I want to clarify the title. By stating that I eat differently I am NOT stating that I eat better, healthier, more or less than you. Just different. I'm a restaurant professional, and actually I'm going to contradict myself and state that yes, there are times I eat better than you. An evening with a Grouper that had been caught literally 20 minutes ago and some exquisite home-made hot sauce at a very popular tapas restaurant at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront rings a bell. You know who you were if you were there for it.
Before I continue on tonight's sermon of mixed emotion, pent up frustration and general fuckery I should add that the soundtrack is "Wheels" by Foo Fighters.
Back to the point.
I've always been good at making a generalized statement. The follow up not so much. I guess that's why if you look back at my limited and debauched portfolio as a writer there are a lot of one sentence paragraphs.
Like this one.
Let's start with when I eat. As a restaurant professional the average time of my meals is the following hours, 5 a.m. (that's dinner or breakfast), 8 a.m. (also dinner or breakfast), 3:45 p.m. (the only lunch I know) and any time between 11 p.m and 3 p.m. (dinner, late night snackies). The noted gap is between 3 and 5 a.m.
There haven't ever been any meals between this hours because of two things, I'm either engaged in something far more heinous, I'm in an alcohol induced coma or we're in the process of crafting the 5 a.m. dinner. This brings me to an art form that I myself have not taken part in in quite sometime. Anyone who reads this that knows me professionally will be able to quickly point out my perennial partner in crime at this venture, and many of you have been poured the finest pint of Guinness in Virginia Beach by him. You know who he is. He's also the most fantastic chef in Virginia Beach between the hours of 3 and 7 a.m. and the Mustard Pork chops with gherkins are always a fan favorite, as is the wide array of shots that will certainly put you over the edge. The dish I'm thinking of has a much fancier French name I'm just usually too inebriated to be able to offer up what the ACTUAL dish is. It's the kind of dinner that you conk out on a couch at 6:30 a.m. and wake up at 10 a.m. ready to head to Doc Taylor's for French Toast with red wine stains on your teeth and a painful memory of jamming out that crap cd you pulled out of the back of our "Caselogic" driving over to the house. It was probably Nickelback. It's ok.
We've all been there.
For those of you unfamiliar with Doc's, go. It'll change your life.
The when is the most important part, I had planned another very detailed and condescending description of the other ways that I eat differently but I'll leave them alone. I've used the term restaurant professional several times and as I learned in some early writing class in college it's always very important to clarify your terms. By restaurant professional I mean someone that lives the life, and unless you know that you do, I can't quantify what that means. I can tell you that it doesn't mean a bullshit busboy job that you got when you were 14 and didn't give a fuck about anyone but yourself. A true restaurant professional has been stuck a this for a while, mostly because we're good at it. We don't whine we still carry that blue collar, work with my hands mentality that at some point was lost on the youth of today. And the hours are the true sacrifice that we make so that you can have your down time, our down time happens when usually the only food options we have rest between IHOP and Taco Bell. I'll tell you honestly, the greatest meal I've ever had happened in then sweaty back kitchen of Murphy's in mid-August on a Friday night. It was a petite New York strip, Irish Rashers a few grilled tomatoes and some asparagus. I took the first bite and broke a tooth that had been bugging me for several weeks. I had worked 11 hours leading up to it with two harrowing rushes in that time span and the every challenging and mind bending preparation that is a restaurant kitchen. Broken tooth and all I finished.
It was lunch.
I went back to my friends house that night and the chops, with shallots and dijon vinaigrette with some thick sliced bacon and gherkins went down well with the glass of Bordeaux, as well as the shots of Jager I needed to get through the pain of a broken tooth.
So maybe it's not condescending, and I'm sure there's not really much of a point here, but yeah.
I eat differently.
