the calamari!”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘Eighty-six the calarmi’? Jesus! Don’t you lazy bastards prep anything? At least we still have the focaccia.”

“Eighty-six the focaccia!”

And so it went.

I’m especially loved when Pepper would come on during break-down and clean-up. It’s a fun song to clean to.

I had forgotten about Pepper for quite some time in the intervening couple of decades or so, and then it turned up out of nowhere on a playlist during the pandemic. The memories came flooding back.

Pretending to smoke so I could have a smoke break. Getting in a wet ravioli face-slapping fight with Mark. Chucking kalamata olive pits out the bar window at waitstaff. The one time a dishwasher decided after hours to try and dry out some weed in the microwave. And the other time the same dishwasher strolled in and dumped a bowl of ice cream in the deep fryer to make fried ice cream.

That dude was something else.

I miss that kitchen. I miss the people who taught me how to cook. And I miss that restaurant.

Thank god I still have the music.

Some will fall in love with life

And drink it from a fountain

That is pouring like an avalanche

Coming down the mountain