I have been working in restaurants since I was 16 and there has always a huge divide between the front of the house and the back of the house. My first job we at a restaurant called PoFolks, it's currently called Folk southern kitchen, but there I started as a host the week after my 16th birthday and within a year I was a server and togo cashier until it closed it was my second home. Being the youngest team member the girls in the front of the home took care of me, but the back of the house, I always felt like I was getting on there way, my next job was a host at Red Lobster. The only thing that saved me there was the fact that my best friends worked with me and there was a boy in the kitchen that liked us. Fast forward to my days at Copelands in Buckhead, I learned a lot of curse words in Spanish, lol but we were still friendly enough to each other, but I think it was the efforts of management that made it possible. I coasted through other serving a bartending jobs but got a rude awakening when I landed at Trois. If you are one of the luck ones you actually are friends with your kitchen staff. Here I was working for Chef Jeremy Lieb (formally of Le Cirque in Vegas and Iron Chef), huge write up in Esquire magazine, Eric Simpkins a true bar God, how do you come to work everyday with this, you know your shit and keep your head down! I admired the relationships between Chef, my owners, managers and Eric. They respected each others talents and opinion, well at least as far as I could see. Food and Beverage are a marriage, it's challenging when one has no respect for the other, but how do we fix that? Me personally, all I can do is the best that I can and never allow a person to take me out of character. We have to work together to create the experience for our guest, that's the only way we all win. I want to create cocktails that pair with food, I want to help servers and chefs pair wines with food, I want to work on pre fixed menus for holidays and events, but until we stop trying to only get free drinks from the bartender or flirting for free food in the kitchen there will always be a divide, let's learn from and respect each other, just saying....
Always in motion....
Keyatta
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