Ode to the Hydro-Ceramic Technician

By Danielle Lattuga, 1-25-08

I was a dish dog, once.  At the time, I lived in a ski town, so perhaps dish dawg is more apropos.  Although I can’t say that any of the dawgs of that ski town would choose to use “apropos” in a sentence.  It doesn’t quite slide gracefully between “sick powder” and “sweet line.” In any case, I digress.

Regardless of the title given to those of us who have spent hours scraping, scrubbing, spraying and stacking all manner of cooking and eating utensil in the illustrious dish pit, one thing is for certain, it is a position of respect, one that receives little public attention, but on which the flow of the service is so undeniably reliant. 

Case in point:  I recently visited an establishment to try out their version of a dirty Grey Goose Martini.  Yum.  It was a busy evening.  We ordered our drinks and waited.  Yum was on hold.  For twenty-five minutes.  When our server returned, the drinks were nowhere to be seen on her person.  I glanced behind her back to see if she had a tray full of beverages anchored to her butt. 

Alas, she explained, they were out of martini glasses.  I am not sure why that inhibited her from bringing my companion’s beer, but that’s another topic.  Another twenty minutes passed (at this point you might ask me why I was still there) and she returned with my martini, in a rocks glass.  Chances are, they didn’t have enough martini glasses to begin with, but hey, if their dishwasher is worth his or her salt, he or she is cranking out every martini glass received, ASAP. 

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Washing dishes in a restaurant has potential for either making or breaking one’s sense of self-esteem, one’s desire to continue down the seductive and tribal path of restaurant life, and one’s perception of their fellow man or woman.  I washed dishes in a rustic, upscale restaurant where there was a clear rift between kitchen and service staff, yet the culture of the kitchen was nurturing, light-hearted and creative.

My pit was a small corner of the kitchen, with a dishwasher beneath the counter, not on top of it, so I lifted trays full of dishes up and down for the entirety of my shift.  Servers would bustle in and out, tossing plates full of scraps anywhere they saw fit.  They ignored my system.  I’d suggest that they scrape the plate completely and place it in the appropriate stack.  I’d ask that they dump leftover water into the slosh bucket.  They did what they wanted.  They made three times what I did in a shift and they emphasized “optional” in their kitchen tip-out.  You can see where this is going.

Most of them proved themselves unlikable.  However, there were those that I came to adore, not only because they were good people, but because they could see that riding a high horse was a foolish endeavor, made that much more absurd by the very nature of being a SERVER. 

But this was when I fell in love with life in the kitchen, and those that I shared that space with were considerate, helpful and just plain silly.  Not to mention their mad skills behind the line.  These were people who loved the sensuality of food, the textures, the smells; the symphony of how those elements came together on a plate.  They would deliberately and gently cut the smoothest most perfect round of steak from the bone, marveling at the burgundy depth of its color and cook it to a tender medium rare, in between executing a mad drum solo with the tongs and setting free the most simultaneously humorous and offensive string of sentences ever to carry an evening. 

I’d been in the business for five years by then, but I got hooked when I spent the summer in that sweaty, raw little dish pit.  It wasn’t much, but it kept me in Montana and it was my domain.  I made order out of chaos.  I exercised a subversive control; washing glasses on the fly for those servers I adored and prioritizing sauté pans above all else.  And I laughed at the boys a lot, wielding a tougher skin than I was accustomed—from a bunny to a hedgehog. 

Yet, it’s those I’ve known to inhabit the dish pit since, that have made me see the true value in that role.  It’s a role that can define you to others, if you let it.  In my experience, it’s a solitary role, and one often taken for granted, by servers in particular, especially those who haven’t ever filled that role (Owners, make your servers do dishes, for at least one shift!). It’s a dirty job, with all the food scraps, grease traps and floor mopping. But most of the Hydro-Ceramic Technicians I’ve known don’t let themselves be defined by the role, no matter how easy it could be to isolate oneself and sink into the muck, like another piece of soggy lettuce. 

They assert their domain.  They take pride in an orderly pit.  They put on a clean apron when stepping out of the kitchen for any period of time.  They jump on any little prep job that needs filled.  They master the art of spotless glasses.  They sort silverware as fluidly as Edward Scissorhands applied shape to shrubbery.  And they put their individuality into every interaction. 

I’ve seen them bring a dining room to tears with a song, and capture a kitchen in black and white stillness. I’ve seen them diagram a dish pit as the cornerstone of the establishment and send waves of giggles across the line, infusing food with laughter, meals with joy.  They’ve shown me moonlight in scallops.  They’ve made me speak clearly.  They’ve made me find great pleasure in rolling up my sleeves to hand wash every dish from lunch alongside of them, while the machine sits idle with a broken valve.

They are actors, singers, writers, philosophers, photographers, students, marines, athletes, comedians, translators, dreamers, engineers, scientists, they are yet to be determined . . . and at times, I must admit, I am guilty of admiring them for the wrapping on the package:  eye candy! 

Of course the image is often shattered when I am put in my place for stacking plates too high, or when I witness them devour the extra seafood stew, made especially for them by the cooks.  Red sauce sliding down their chin.  Red streaks across their whites.  Silverware flying into buckets around them, so at home in the chaos.  So eager to be inappropriate, yet so able to present me with squeaky clean wine glasses when I lean ever so sweetly into the window and ask—because the shelves behind me are suddenly empty. 

What would I do without you? Nowhere to pour the wine.  No plates to carry the food. No symmetrically sliced carrots. No reprieve from proper behavior.  No refuge for disorder.  No simple daily reminder of resilience—the one choice that is always yours; to take what you have and shape it with your hands, your words, your dreams.