By David Simmons
DULUTH, Ga. | Before the dinner rush, you get ready, and prepare for the onslaught. ‘Cause it’s coming. You know that for a half an hour, or an hour or three, you’re gonna get slammed when you are a waiter.
Simmons
You have every table filled, and you’ve got a waiting list. It’s crunch time. As an individual, you can be on top of everything, humming right along.
But a breakdown can occur, causing a back-up. And it spreads. And suddenly, you know where you are. You’re in the weeds. It happens in even the best of restaurants. And nobody is happy.
You struggle, and everybody does the best they can, and finally you work your way through it, finish the shift, clean up and go home. You got through it together, as a team.
This story is about a typically well run dinner shift at Kurt’s in Duluth, Ga., where I worked as a waiter back in the mid ‘90’s. That night the restaurant was full and we were humming. Hitting on all cylinders. Everybody was in tune, working together, super busy, but no stress.
I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it. I don’t know why. I came out of the main dining room, down the 20 foot hallway, made a right, a left and kicked open the two way stainless steel door, into the kitchen and up to the serving line.
And for whatever reason, I don’t know, I coughed out the beginning to Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf. “Eh-ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh!”
Just as I hit the last “ah-huh,” Tim, the executive chef, who had his back to me, jumped up and spun around 180 degrees, landed on both feet, and began doing air guitar while singing out the guitar notes. Another chef added the drums, and another was air-strumming the bass, then right on cue, the Sous Chef, John, sang into his tongs, “All Right Now, ………. won’t you listen?”
Then behind him a chef slid a hunk of grilled salmon onto a puddle of lemon butter sauce waiting on an oval plate. After John built a fort of six asparagus spears, Tim drizzled it with s sauce béarnaise, grabbed some parsley and a lemon wedge, garnished, arranged, wiped a thumb print off the edge of the plate and put it up in the window with the other items that completed my order, and told me, “Get this out of here.”
And I did.
That hunk of salmon needed another half a minute on the grill to be perfect. We were so in tune that the 30 seconds just filled themselves. And just as quickly as it started it was over. Not another word was said.
And we all were back at it. Humming along as a restaurant team. I bet it would take Hollywood 30 takes, and countless edits to get it right, but we did it perfectly, unplanned, on the first try, seamlessly, then on we went.
And from out of nowhere I was a witness to, and a participant of, an inexplicable magic moment.
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