I was coming back from a trip to Western Mass a few weeks ago when I stopped at a local diner and witnessed something remarkable, though in one sense it could not have been more banal. I sat at the counter and ordered a chocolate shake.
From where I sat I had a view directly down the long axis of the kitchen, which was a beehive, or rather a bunker of activity by the staff trying to cope with the weekend crowds.
One young woman carried large bags of French fries on her shoulder, like cement, and poured them into the banks of stainless steel fryers. Another middle-aged woman carried large cardboard boxes labeled “3/16” SHOESTRINGS.” With a preemptory, “Excuse me,” she dumped these potatoes unceremoniously on the floor beside me like crates of shoes. A third woman – short, stubby, gray-haired, in her sixties – stood at the prep counter filling plastic boxes with pulpy handfuls of what looked like sliced tomatoes, and wringing out rags soaked in plastic containers of ammonia, both with the same pair of ungloved hands. In fact, none of the staff wore gloves or hairnets, and I was somewhat appalled at the amount of intimate manual handling much of the food received, sometimes from several sets of hands: slices of cheese placed on the burgers, slices of tomatoes and cucumbers placed on salads, etc.
The anchor of this bunker of controlled frenzy was a young man – his name tag said “HENRY.” He was in his early twenties, the only male in the kitchen crew. He was the short order cook, and he caught my attention - first by his intensity, and then by the extraordinary style – one might say artistry – of his actions. On one grill he had eight to twelve burgers going, and on an adjacent grill, an equivalent number of buns – soft, golden-domed muffins held gently down on the surface of the grill by long, thin, round-ended boards of what looked like maple or ash. There were two or three rows of these boarded buns, and from time to time he would slide the board under the buns and then slide them all off the grill into a trough onto another board to be kept warm – all in one seamless motion. Then he would scoop up the burgers, cheese, and bun tops, place them on the bun bottoms, and slide the whole board of loaded burgers down to the fries station.
What impressed me most was the way he handled the burgers: starting with a plug-shaped piece of meat, he beat each one down into a pancake patty with a long handled fork and spatula, beating them with the rhythm and flair of the drummer or a xylophone player. Occasionally, he would flip the fork or spatula in the air in rhythm, just to keep his beat going. He kept one eye on the cooking patties, flipping them over between attending to the buns and dumping out blocks of sliced cheese. His orders came from a monitor above him that he glanced up to check after each set of burgers had been boarded on its way. Occasionally, a waitress would come in and tell him to “scratch that double burger” or “add a cheese” while he strenuously scraped the scrums of remaining meat off the grill and onto the grease trap. He was sweaty and harried, and occasionally the manager would come over and say, “Henry, don’t get upset, you’re doing fine.” She knew she had a winner, a “natural,” and she wanted to keep him.
