The smell of frying potatoes and onions. A server old enough to be his mom\u2019s younger sister carrying a plate with a patty melt and a half-full coffee pot. Formica table tops painted to look like wood grain. Clean but weathered white floors. Lollipops by the front cash register. Behind it, a fridge with cans of Coke, Pepsi, RC. None of the staff looked like English was their first language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He hadn\u2019t seen the kitchen yet, but Tommy felt right at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Home would be called Olly\u2019s<\/em> now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSit anywhere you like,\u201d the auntie server said. Patty melt deposited at a booth where an old man in a blue CTA uniform sat across from a gym bag with a Reader<\/em> spread under his mug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh, actually. I\u2019m here for an interview. With Mart\u00edn?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tommy told her and watched her disappear into the kitchen. She had both a gentle smile and hard eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The diner looked small on the outside, and it was, but there were more tables than Tommy had anticipated. A host stand and coffee station. Four-tops lining the walls, with a large corner booth to the left of the door. An island of booths with a half wall covered in planters in the middle of the dining room. Most of the walls had planters between the windows. Our Lady of Guadalupe watching over the back booths. When there was art, it felt like whatever the owner had found at a secondhand store over the course of a single weekend. One black-and-white photograph stood out: two men smiling in front of the restaurant, with a handwritten OLLY & MART\u00cdN caption underneath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Auntie server reappeared. Held out her hand for Tommy to shake. \u201cTommy? Amparo. Come back here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Double doors with porthole windows that were approaching opaqueness\u2014likely due to a bus boy trying to clean the fake plastic glass with a scrub brush\u2014led to a kitchen space that was equal parts lived-in diner grease hole and pass the health inspection or you\u2019re out on your ass<\/em>. The unmanned dish pit was piled with plates, a mix of ketchup and syrup gluing the towers together. The flat top was a shared space of breakfast potatoes being held at temp and burgers in varying phases of cheese melt. A line cook was shaking the fry basket and watching a soccer game on his phone while the other cook was folding a three egg omelet, probably called \u201cthe Cali\u201d or some shit, judging by the spinach, artichokes, and avocado. In the prep area was another woman, likely the missing dishwasher, roughly chopping lettuce without gloves.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tommy took it all in with the enthusiasm of a rich person browsing the spa menu at an all-inclusive resort. This place practically felt like destiny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The cramped office looked like every manager\u2019s office he\u2019d ever sat in. Banker\u2019s boxes stacked everywhere. Shelving with backup flatware, dinnerware, what was clearly hotel pans, squeeze bottles, spoons. Paper rolls for receipt printers, a computer and printer, a locked file cabinet, half-printed menus with messed up ink. A milk crate full of cords with no clear place. Papers on the walls that, at the moment, were indecipherable cuneiform, but Tommy knew he\u2019d have whatever this system was memorized soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some shouted Spanish, then the creak of the door being pushed open. Tommy looked over his shoulder to see a man leaning half into the kitchen, arm weighted on the door handle. When the man straightened, his kindly face barely matched the shouting. His eyes had soft edges and he had an easy, age-jowled smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHola, bienvenido. Tommy? Mart\u00edn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHola, Mart\u00edn, mucho gusto.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u00bfTienes experienca en la cocina? \u00bfLimpiando mesas? \u00bfPlatos para lavar? \u00bfPrepara? \u00bfDesayuno y cena?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cS\u00ed, senor. Todos los trabajos hay una cocina. Todos los trabajos en el restaurante. S\u00ed. Para no\u2014nunca soy\u2014owner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mart\u00edn let out a laugh and gave Tommy a conspiratorial finger point. \u201cPretty good, guero. What, you got a Guatemalan novia or something? Anyway, I can read. I see your job experience. Can you be a good coworker, can you fit into a culture, can you work fast? These are my questions. I\u2019m also wondering why you\u2019re ditching the downtown life, the lakeside glamor, and riding the bus here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs there something unglamorous about a diner? I happen to think the best food in the country gets made at places like this. Plus, if the weather\u2019s nice, I can walk here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow kind of you. Look, I\u2019m not trying to slander my environment. But why are you<\/em> here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell, I\u2019m not kidding. The best food is not being made at Trencherman or Girl And The Goat. Truly good food comes from an environment where people understand daily practice. The point isn\u2019t something new and novel for every meal. The point is poaching perfect eggs every time while maintaining the boil bath for six hours\u2019 rush on a Sunday, while also<\/em> not letting the Hollandaise break on the hot line. Then doing that every <\/em>Sunday, for<\/em> people. It\u2019s turning chicken bones to stock, turning chicken livers to a Friday night special. Because, sure, I like to be creative with dishes. But I also want to execute the basics perfectly, every time. And if possible? Serve a clientele that appreciates that, rather than clout-chasing rich people who spend more time Instagramming their meal than tasting it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOoh, que apasionado, qu\u00e9 iluminado. I say a burger is four minutes per side, how long do you cook it for?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFour minutes per side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI tell you an omelet has cheddar cheese, what kind of cheese you put in it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCheddar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They went on like this a few minutes, Mart\u00edn asking more situational questions and occasionally slipping into Spanish. Tommy tried to respond in whichever language Mart\u00edn spoke, though he knew the cracks in his Spanish were starting to show. He\u2019d sort of been bullshitting with that diner monologue, but only sort of. To Tommy, cook<\/em> was a profession full of pirates, misfits, boozehounds, dropouts, and others on the marginalia of society, and he loved it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, there was a right way and a wrong way to approach this noble calling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, listen,\u201d Mart\u00edn said, drawing out the O in a reedy tenor that suggested they were wrapping up. He looked over his clipboard. Tommy felt a flash of being back in that south side Irish bar. He was being regarded<\/em>. Older generations distrusting youth. Every small business owner or manager had a no one wants to work anymore<\/em> living deep within their soul, ready to be vomited out at the slightest hint of slacking off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Or maybe Tommy just made people think twice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCan you start Lunes?