DIML OOTD GRWM (Lmao, Btw)

If it hadn’t been for Cotton Eyed Joe (injured wrist), I’d been married (writing more on Substack) a long time ago.

If you’re scared by the acronyms in the title let me just say this: you should be!

I’m just joshin’. For those of you who may not know (hi, Grandma!) these are acronyms popularized on social platforms like TikTok that stand for Day In My Life, Outfit Of The Day, and Get Ready With Me, respectively. They are each their own distinct frameworks that give video creators a formula to showcase their content, and I am committing a major faux pas by suggesting they all go together. Gasp!

But alas, here is a day in the life of a 29 year old gay line cook in Brooklyn, NY. If you were curious.

On days when I work a dinner service at the restaurant and know that I have the following morning off (I don’t have to be at work until 3pm today) I typically aim to sleep in. I set my alarm for the 9:30am range, knowing my snooze button addiction will keep me supine until the 10am range.

10am

House shoes are very important to me; I don’t sport bare feet. Ever. I have a summer collection of Crocs and a winter collection of slippers. At 10am, I found my current favorite pair of Uggs (navy blue Tasman slippers I found NWT at the thrift store for $40) and give my feet the beautiful experience of being inside a teddy bear. I grabbed my hamper from my walk-in closet (brag) and took a load of laundry down to the basement of my building to use the free laundry machines (brag again).

My coffee routine is erratic. Routine is a generous word, as there is no constant practice. I rely on a patchwork system: I have whole beans that I grind for a french press, I have ground espresso for a mini Moka Pot, I have shitty grocery store coffee grounds for a single-use pour over, and I have cold brew concentrate. I don’t know why I have four different preparations at the ready, but today I chose to grind beans for the french press. No rhyme, no reason.

I sat down at my desk and opened the Google Doc that I will probably title something like “Substack Draft 2-20” and began, without much forethought, to chronicle my day. The only impetus of this day-in-the-life-style Substack today is that I realize most people have no fucking idea what a professional cook’s job entails. We culturally understand that (in loose terms) chef = cooking, and restaurant = serving people food. But what the hell is a par sheet, a shallow 6 pan, a temp log, or a sani bucket change? What does it mean to say sharp behind, I’m working six salads all day, we’re all in savory, or I need two desserts on the fly? I treasure writing as a connective tissue between my work universe and my content universe. And I’m excited to tell you more about my day. Don’t be mad that I am being earnest!

When my first cup of hot coffee gets to be room temp, I allow myself one round of microwave. I don’t give a shit that it “makes the coffee taste weird”, I truly can’t tell. But once this first wave of hot coffee is over, I move to iced. At this point, the rest of the french press has lost its piping hot appeal, so I let it cool without fighting it. I pour out the rest of the now tepid liquid and add maple syrup, salt, and whole milk. Hot, black coffee is fuel, whereas iced, sweet coffee is fun. Earlier in the week I made a cream cheese spread with carmelized onions, scallions, and fresno chilis - so I fried and egg, toasted an english muffin, and married them to the spread.

11am

Back at my computer, I answer emails (I do the private events at the restaurant, so I act sort-of like… an account manager (?) at times) and write more. I pay an overdue bill. I browse Depop on my phone. I google “best HYSA interest rates”. I think, vaguely, of starting to do my taxes but then chuckle and dismiss that thought. What I don’t do? Make my bed. As a quadruple Virgo, people make various wrong assumptions about me. This is one of them. Let me be clear: I do not now, nor have I ever, made my bed in the morning. I don’t want to, I don’t feel the need to, and so I don’t. The only reason I will make it is if I have guests coming over and want to show off my room.

12pm

The rest of my day before work is unremarkable. I thought about getting a pedicure but am feeling a little broke at present, so abstained. I got my laundry and put it away (surprise… I also don’t fold my laundry), I heated up leftovers (I made sambar, a type of lentil veggie stew, recently), I showered, I applied a star-shaped pimple patch, and I got slowly dressed for work. I bundled up to face the freezing Brooklyn air, and assumed my regularly scheduled programming of calling my sister on my walk to work to catch up.

3pm

I walk in the doors of the restaurant at 3pm, and clock in. I am paid hourly, so accurately clocking in and out is important. I walk through the kitchen into the back “storage area” which is just a little hallway with shelves and a coat rack. After I de-robe from my winter ware, I change from my civilian shoes into my kitchen shoes, and put on a service apron. At work we have prep aprons that you wear for, you guessed it, prep. The service aprons however are a little nicer so we wear those for, yep, right guess again: service. When I emerge into the kitchen, the prep team is finishing their day, making family meal, and handing off tasks to us. There is one hour of overlap in the teams. I check in with the prep team to see what still needs to be done; where I can start.

