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Almost every kitchen you eat from is a dirty, unsanitary place. It seems impossible that this could be the truth but it is. The kitchens that are clean are the good ones. They are the Chefs Table, Masterchef, Michelin starred kitchens. They are the kitchens that have staff that really care and work hard and face consequences for mistakes. They are the kitchens that hold pride and whose chefs have technique and training and ambition. They are the top kitchens, the 50 worlds best kitchens, the Good Food Guide kitchens - although not always - they are the Gourmet Traveller kitchens, the Melbourne Food and Wine kitchens. They are the television kitchens, the obsessive kitchens, the live or die by the sword kitchens1. They are the kitchens chefs who dream of being chefs imagine themselves to one day work in. They are the kitchens in the film The Menu2. They are the kitchens with staff that have time and resources to allocate to rotating stock, that have consistent daily suppliers, the can afford the luxury of a daily deep clean. They are not, however, the only kitchens. They are not the kitchens that make the food we love or the food we eat day to day. They are not the kitchens that hold up the back bone of the industry.
Kitchens are dirty. Almost every kitchen I have worked in has been dirty. Grease under the lip of the bench, mould down the back of the salamander, fish sitting above cheese in the cold room dripping down, out of date dry store goods, weevils in the flour, possums climbing through the vents3, mice shitting on the bench.
It is a disgusting and unfortunate reality that kitchens exist like this and an absolute gift that more people don’t report food poisoning, which no doubt occurs more frequently that the average diner is willing to admit or report.
The rules surrounding health and safety hygiene in kitchens are fairly straight forward. As a base they can be summarised as - clean often. Clean well. Disinfect as often as possible, don’t allow for cross contamination, do everything you possibly can to rotate, dispose of, or use stock within the required time frame - 3-5 days for most things. The truth is, these basic rules are rarely followed. Even regarding preparation of ingredients the fundamental guidelines are often ignored. When you are cooking at home, most people have just a few chopping boards, not so much for the preparation of different ingredients but instead for convenience, if one is dirty, use another. Kitchens, however, have a coloured system of chopping boards. Yellow for raw poultry, white for bread and dairy, brown for cooked meat, red for raw meat, blue for raw seafood, and green for vegetables. The reasoning behind this makes sense. If you are using specific chopping boards for specific materials the risk of cross contamination and subsequent risk of food poisoning is greatly reduced. After all, even at home if you are cutting raw chicken on a chopping board you wouldn’t then go and chop a carrot on the same board - at least not without thoroughly washing it first, right? Right. By allocating ingredients to coloured chopping boards it means that raw chicken will never be prepped on the same surface as the mozzarella that is going into your salad, or the potatoes that are going into the fryer, or the beef tartare that is being plated as we speak. Yet walk into any kitchen on any street in any city in Australia and I can guarantee you that you will at one point in the day find vegetables being prepared on the white board - intended for dairy and bread - or meat being prepared on the blue board - intended for raw fish - or cooked meat being sliced on a green board - that should really just be used for vegetables.
By now I am sure that everyone has heard the story of Van Halen the brown m&ms. If you haven’t, I’ll recount it quickly for your pleasure. In the rider4 for a Van Halen show there was a very specific request. They required bowls of m&ms in the green room, however, there could under no circumstances be any brown m&ms. Whatever you think about the request within the rider as it stands - dramatic and demanding musicians blah blah - it held a purpose. A very specific purpose. If there were brown m&ms in the bowl it was clear to the band and the management that the finer details had not been attended to. If you couldn’t trust the venue to read the requirements at a basic level, how could the band trust that venue to set up the electrics properly? How could they trust that venue to build the stage safely? You see where this is going? Sure you do. Of course you do. If the chefs / cooks / staff of most of the kitchens in the industry can’t follow the simplest of rules, how are they going to manage the remaining requirements of cleanliness, health and safety hygiene? You guessed it, they don’t.
Kitchens are a dynamic and complex place at the best of times. They require rigour and consistency and above all, cleanliness. If you want to know what it looks like to clean a kitchen, a real kitchen, watch The Bear on Disney and pay attention to how the main character is on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor. It requires dedication and effort and oftentimes - sadly - a level of self flagellation that is entirely unhealthy. Most of all though it requires a level of focus that is rarely found in the staff working in kitchens.
That’s not to say that great food can’t come out of a messy or dirty kitchens. If you ever get the chance to peer behind the veil of any of your favourite local restaurants, into the kitchens, you will see what it is like. There is no romance. There is chaos. The benches are not clean, the floor is not clean, the food is rarely organised correctly. This doesn’t mean the food is not fantastic. Good food requires passion and sacrifice and that can sometimes only exist as a result of the chaotic fight of service, the beautiful mess that arrives. Service is a battle, described often by chefs as war5. War is messy. War is dirty. Kitchens take on an at all cost approach to cooking that is solely focused on getting the food out. That is the priority, if the food arrives on time, nothing else matters. That attitude and the subsequent mess can be the secret ingredient. There is an art in being able to identify which restaurants have access to that secret ingredient - the state of the kitchen can be a tell tale sign of brilliance. Some of the best meals I have ever eaten were prepared in kitchens that would be described by most, as less than savoury.
There can exist an art in the imperfection, in the mess and the chaos. Cooking involves passion, creativity, and at times a little bit of magic. A certain level of chaos can not only contribute to the experience on the plate but is often the essential ingredient. Moving in a kitchen within a state of flow from one ticket to the next, five steps ahead, problem solving and managing the chaos from moment to moment. That is magic. That is what the pleasure of cooking can be about. It can also mean things go astray, eggs get smashed and not cleaned up, empty storage containers strewn on the floor having missed the bin in an effort to increase efficiency. It can be a dance between flavour and chaos. I know in my own experience it certainly almost always was.
More often than not though it is not. I would say it is more a cause for concern than a cause for celebration. More than anything being able to see inside a kitchen at its state of cleanliness can be an indicator if you are on the edge as to whether or not you want to dine there. Treat it as a warning light, a measure of the attention that is paid to everything else that is going on. The state of the kitchen - clean or dirty - can push you one way or another towards sitting down and dining of walking somewhere else to get that feed.
Those who live a violent life will die a violent life etc etc.
As much as I dislike this film the kitchen is text book.
I ran a kitchen once where a mystery possum would get in every day and ravage the dry store - the owners were too cheap to buy a cupboard that could be locked to keep the food safe. The staff insisted they didn’t have time to always remember to disinfect the benches before service each day - mind you only one staff member would service breakfast which could extend to upwards of 150 dishes. I wasn't there long.
If you are unaware of what a rider is please do yourself the favour of using google. If you can’t be bothered to use google please ask Siri. If you can’t be fucked using Siri please read below. A rider is not a person on a motorcycle, although they are also named riders - just riders of motorcycles. A rider may also be considered someone who rides a horse or a bicycle or a unicycle or a scooter as a hobby or a job. For a band, however, a rider is simply put a list of requirements, requests or conditions that they expect in addition to their fee.
I mean personally I think this is a stretch. A whole lot of cobs wobble. Yes it is stressful but it is not war. Naming it like war is just a way for chefs to feel more connected and important than they feel in their life outside of the kitchen.
Daniel has a Masters in Food Culture from The University of Gastronomic Science in Pollenzo, Italy. He is a writer, a chef, and a recovering restaurateur.