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Your Waiter Tonight... Will Be the Chef Posted by livelotus on Thursday, March 13, 2008 (EST)

At what point in the chef-diner relationship is it O.K. to offer a backrub? One night last week, during dress rehearsals for the tiny new restaurant Momofuku Ko, David Chang could barely stand, much less cook. (“Back pain, stress-related,” one of the sous-chefs opined under his breath.) Evan Sung for The New York Times NO MIDDLEMEN David Chang, chef at the new Momofuku Ko in New York, serves with a smile   Each of the 12 diners, seated a narrow counter’s width away, was in a position to suggest remedies, panaceas and stretches, which the chef attempted in the sliver of space between the steamer and the sorbet freezer. “I’ll be O.K.” he said, waving off an offer of Valium. “Let me do the foie.”   Grab a stool and belly up to a new brand of upscale dining, where closeness to the cook comes with your meal as routinely as bread. Although counter seating, open kitchens, and chef’s tables are not new to the scene, Momofuku Ko and a few other restaurants are reaching for a new level of intimacy. The chefs are not only cooking and plating the food, but also serving it, taking coats, recommending wine and confirming reservations.   “Everyone who works here is a chef, and everyone is also a dishwasher,” said Michael Carlson, the chef at Schwa in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, which serves elaborate multicourse menus of dishes such as parsnip custard with ice-wine vinegar caramel, candied sweetbreads and http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/11/dining/12wait450.1.jpg">a lavender lecithin bubble. (It’s a dessert.)  William Zbaren for The New York Times MAN IN A HURRY Michael Carlson, the chef at Schwa in Chicago, rushes two orders to the dining room, for face time with his customers.   The decision to minimize service staff ripples throughout the meal. “We’re just cutting out the middleman,” said Sam Gelman, a sous-chef at Momofuku Ko. “It’s you eating and me cooking.” His words reflect a sensibility about food that also drives modern eaters to seek direct contact with farmers and fishers, fromagers and foragers.   “This way I can tell people myself about the food they’re eating, the wine, everything,” he said, grating a snowfall of frozen foie gras over a bowl of riesling jelly and pine-nut brittle. “Hey, Gelman, enough talking,” Peter Serpico, the chef de cuisine, interrupted. “I need four more of those.”   Access to chefs — and the dynamics among them — is one of the thrills. “Sure, everyone wants the chef to come to their table, everyone likes the idea of the chef cooking just for them,” said Christopher Russell, the longtime general manager of the Union Square Cafe in New York, which has up to 18 service staff members working on a Saturday night. Mr. Russell said that the illusion of direct contact between the diner and the cook is in fact the goal of truly great service. “A really sensational waiter is transparent,” he said.   A few blocks downtown from Momofuku Ko, another small, counter-service restaurant called Degustation runs on an alternate plan: more service, not less. Jack Lamb, a co-owner, puts three servers behind the counter alongside the three cooks, all to serve 18 diners at a time. “I tell my chefs to concentrate on their food,” he said. “The waiters are there to be ambassadors, and they are trained to take command of the customer as soon as they sit down.”   Even for chefs who have the right temperament to wait tables, a feverishly hospitable spirit and a kind of manic energy are necessary to play every role in the restaurant. “We wanted it to be more like coming to our house for dinner,” said Jean-Philippe St-Denis, one of two chef-owners of Kitchen Galerie in Montreal, raising his voice over the sound of the vacuum cleaner as he cleaned the dining room carpet one morning last week.   The restaurant is more cozy than cutting-edge, with 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. seatings that help Mr. St-Denis and his partner, Mathieu Cloutier, concentrate on one task at a time: first coats, then seating, then wine, and finally cooking. “Oh, and we even do the shopping,” said Mr. St-Denis. (Kitchen Galerie is near the Jean-Talon food market.)   In a small restaurant, he said, every new hire takes a big piece out of the earnings: “If I hired a waiter, the guy would make more than us.” David Chang said that his service-free experiment at Momofuku Ko — an experiment which is not yet complete, as the chefs haven’t yet figured out how to serve wine or guard the door — also rests on the bottom line. “The only way we can tip out cooks is by actually having them be part of service,” he said. Translation: Cooks and other restaurant employees who do not interact with the customers cannot legally earn tips or share in the tips earned by the waiters.   For the purposes of the New York State Department of Labor, cooks and and dishwashers have the same status: they are paid an hourly wage, with overtime, but they are not paid more for a busy Saturday night with 300 covers than for a slow Tuesday lunch with 30.   The result is that in many restaurants, waiters earn significantly more than cooks. “In some cases there is bitterness,” Mr. Russell said. “Say, at the end of a busy night when the kitchen was slammed, cooks are still making their $10 an hour and the waiters are walking out with their $425 in cash.”   But, he said, most cooks know that they lack the temperament for what he calls the “emotional labor” of sustained customer service. “How many have the patience to stand there and patiently listen to everything the customer has to say?” he said. “In the kitchen, each table is represented by a ticket. Most chefs would rather talk to the ticket.”   (The New Tork Times Dining & Wine By JULIA MOSKIN Published: March 12, 2008)

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