I spent some time today wallowing in nostalgia for my professional cooking days. Perhaps I should have titled this post “En Busca del Tiempo Perdidos”.

It’s been a long time since I toiled in kitchens for a living. Every once in a while I get a bit nostalgic about it, though I usually snap out of it quickly, remembering the luxuries I currently enjoy, such as doing laundry that doesn’t reek of onions and grease, working less than sixty hours a week, having weekends off (to say nothing of holidays: for every person who says “hey, let’s go out to eat on Mother’s Day”, there are a dozen line cooks, dishwashers, and busboys saying “fuck you”), not to mention the annual guessing game as to whether or not half your staff is going to show up the morning after Cinco de Mayo.

Still, I drift into the occasional reverie about my years in salt-and-pepper pants; I guess you can take the chef out of the kitchen, but not the kitchen out of the chef. Or something like that.

The unexpected trigger for this morning’s wistful recollection was the Beck song
“Qu? Onda Guero” [link goes to the iTMS]. It’s been a long, long, time since I was called “Guero”, “Jefe”, or any one of a number of colorful Spanish nicknames; a long time since I spoke Spanish every day. I found myself really missing the guys I worked with during the course of my cooking career, and the whole Spanglish culture you find in the back of pretty much every non-Asian restaurant.

Some kitchens are all-immigrant, others are more cholo in nature, but wherever you go, chances are good there’s a crew of vatos in the back dishing out the grub. I should know; I used to be one. I spoke Spanish with a chilango’s accent, though I was asked more than once which part of Michoacan I came from (apparently a lot of Michoacanos don’t have a lot of pre-Columbian blood in them, so I passed as Mexican).

There’s been a lot of anti-immigrant talk in this country lately, particularly about illegal immigration from Mexico, and how they’re “stealing our jobs”. I know it’s common wisdom this is bullshit, but let me confirm that: it’s total bullshit. I can tell you right now that 95% of the guys who showed up at the back doors of my restaurants looking for a job were born south of the Rio Grande. Most of them worked their asses off, and I know how hard they worked: I started out as a dishwasher and clawed my way up into management. I was working alongside them (much to their surprise; in a lot of kitchens I was the only white boy back there) long before I was their boss. Collectively, they were a great bunch of crazy, macho, ass-kicking, hard-drinking, funny sons of bitches, and I miss them, even if there’s no chance in hell I’m going back to the kitchens.

Yo te recuerdo, mis cu?ados.