Intangibles

I want to describe to you a kind of unseen commerce that occurs in restaurants.
Not theft. Not graft. Something elemental that you have all participated in, likely without knowing it.

There is an exchange that happens beyond the tidy commerce of receiving a meal and paying your bill. It's not a long story. Are you in?

Years ago I had the pleasure of working for Bryan Carr, the chef-owner of Pomme, Pomme Cafe, and Atlas restaurants. He and I had many conversations over the years, and one thread that repeatedly emerged regarded the impermanence of what cooks create. We craft it, they eat it, and we get to do it all over again. Those discussions, usually involving a glass of white Burgundy at the end of Saturday night service, led to a deeper inquiry on my part that has spanned the past 5 years. What is it we do as Chefs, and what is it the guest receives from us?

Bryan.

To get the mechanics of the exchange between Chef and Guest, we need to define a couple of terms. Let's begin with the Externals: the physical aspects of existence. People eat to keep their bodies alive. As humans, we learn to take care of external needs first and then worry about entertaining ourselves, making art, or doing other activities which address non-physical needs. As a rule, we don't go hungry for long because of some cultural project we're into. Our species developed agriculture (a program of controlling externals) so we could worry less about the nagging of a hungry belly and have more time to devote to our loftier needs. We built cities to control yet more externals and create commercial infrastructure, plumbing, mass housing. In this way we gained freedom to further develop culture, the arts, the sciences.  Of course, the externals need continual maintenance for our survival and health, as we seek to live in balance.

Now, please consider that every external feature of existence links up to an unseen web of Intangibles. These intangibles are what we might call meaning. Here's a metaphor: if the Externals are the physical strings of a guitar creating vibrations in the air, then the Intangible is our perception of the sound as music, and also the emotional response to that music. The sounds ripple out into a room of listeners, and evoke a landscape of intangible meanings echoing in response. Humans can resonate to seemingly mundane external phenomena in very complicated ways. (See, for example, centuries of Japanese art celebrating the simple fact of cherry trees blooming in the Spring.)

Back to the Externals, then. Chefs are masters of controlling externals. They command techniques which transform ingredients physically, and create food. A potato starts out as a lumpy, cold, dirty, crunchy, bitter tuber. After some application of skill, that little lump can become a warm, velvety smooth, nourishing purée that transmutes hunger into satiety. Some chefs, not content with such pedestrian skills as making mashed potatoes, command elevated techniques which transform ingredients into whimsical, alien landscapes of flavor and texture. This has been one dominating trend in fine fare for the past several centuries. From Marie-Antoine Careme ("architecture is a sub-science of pastry") to Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Spain, to Grant Achatz of Alinea and Next in Chicago.

One of Alinea's magical landscapes.

Some chefs, having mastered elevated techniques, aspire to command the very bodies and meaningful reactions of their guests. Several years ago, upon being served one of those magical alien landscapes at Alinea, I was given clear instruction by the server as to How to Eat It Properly, and which flavors to appreciate. (If fascism needed a signature flavor, Chef Achatz could create one.)

I mention my unsatisfying mean at Alinea here to illustrate that the Chef never really gets past guesswork when it comes to controlling the effect of their cuisine on the guest. (Certainly in that case Mr. Achatz's server missed the mark in trying to improve my enjoyment of the meal - I left the restaurant annoyed and frustrated by prolonged contact with the staff.)

However, I can see why such a Chef would try so hard to control the unseen. The bounty of the intangibles glimmers within each of us, greater than any cornucopia. Raw sensory pleasures link up to feelings of fondness, memories of loved ones, image associations, stories remembered. . .  All these and infinitely more can be summoned by a meal.

People don't go to restaurants for purely external satisfaction, and they don't just exchange hard cash for food. The intangibles are the reason and the motive for the restaurant diner - even when the expectation of Proustian rapture is quite low, and the guest is hitting the Taco Bell drive-thru for lunch, there are echoes of past satisfactions waiting to be stirred by that Chicken Soft Taco. (I think it's fair to say that Marketing as a social science is a study of what intangibles drive consumer behavior, often in spite of what poor external qualities the products offer.)

