One is a 17 year old local-foods daily-changing-menu spot near the Mission in San Francisco. I'm going to be covering manager duties during busy shifts and generally "floating" around helping the service staff. I'm very much looking forward to training with the General Manager (a position I would love to hold in the next few years).
The other spot is a brand new Gastro Pub located on Lake Merritt. I really enjoy opening restaurants - you get to set the tone and culture of the entire space. The sense of ownership makes me feel proud and enthusiastic about going to work. It also helps me visualize what amounts of strength and stress go into opening a restaurant for the owners and chefs.
I've also started reading "Heat" by Bill Buford, which follows his culinary studies under the wings of Mario Batali and then on further to Italy. It is straight-forward and amusing. It is hitting all the nerves in my body that want me to cook for a living, but I think I'll stay in the front of the house where there is considerably less pressure (and sweat).
George Orwell says in The Road to Wigan Pier:
"A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more inportant than changes of dynasty or even of religion. The Great War, for instance, could never have happened if tinned food had not been invented. And the history of the past four hundred years in England would have been immensely different if it had not been for the introduction of root-crops and various other vegetables at the end of the middle ages, and a little later the introduction of non-alcoholic drinks (tea, coffee, cocoa) and also of distilled liquors to which the beer drinking English were not accustomed. Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners."
Love your local farmer / chef / waitress.
<3
"Hello! How are you? I'm well, thank you for asking. My name is Carla and I will be your server tonight."
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