My first cooking job, when I was 16, was at a Cambridge, Massachusetts, cafe called The Blacksmith House.
I prepared all the food on the menu of soup, salad, and sandwiches, and my fellow staff were a parade of restaurant archetypes: Doris, the tough old Austrian baker who ran the kitchen like a Swiss watch and always made me feel so nervous to steal bites of frosting in the walk-in cooler; Betty, the cashier who wouldn’t call it the “Ari Special” even though she ate my chopped turkey sandwich every day for lunch; Ele, the hot waitress with whom I didn’t have a chance; the muscled and managerial Curtis, who was also on the hunt; and the head waiter, Steve, who was on cocaine.