So the intangibles motivate the diner. And the Chef (and of course the service staff) has only indirect control of the diner's experience.   But something very reliable occurs, intangibly, when the ritual of a restaurant meal takes place. This is the secret commerce of which I speak.

I will illustrate it by painting this picture.

Small Batch, in Midtown St. Louis.

It's Saturday night in your city. The Chef of the best restaurant in town is making the final preparations to open for dinner. The coolers are full of ingredients made ready to become meals. The staff is bustling, the cooks are bracing themselves, finishing their sauces, making their garnishes. The kitchen is bursting with potential waiting to be realized, served, and consumed.

You and other guests arrive, emptiness within you. Hunger, yes, but you bring other intangible kinds as well. You are there to fill yourself, replace the emptiness. . . or in fact, trade it.

The Chef and staff on the other side of the pass are lit up with the effort and anticipation. They manage an orchestra of externals moment to moment as your meal comes together, as well as the intangibles humming within their own selves. (The pleasure of their craft, the happiness that comes from syncing with the team, the dread of going down in flames, the nagging thought that some undone thing will be needed.)

At the table, the plates arrive, you experience them, and they are cleared.
The trade has begun, but the currency can't be seen.

With each plate made and served, the kitchen loses: the ingredients, the time spent making them, and the energy required to push it out. Relief replaces anticipation.

With each plate tasted and consumed, the guest gains: nourishment and meaning. Your hunger blunts while intangible resonances form and interweave. Meaning replaces emptiness.

As the night progresses, the cooks restock and keep going, emptying the larder, pushing through fatigue toward the completion of the shift. If it is the best kind of night possible, then by the time the last guest walks out the door the kitchen is empty. The staff is spent. The Chef is. . . hungry. The rest of them also.

It is now complete. The restaurant has traded food for emptiness.  The emptiness is the gift that you bring, the unseen currency of the exchange. Emptiness is not a "lack" of something in this case, it's a surplus of the negative. It's the potential to create. It's the dark matter that binds the whole ritual together. Money keeps the restaurant in business, but emptiness is the crucial compensation received.

Why? The Chef surveys the ruined stations as the staff sweeps away the wreckage. The coolers are nearly empty. Every surface needs cleaning. It will take many hours of work for the kitchen to be ready for service again. That is perfection, purpose, and a reason to live another day.

The most beautiful thing about being a cook is that no matter how hard you had to work to accomplish service, it all evaporates and makes room for more work tomorrow. You receive the guests' emptiness, and the duty to create something to fill it. The worst thing that a Chef can hear is "We're closing. It's over."

To bring the reader up to to the present, I now work for David Bailey, the entrepreneur who owns 7 restaurants within the city of St. Louis. I have labored in every one of the restaurants at some point, in the Commissary and Bakery, and pulled off festivals and events of all kinds under the Baileys' banner.  Dave's vision for a group of restaurants that are accessible to nearly all St. Louisans has come to a point of fruition and continues to grow. What I used to do for a 50 seat room in Clayton, I now orchestrate for about 700 seats across the cityscape. In 2015 we had the honor of serving over half a million guests. I am humbled by the scope of this work, of Dave's vision, and the transmutation of strangers into regulars and close friends.

Dave.

Back in your city, in the restaurant you have departed from, forever changed and full of new meaning, the staff starts to share their experiences. The intangibles take over the discussion.
"I had to prep celery leaves 4 times. That halibut sold all the way to the tail."
"I burned my arm? I don't remember that happening."
"Table 43 left us some of their wine! Said something about Tsar Nicholas."
"We had a three thousand dollar hour? I though I was just salty today."

As you know, there are media empires built upon the stories that emerge from kitchens.

The Externals are what we list on the menu, but it's the Intangibles that hold the value.

Welcome to Bridge.

Over our next glass of white Burgundy: Where do we get this emptiness in the first place?

Namasté.