Breakfast Confidential

I don’t eat breakfast.

Well, that’s not true. I eat a piece of cake, a brownie, or other dessert first thing every morning. Then a banana. Then coffee coffee coffee until noon. Every morning except the weekends, when my husband cooks bacon. Then, I eat just as much bacon as I possibly can.

Despite my ambivalence about the most important meal of the day, I’m well versed in the ways of breakfast. I worked in breakfast restaurants for years.

Initially, I worked at a place near the beach that catered to the tourist crowd. I started bussing tables when I was fourteen or fifteen, rolling a cart with black bins for dirty dishes. Soon, I was a waitress, though still bussing tables, since all restaurant staff double as cleaning crew.

I can hold five dirty glasses per hand, a finger in each rim, right where you put your mouth. I can balance plates and platters along my arms, hug countless cups to my chest and balance a stack of mismatched bowls on one hand. Waitresses are strong and skilled. They are also interesting.

There are good songs about waitresses – Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend,” First Aid Kit’s “Waitress Song,” Eric Taylor’s “Storms.” Waitresses hold an air of mystery – floating by, carrying all that weight, smiling, making it look easy. There are, of course, wait staff of other genders, but this post is about waitresses.

Some of the waitresses at the beach breakfast restaurant had been there for decades. They wore support shoes and compression socks; their hair was dyed and teased, their lips and cheeks painted bright red. They didn’t take shit from anyone, especially teenagers like me.

They taught me how to run the iced tea machine, the industrial-sized coffee maker, and the ten-piece toaster. They taught me to get the hell out of their way. They got first dibs on ritzy customers, while I bussed their tables and dropped their toast. That’s ok, they’d earned it.

One of the waitresses, Peggy, was dating the cook, Johnny. As entertaining as the old waitresses were, the old cook was even more so. Johnny had been the cook for as long as anyone remembered, and he’d spent that time perfecting the art of fussing at waitstaff.

Order tickets had to be written just so: the number of eggs, followed by capital abbreviations for their preparation, grits or hash browns, and meat choice (ham, bacon, or sausage), then add-ons: waffles, pancakes, etc. Notes for ourselves about type of toast, drinks, etc. were to be kept clear of Johnny’s order information.

Eggs could be ordered sunny side up (which is gross), over easy (also gross), over medium (yum), and over well/hard (ruined), as well as scrambled soft or hard. There were no poached or hard-boiled eggs at the breakfast diner.

Johnny took great pride in his eggs. If a customer ordered one over medium and disagreed that the egg she received was cooked correctly, that would wound his pride, and everyone in the kitchen would hear what an idiot the customer was. And idiot customers, as everyone knows, are partially the fault of the waitresses who serve them.

“What do you mean it’s not right? It’s perfect! Does your lady not know what she ordered? Go tell her that’s an over medium egg. I’m not cooking it again.”

I’d tell her, and she’d insist, so I’d ask Johnny to make another egg. Which he would, with choice curse words, handing it to me with something like, “If she don’t like this one, don’t come back in here. I’m not making extra eggs for anyone who’s too dumb to order what they want.”

When there was a problematic order, Johnny would come out of the kitchen to stare at the offending table. Since he looked exactly like Popeye, but covered in food stains, I imagine the customers got the message.

He was always on the lookout for men in short pants. Johnny thought men should never wear shorts – not even knee-length, and he was highly vocal about this opinion. If he saw a man in short pants, he’d ask what the fella ordered. You’d better hope it was something reasonable like over-easy eggs, bacon, and grits. God help you if the shorts man ordered pancakes, waffles, or french toast.

Nothing set Johnny off worse than a man in shorts ordering french toast. I can’t write the things he said about that; they would offend your delicate eyes. Let’s just say that Johnny always needed a smoke break after preparing french toast for a man in shorts. He looked even more like Popeye when he was smoking.

But for all his yelling, cursing, and fussing, Johnny made the best grits I’ve ever known.

I was at the grocery store yesterday, chatting up the cashier. I’d bought two boxes of cereal, and I told her how my kids only ever want one bowl of oatmeal in the morning but two of cereal. She confided she’d not been brought up on oatmeal – grits were breakfast in her family.

Grits, as you know, are a southern thing – ground dried corn that you boil into porridge. But if you just dump grits into boiling water, they’ll clump up and never become smooth again. If you stop stirring, they’ll harden and stick to the pot. They form a skin on the surface like a layer of plastic wrap, and if they cool enough, they congeal into a solid brick.

To keep a pot of grits silky smooth from 6am-2pm is a work of art. Johnny was a grits artist.

Throughout my shift, I’d dip the stainless steel ladle in the pot of grits and serve myself a bowl. Johnny didn’t stop me; he was proud of those grits, and he enjoyed seeing them appreciated. They didn’t need salt or butter – they were just right. Creamy, smooth, no lumps, no skin, each grain plump and buttery. I’ve never had grits so good.

I worked other restaurants, too: a seafood buffet, where the hardest part was keeping the feeder troughs full, and the lights were so low you could barely see the dirty floor; a fancy bistro, where the waitresses were mean and meant it; and a steak place where I learned that salad bars must be stocked with the smallest broccoli size possible and that anyone who orders a steak well done deserves to be slapped. Every one of these restaurants had angry cooks. I even dated a cook at one point and confirmed it – they’re all angry cooks. They’re all interesting nutjobs.

Like Anthony Bourdain said in his wonderful book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, “Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn’t prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them, or finding them entertaining.”

I enjoyed the company of restaurant staff, and I wish I’d known some of them better. But my greatest regret concerns a customer.

It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I worked at a 24 hour breakfast place. Though it was busy at times, in the hours between the bar crowd and breakfast, the place was dead – just me and the angry cook talking about his life as a Palestinian in Israel, trying to solve the problems of the Middle East at four AM in an empty dining room.

One morning about daybreak, I watched the cargo train pull into town. It ran right by the restaurant’s front doors, slowing as it neared the port. A young man jumped off the train and walk toward me. I let him in and hurried to talk with the cook, who was also the owner.

He said to give the guy whatever he wanted, on the house, so I did. I don’t regret that one bit.

What I do regret is that I didn’t try to talk with that train-riding hobo. If I could go back, I’d sit down at his table. I’d ask questions; I’d listen, and I’d drink in his stories like hot morning coffee.

– by Jessi Waugh

https://open.spotify.com/track/6INaSJ4clfZ8pvXSGZQnJ7?si=c0bcafb291294bca