The Science of Being a Great Line Cook

There are easier ways to earn a living than standing beside six burners, a flat-top grill, two fryers, a salamander, and another human being who keeps shouting the word "behind" directly into your left ear. There are quieter jobs. There are cooler jobs. There are jobs where nobody becomes emotionally invested in whether a hamburger receives pickles. Yet every day, thousands of people voluntarily tie on an apron, sharpen a knife, step onto a restaurant line, and enter one of the strangest combinations of precision, speed, physical endurance, memory, teamwork, improvisation, and controlled panic ever developed by civilization.

A great line cook does far more than cook food. Cooking is merely the visible portion of the job. The real work involves timing several independent processes so that they finish within seconds of one another, communicating clearly while surrounded by noise, maintaining sanitation while moving quickly, remembering modifications buried inside a stream of orders, controlling heat, preventing waste, understanding ingredients, anticipating what will be needed ten minutes from now, and somehow producing the same plate for the hundredth customer that was produced for the first. Anyone can accidentally cook one beautiful steak. A professional must cook the next forty correctly while somebody asks where the ranch dressing went.