Mother's Day in The Kitchen

A personal look inside the restaurant industry's busiest day

Mother's Day can be a peaceful time when families come together, put aside their differences, and celebrate their beloved matriarch. However, on Mother’s Day the restaurant kitchen can be like working in a hot and sweaty insane asylum. It is also the busiest day in the restaurant industry according to the National Restaurant Association, and in my personal experience, I can tell you that it definitely is just that, insanely busy. Did I mention that this is probably the craziest day of the year?

It’s mothers Day 2016, I was working in a casual dining bistro concept that served wannabe upscale fare. Good burgers, pizza, pasta along with some pub-style food. On the weekends they offered a brunch menu that was an attempt at an innovative take on brunch but was really just a regurgitation of other casual dining menus. Most of the menu was made from scratch and was pretty tasty but it was nothing fancy.

A palpable anxiety seeped its way into the kitchen in the month leading up to the event as guests booked reservations daily. From the general manager on down to the dishwasher, wait a minute we didn’t have a dishwasher, oh well, either way we could all definitely feel it. On days like this, we all knew that customer expectations would be at their highest. On these days customers can be amazing guests who tip very generously or they can be worse than a bridezilla, sending food back multiple times, yelling like a spoiled child, refusing to tip servers, or in some cases even pay for their food.

As I opened the kitchen and waited for the line cooks to finish their cigarettes and clock in, I couldn’t help but notice that I only have one front-of-house staff and not a bartender in sight. Who is going to make all of those bottomless mimosas or Bloody Marys? At this point, I didn’t have an answer to that question. Luckily one of my pizza makers, yes we served pizza as well, also doubled as a bartender. After sending one of my line cooks to work as a bartender I was now down to one person, and it was me.

For some reason the rest of the cooks that day had been scheduled to come in an hour after we opened, why, I don’t know. Keep in mind that we had reservations booked from open to close. It is now that I will mention that I was the sous chef at this establishment and the scheduling was done by the executive chef so at least I didn’t screw myself over. At this point, I have one bartender who is also acting as a server and myself to work all stations on the line.

As the clock ticked away I thought, we might as well open this place up and get ready for the onslaught of orders coupled with the constant noise from the ticket box. I still wake up at night hearing the sound of that box, it was particularly maddening. The line outside of the door had grown seemingly longer by the minute.

I should give you some insight into what the expectations from ownership were on that day. The expectation was to have the kitchen operate on limited staff all while executing the full everyday menu along with a brunch menu accompanied by, you guessed it, a Mother's Day menu.

Having an ample but limited Mother's Day menu to speed up the orders coming out of the kitchen would have been ideal, but I guess the owners of this establishment wanted to challenge us that day, or it could have been sheer incompetence on their part, the world may never know.

Once the servers started ringing in tickets they didn’t stop. It was one after the other. We didn’t have our first lull in orders for close to four hours and that’s no lie. I had to call in our executive chef who had scheduled himself the day off for whatever reason. I had attempted to convey to him that we were in the shit deeper than I had ever seen before, and customers had already become quite surly if not completely cantankerous. When he got there he declared that he was just coming in that day to oversee things but wasn’t actually going to work. I laughed my ass off and got pissed off all at the same time because I knew that he was definitely going to be working that day.

The chaotic mess of eggs benedict, pizza, pasta, and burgers continued for the rest of the day into the evening. This is probably one of the few times that I couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. Keep pressing on, keep moving forward, you can’t slow down now old boy. This is how I talk to myself when I want to quit and yes I call myself old boy.

As afternoon turned into evening the insanity of the rush slowed down a bit to a more steady pace instead of an all-out balls-to-the-wall assault. We were even able to send a couple of people home so they could celebrate their own mother. I stepped out back and called mine because I had no delusions of getting out of there any time soon.

Even though the all-day rush had slowed down remember, we did not employ a dishwasher. Each line cook was responsible for doing at least some dishes, which that night nobody wanted to do at all, and I didn’t blame them. With dishes piled high and everybody clinging onto sanity by a thread I knew it was my job to motivate these dedicated cooks who were truly fearless that day. We continued to cook orders and clean up where we could as we could now collectively see the light at the end of the Mother's Day tunnel. When it was all said and done we were in a pretty good spot. I can’t tell you how we made it through that day but we did. It’s days like this that make all the other busy days seem like a walk in the park. These days can be extremely difficult, but these are the days that dedicated young line cooks hope for, they test your mental and physical fortitude and can temper a rookie line cook into a veteran in no time.

Kitchens can be crazy and they are not a place for the faint of heart. As a chef, I have always appreciated a busy restaurant, after all, how else are you going to pay the bills or staff if you don’t have any customers.

If you have worked in a restaurant on any day of the week you know how intense it can be, but if you have had the chaotic pleasure of working in a kitchen on Mother's Day, then you understand exactly what I am talking about.