Seaweed Paper is Called Nori

Well, it’s May on Cape Cod. For potential tourists -all the 9 to 5 types that get the two weeks paid vacation with their kids, the snow birds that have grown tired of the rising heat in Boca Raton, or the college and grad school students that are heading to a wedding at CBI- spring means the beginning of some R&R. For the restaurant crews that are dusting off the fryolators and flattops, the beginning of May means the beginning of Money. Whatever the case may be, it’s time for another summer season on Cape Cod. Late nights drinking followed by early mornings sweating off a hangover while making champagne cream sauce. As for me, I’m officially living off my credit card (it was a rough winter) and I’m happy to get back in the kitchen. I’m a food person. I started on lower county road in Dennis, MA shucking sheet trays of clams and steaming hotel pans of lobsters. I never went to CIA and I never read a textbook on the mother sauces of France. Chefs would just say to me: “alright just burn the butter and the flour this much then add it to the chowder.” I learned about tempering eggs and cream when a chef yelled at me for making vanilla flavored scrambled eggs. Yet, like a moth to a flame, here I am again, slowly burning my fingerprints off and ignoring back pain. It’s May on Cape Cod, I’m ready to make some money, and sweat while I’m doing it…that sounds dirty…and make some food.

You have, realistically, two months to make your money. May and June are warm-up months; months to get the rhythm of the kitchen down, to find a crew willing to endure the hustle of making 500 dinners every night. By Memorial Day weekend you had better be ready to get the food out the window without thinking. July and August are a mad house, the term shit show would work better. A medium sized restaurant can easily do maybe 200 or 300 dinners on a Saturday and make decent money. The kitchen will have to hustle as will the front of house staff, but in July and August on Cape Cod that is a slow night. 400 and 500 dinners is when all hell breaks loose, and when the owner walks away sleeping easily. Instead of making 20 lobster raviolis a night the sauté guy will make 50. As for me, for the time being, I’ll be on the line, the sushi line of all places, cooking massive pots of rice and getting yelled at for calling the nori “seaweed paper.” Good thing I have some fine motor skills left. So here I go, following the first rule of thumb in my own culinary handbook: Just make it taste good.