GASTROPHILOSOPHY: METAPHYSICS OF JOB
IN A KITCHEN

 

I write this series of considerations especially for young restaurant professionals and for those who attend a cooking school or a haute cuisine academy, without forgetting those who would dream of working in the sector or who would like to open a restaurant.

Many years ago Jorge Luis Borges wrote a very famous story "The Library of Babel". In literature, Borges is famous for his fantastic stories, in which he has been able to combine philosophical and metaphysical ideas with classic themes such as the double, the parallel realities of dreams, mysterious and magical books, time shifts. Very complicated stories and I don't dwell on the definition of metaphysics.

In the incipit Borges writes: "The universe (which others call the Library) is made up of an indefinite, and perhaps infinite, number of hexagonal galleries, with vast ventilation shafts in the middle, bordered by low railings. From any hexagon you can see the upper and lower floors, interminably.”

Let's forget that for Borges this library is the universe and that it is certainly the work of a God. In its succession of repetitive figures, everything would suggest a very orderly succession, similar to a labyrinth, even if thinking of Babel one generally thinks of a place chaotic and perdition. In the Borges Library the shelves contain all possible books. Each room contains a precise number of books, all with the same pages, all containing the same number of graphic signs with all the innumerable possible combinations, in all possible languages. In other words, the Library contains everything.

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A great place for a book lover and so you ask what's the problem? The problem is the words you read on the pages of library books: They are gibberish, just strings of characters with no meaning. "The Library of Babel" is therefore a hell, not a paradise for bibliophiles. In addition, in that library there is the book that contains the truth, the answer to the existence of a God, all the biographies of all men, the way in which each of us will die, the solution to all problems, all the books that have been written and even those that have not yet been. But it is unobtainable.

Now you ask yourself what does all this have to do with a professional kitchen? Let's analyze the possible metaphor.

A professional kitchen should be very tidy. Generally it should be divided into rooms or spaces that are quite repetitive even if they have different functions. There is a lot of equipment in a professional kitchen, just as there are many books in a library. Many times they are strange and unusual for the kitchens of the past or those of the house. Many times they are incomprehensible because they are very badly described in their instruction books. Many times they are used little compared to their potential. Those who use them do not always know them well also because they vary by brand and there is no button that is ever the same in all appliances of the same type. Very often the equipment is not maintained in the correct way or simply gets old and breaks down. There is to learn.

There is always a lot of food and preparations in a professional kitchen. The menu changes according to the season, to the requests and tastes of the clientele, to the fashions of the moment. It is almost certain that somewhere in a kitchen there is a box or a tool with something that is not used and will never be used again. In short, a lost object, abandoned to its unhappy fate, solitary and hidden behind many others.

Every day in a professional kitchen it is necessary to make a list of what is missing and which is used, of what one would like to use but which has never been used before, it is necessary to check the availability and cost of the goods, it is necessary to check the incoming goods, their freshness and wholesomeness. And in all of this, of course, there is always sometimes that as in a magnificent tangle of letters from a mysterious book, there are misunderstandings and problems that need to be addressed and resolved.

I can continue again and again in the description, talking about the mise en place, the conservation of the preparations, their quantity, to arrive at the frenetic ordered chaos that occurs at the time of service. Because there will certainly be a time when something happens that risks ending up in chaos and leaving out of order. Also considering the always possible hitch with the dining room and those who think of speeding up and improving the work instead manage to block it, sending the whole kitchen into a tailspin.

  "The Library of Babel" appears to be a calm place but in reality it is not, exactly like a professional kitchen. It is a dystopia that is the opposite of a utopia. Just as “The Library of Babel” does not represent the realization of the ideal, no professional kitchen corresponds perfectly to the ideaL kitchen. The ideal kitchen is the representation of a future reality, which will never come true, while the present reality has the tendency to resist perfectly until it is experienced as a difficult and/or unpleasant reality and at worst frightening.

Every day in a professional kitchen we work and organize ourselves to make something that is ideal in potential but which in reality will never be 100% perfect and forever. The existence of the ideal potential ends up becoming a reason for pain, rather than generating enthusiasm. In the kitchen-library there is a world of finite alternatives, but so numerous as to appear almost impossible to finish, exactly like the books contained in the "Library of Babel".

In its small way, in the kitchen-library there is all of humanity in its most current contradictions and everyone is looking for their own space, just as in the library there are those who are looking for the book that talks about themselves, their present and their future.

For some it is better that something impossible be recognized as such rather than possible but destined never to be realized. However, this does not correspond to the stubbornness of those who love their work in a kitchen. The moment someone gives up and the moment they stop loving their work, which appears absurd, as metaphysics very often is. does it happen? Of course it happens and I add unfortunately. Sometimes, over the years, hope is lost, because negative experiences accumulate, which perhaps last for a long time, for reasons of mere survival.

Perhaps we have reached the point of this discourse which perhaps appears obscure to you.

In the field of work there are various socio-economic and cultural studies which are often examined for the most diverse needs. Currently, in the post-pandemic era and in many western countries, in catering, but not only, it is difficult to find staff.

As I have already said a few times, one enters this job for economic reasons rather than for passion. Other times you do it highly motivated and then you shut down because the conditions are not the ideal ones. You become simple headless arms in front of a sink, a cutting board and stove. Heartless office workers, playing automatons, as we are sometimes, all too often, required to be. It's up to us to accept it or not.

"The hell of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is the one that is already here, the hell we inhabit every day... There are two ways not to suffer from it. The first is easy to many: to accept hell and become part of it to the point of no longer seeing it. The second is risky ... Seeking and being able to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, is not hell, and make it last, and give it space"

This is an excerpt from a passage by an Italian writer, Italo Calvino. In the kitchen-library, hellish place, we have these two choices before us. In both cases, we won't find answers in the kitchen-library, but we can glimpse something that is neither heaven nor hell. I fully realize the difficulty of the matter.

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To be clear in all this confusing metaphysical reading, look for a job where you are not required to be part of hell, to be mere automatons. Not dispersing the talent that dwells in your hearts, regardless of the money or other advantages they can offer you. Every time I accepted in exchange for these things, I said to myself "let's try" but I knew deep down I was wrong.

Borges towards the end of his story is faced with what he describes and I, like him. The certainty that everything is written annihilates or stupefies, while it is in the condition of men that very little is written. Young people often prostrate themselves before books and kiss their pages, but they cannot decipher a single letter and believe dishonest writers of lies. Perhaps experience deceives me but I suspect that the kitchen-library will last: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly still, armed with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret.

In conclusion, the only certainty about the kitchen-library is that perfect understanding or knowledge, the perfect execution that is theoretically possible, is concretely unattainable, unfeasible. We can only continue to love it or start hating it, we can face it bored or still enthusiastic. We can be part of hell or seek something that is not. And sometimes variably all these things together. After all, we are in Babel.

 

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