We finish all tasks that need to be done for service, which today for me included supreming citrus for the first course. The prep team had globed the citrus, meaning the skin and pith was removed, revealing a naked orange globe for me to cut segments out of. Once I got through that, I realized I was due for my afternoon coffee. I made my coworker and I some salted iced lattes before family meal (colloquially just called “family”).

4pm

At 4pm everyday, we sit down for family. This meal feeds the prep team finishing their shift, the service team starting their shift, plus front-of-house employees like the bartenders, servers, and the host. Part of the prep team tasks include cooking family meal for these ~14 people every day with ingredients on hand in the restaurant. Today, we are spoiled. There was a fish snafu yesterday and instead of tuna for the crudo course, we got cod. Which isn’t really fit for a crudo, so we couldn’t use it. So that meant today I walked face-first into miso black cod, kimchi stew with tofu, rice, charred scallions, and crispy fish skin. And please don’t think that we weren’t testing a cardamom snickerdoodle recipe and therefore had cookies for dessert. Spoiled!

After family meal, we do the last round of dishes before our dishwasher comes in at 5pm. We do dishes constantly, all day, and it is a huge relief when our dishwasher comes in and takes over.

5pm

We then set up the line. Setting up the line refers to organizing the whole day’s worth of prepped foods, sauces, ingredients, etc in an efficient manner inside of something called a low-boy. This fixture is common in a restaurant: a small refrigerator system designed to fit under a counter (or a counter-height table) that has a basin top for third pans, six pans, and nine pans full of food. These vessels I am referring to are small, metal containers that have corresponding lids. They are the most “standard practice” piece of equipment in a restaurant kitchen. Their names refer to their size: a third pan is the largest, and its name refers to how three of the vessels will fit in a full sized hotel pan (the large, rectangular containers used in restaurants to store, hold, and serve food). As is, they are one-third the size. Same structure with a six-pan, which is half the size of a third pan. You get the idea.

Resy allows our first reservations to start at 5:30, but it was a bit slower today so there was nobody booked until 5:45. We took the extra 15 minutes to go admire the snow that started falling.

5:45pm

Once service starts, it’s off to the races. The structure of a prix fixe menu is much more predictable than other menus, so we can gauge timing quite well once a party sits down. That being said, servers still ring in tickets for each course. And just like any restaurant-in-a-movie you see: a physical ticket prints, it is taken from the machine and stuck on “the board” (wire rack), and called by the head chef. Each dish announced is met with a verbal response (think: “heard”) and the fire (think: start of cooking) begins.

We are lucky to have some down time tonight, because it is slower. I have my coworker show me some tips for a better quenelle so that I can perfect it for plating the dessert course. We then “have to” “test the product” “for quality control” and make ourselves an ice cream sundae that we are running as an a la carte special. Sometimes we play madlibs, word games, and pranks on each other. We have our own speaker in the BOH (back of house, aka the kitchen) and we constantly dance.

9:30pm

Somehow service is coming to an end, and we get the call for “all in savory” which means all servers have entered their last tickets for main, savory items. This means that although there are still tables eating, and some still expecting dessert, we can start breaking down the line. Before we break down the flat top station - cut the gas, turn off the pilot, scrub the flat top surface with a grill brick, empty the sludge-filled grease trap, and grease the flat iron top of the range - we make odds and ends of food for an informal family nosh. We call it “dog pile style” because often we make a giant serving in a communal bowl, and the staff comes with their own forks and picks at if they’re hungry by the end of their shift.

10:00pm

Cleaning the kitchen is not for the faint of heart, as it’s a continuation of manual labor after a full night of manual labor. Scrubbing and sanitizing. Wiping down walls, handles, and fridge interiors. Picking up floor mats, sweeping up debris, then mopping the floor. Cleaning the mats and putting them back down on the floor. Refilling all squeeze bottles of oil, ramekins of salt, and pints of spices. Clamping compost buckets. Emptying trash, relining the cans, and taking the trash out to the dumpster. Taking the trash from the dumpster to the side of the road so that city garbage collection removes it. Putting away stacks of dishes. Filling out par sheets, which inform us of an inventory count (tracking how much stuff we have of each thing so that we know what to accurately make the next day).

10:30pm

The BOH team is clocked out. Tonight my coworker drove us to a bar to meet some friends, but usually I walk home. But alas, I open tomorrow (meaning I have a prep shift) and turn in early from the bar.

12:30am

I am eating classic (yellow bag) Lay’s potato chips in my bed, writing about my day in the life of a 29 year old gay line cook in Brooklyn, NY. If you were curious.