It will happen. No matter how many times you’ve made your very own grandmother’s recipe, or how accomplished a chef you are, whether you work in a professional kitchen or in your own home cooking for your family, no matter how calm you feel, how in place your mise en place really is, the time will come when what you create is shit.
Maybe you blew it with the measurements, used salt instead of sugar (you think you’re the first one?), overcooked the tenderloin or served sandy clams.
Maybe the dinner was served two hours late and everyone is pissed. Maybe the birthday boy’s cake flew right out of your hands. Maybe you forgot to serve the beautiful shrimp that are all prepped in the fridge.
I’m going to tell you a great big secret: It happens to EVERYONE. Everyone who cooks anyway. Anyone who has stood on screaming feet for hours, chopping, stirring, blistering forearms while reaching into hot ovens, eyeglasses covered in steam from boiling cauldrons on the stove top. Backs, knees, everything hurting at the end of the day and at the beginning of the next one. Cooks who pour all of their creativity, concentration and effort into serving something beautiful, transcendent, or at the very least delicious, who despite all of that, sometimes, indeed create a soufflé (metaphorically or otherwise) that is shit.
It happens to everyone except the people who don’t enter the arena of the kitchen. For the people who don’t know what’s it’s like to be *“in the weeds”, who haven’t served time in the service industry, you might not relate to this.
But for ME, and if you do cook in any capacity, then probably for you too, it happens. Hopefully not too often, but when it does, what the heck do you do then?
There are lots of options.
The walk-in, the bathroom, the alley, the garage, all make for great stress receptacles and excellent places to gather one’s breath.
But what do you do about that roomful of people that are still out there? The hangry family members, the grouchy customer, your impatient boss, your judgmental dinner guests…how will you ever face them? It’s the worst, but you do it, you have no other option. With humility and a cautious sense of humor, careful not to be flippant but secure in the fact that you did your best, you accept the fact that unfortunately, today your best was shit.
And hopefully, HOPEFULLY, those people show you mercy, they see your sincerity and they understand that despite the best laid plans, it happens.
And if they don’t? Well, just know that the rest of us feel your pain, we appreciate your hard work, your physical pain, your sense of shame, and WE know that next time it will be better. And if not, well it’s gotta get better the time after that. And if it doesn’t, I promise you, one day you’re gonna nail it.
So if the soufflé is shit, whether you made it or it has been served to you, please be merciful and be especially gentle with yourself if you’re the one standing in a puddle of fallen soufflé. We’re all just doing our best and most likely we’ve all been there. After all, grandma’s recipe surely took decades to perfect.
Sincerely,
Someone who’s been there.
*in the weeds: A term used in the restaurant industry, IYKYK. An online glossary of restaurant terms puts it like this: "A colloquial expression used when persons are near or beyond their capacity to handle a situation or cannot catch up. Struggling. Very busy." …to put it mildly.