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cS\u00ed se\u0144or, Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tommy\u2019s thoughts wandered to the kitchen. <\/em>He imagined scattering hashbrowns on the flat top. He imagined knowing the grill intimately enough to be able to feel<\/em> when it was time to flip a grilled cheese or an egg. He thought of a few recipes he could add to weekend dinners. He could define<\/em> this place. It was a postcard picture of an all-American diner. It just needed an injection of new blood, some youthful energy and know-how from a thoughtful chef who also properly revered the previous generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019ll train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week. Then I want you expediting Friday night. Just for you to see what that\u2019s like. After that, we\u2019re going to start you on Sunday dinner running grill, cover Wednesday and Thursday breakfast, doing eggs. Friday dinner you\u2019ll be on prep. Saturday breakfast you\u2019re on the fryer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It felt like a schedule for paying your dues. It felt like a schedule for a kitchen where everybody else had another job somewhere else, and they didn\u2019t want to topple the current Jenga tower of a crew rotation. Tommy could already picture afternoon shifts stretching into evenings with dinner prep work. His back and knees were telling him how much drinking he\u2019d be doing Sunday nights. But Tommy wasn\u2019t in a position to complain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the street and up a couple blocks, there was a bar, Jimmy\u2019s Pub, that Tommy knew about. Here was a place that catered to workers, misfits, and people on journeys: it was open from seven a.m. to four a.m. and never had more than one person working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He walked out of the afternoon summer sun and into a dark, wood-paneled cave lit by kitschy neon palm trees and orange string lights. A lecherous-looking flamingo was painted on the back wall underneath some spotlights that only came on for karaoke nights, which didn\u2019t happen anymore. Some college-age kids were playing pinball in a corner. At the bar, a white-haired guy wearing a faded Cubs shirt and hat combo was leaning on his elbows, talking to the bartender over a couple Old Styles. The bartender looked like he could dunk a basketball forty years ago. Droning, vaguely demonic shoegaze music played over the speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tommy ordered a double whiskey, rocks, and Faded Cubs Shirt didn\u2019t break monologue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2014so then the guy tells me, well nobody retires anymore. Guys take consulting gigs. I says to him, consulting gig? Consulting<\/em>? The hell I\u2019m gonna take some \u2018consulting gig,\u2019 who the hell wants me to consult<\/em> about anything? No one\u2019s ever wanted my opinion, except the people who have. Guess what? They didn\u2019t listen to me anyway. They were wrong, of course, because I know what I\u2019m talking about, but hey. That\u2019s neither here nor there. Nobody\u2019s ever listened to me, so what am I gonna consult? I wanna retire. But all those layoffs, so many jobs\u2014I got a pension, I got a 401(k), my retirement plan\u2014every job\u2019s given me some sort of thing, right? But all of these things, I can\u2019t make heads or tails of it, all of these things are somehow not enough to live above the poverty line?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s all a scam,\u201d the bartender drawled, pouring the whiskey that Tommy had ordered during the regular\u2019s monologue. Tommy couldn\u2019t decide what had more reverb, the music in the hall-like establishment or the bartender\u2019s voice. \u201cAll. A. Scam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see all these guys in their flashy suits, I see them driving their BMWs, I see them with their working teeth,\u201d the regular continued. He was starting to chuckle. \u201cThey\u2019re not thinking about hip replacements. They\u2019re not thinking about cholesterol. They\u2019re not thinking about A1C. You know what else they\u2019re not thinking of? How much they\u2019re gonna sweat at work today. Whether or not they\u2019re gonna make their mortgage. Those suit-wearing kids,\u201d the regular was laughing more, \u201cwhen they walk, the ground gets softer beneath their dainty little feet. When automatic doors open for them, they get a little spray of rosewater. You and I don\u2019t get that, do we? You and I don\u2019t get bathroom attendants wiping our asses for us. You and I don\u2019t get waiters at restaurants cutting our steaks, making Caesar salad tableside. You don\u2019t see tableside salad when you\u2019re guys like us. Guys like them, though? Boy, do they have it nice. That\u2019s all I\u2019m asking. Why I gotta bag groceries at the Jewel until the skin falls off my bones?\u201d He was laughing hard and loud, clutching his side. \u201cWhy I gotta smile at housewives who are just looking back, watching my hair fall out and my teeth chip off in pieces like little fuckin whatdoyoucallem, lemon Tic Tacs, looking back at me like I\u2019m some kind of freak show, because I don\u2019t got one of them 401(k)s that actually works right? Those boys, though, they drive suits and wear BMWs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bartender bent over and gave his own thinning hair an exaggerated rub. \u201cOh, cut yourself some slack, Frank,\u201d he said. His body moved nimbly, he\u2019d refilled a pitcher and made change for the college kids and rinsed a glass before pouring himself a water the whole time Frank had been talking. But his voice was impossibly slow, each syllable sweeping every inch of the cavernous bar before he uttered another one. Frank\u2019s laughing had slowed to a wheeze. \u201cYou got great chompers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this, Frank burst into mouth-open honking, revealing yellowed and chipped and silver-capped teeth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat about you, kid?\u201d Frank turned to Tommy when his laughter died down. \u201cYou got a job?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The smell of frying potatoes and onions. A server old enough to be his mom\u2019s younger sister carrying a plate with a patty melt and a half-full coffee pot. 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