FREEEDOM!

Chef Lili Kinsman - TIme Out Taverne, Durham, CT

i love the line...i love the line...i love the line...

Every few years I find myself back behind the line, knee deep in tickets on a Saturday night. I do somehow convince myself that I love the line (or maybe my meds need adjusting). It's kind of like having a baby, (i think), the brain cannot remember the pain and somehow the past experience takes on some kind of spiritual meaning. ...good thing or the human race would not survive and there'd be damn few line cooks and chefs out there. But there I was for the past eight months...a simple stage for a new place. Don't even get me started on how sucked into this business one can become. I'm just happy it's done..I'll be happy to see friends and drink wine and go to restaurants where other poor, but talented, suckers will cook for me during a crazy ass rush. I'll be able to see my nieces and nephews play a toad or a lamp or baby jesus in a school play. I'll take a trip and maybe clean out all of the to-go containers that have been in my refrigerator for months now. I can pick up where I left off writing my cookbook. I'll wear my hair in a girly (ok..how 'bout just clean?) manner instead of stuffed under a ball cap that smells like fryer fat. Eventually my burns will heal and I'll be able to makes fists with my hands without having to choke down a handful of ibuprofen first. I'll stop wondering at 7:55pm if it's too early for a FREAKIN' COCKTAIL. My car mats won't smell like somebody missed the dumpster and hit my car and I won't have to strip in my basement to keep my cats from attacking my kitchen clogs. ..I'll have time to keep pitching this Tasty Planet vibe. I'll have a life.

Then the Jones will come. I'll get a foodie-hard-on for some crazy new menu I want to try. I'll start missing the ball busting, insult-slinging banter of the kitchen crew..those insults and digs that bind an 8-man line into a precise, exacting machine. I'll forgive all the ass-clowns who so cruelly deconstruct all my beautiful specials. I'll forget the names and faces of the imbeciles, pre-menstrual bitches, hysterical food-grabbing waitresses, the drunks and the morons that always come with restaurant jobs. The 16-hour work days will become a dim light in the back of my mind and I won't remember the days when I couldn't get through the day without pain meds for my back or not being able to wear regular shoes because my feet are so swollen.

My Sicilian grandfather used to say 'What's in the blood, you cannot beat out of the flesh". I have tried. Many times. Being a line-chef is in my genetic makeup..my DNA..my blood. I have repeatedly beaten myself up back there over the last twenty-seven years, and I expect that someday, I'll do it again. Because despite all the loony-ness, I love the adrenalin rush that comes with being under the gun, with putting out 300 dinners in a 90-minute window. It's the place I love best.

Thanks to all my guys at TOT. Keep on rockin' out those awesome dishes. I'll be in soon for a couple of cold ones and some f@#*% french toast.

Thanks for the love, xoxo, Chef Lili aka Rudy