Line cook.

I don't identify as a chef. I'm not suggesting that I'm not a good cook. I can cook. I'm just not a chef. I don't think like chef. I admire the way they think. I find it interesting. But I don't aspire to it.
In some ways I think like a chef. I think about cooking. I get excited when I learn about a new ingredient or method. I just don't care that much about newness. Or creative expression. I care about making food that is beautiful (eye) aromatic (nose) flavorful (mouth) and satisfying (heart). I never refer to food as my food. It's not my accomplishment. It's dinner.
A friend of mine wondered why anyone would make marshmallow when it was so easy to buy. That's not something you can explain. A chef asks the opposite question. Why buy it when you can figure out how to make it. My friend Debbie is a pastry chef in SF. She makes her own marshmallow. I don't even like marshmallow but I like her's.
I was watching Ugly Delicious the other night. In the middle of the second episode I had to turn it off. It was hurting me. Watching people so sincerely and lovingly trying to learn about a kind of food that they love so that they can share it was hurting me. I was having trouble breathing because it hurt so much.
Gabrielle Hamilton wrote a heart breaking column in the NYT about the future of her restaurant: Prune. I read her memoir and have the Prune cook book. I've watched The Mind of a Chef. I really like her. I would like to have eaten at Prune. I probably could never have because it was very small. Lots of tables scrunched together. I would not have fit. I still loved the idea of it and her. I heard that Chris Hayes and Ta-Nehisi Coates had a meal there. I would have loved to be sitting next to that conversation.
She needed all those tables and she needed them to be full just to meet her bills. Little charming places that serve great food have always been a struggle for the owners and the staff. It's hard work and the reward is not economic. Most of the places where I worked were small places owned by women. Three or four people in the kitchen. I tried to work where I could learn. I wanted to be part of something.
I identify specifically as a line cook. I have managed, a small diner in Colorado and a large tourist place in SF. I feel like I became the manager because I was the one who would pick up the phone when it rang. Seriously. I scheduled and ordered and made sure equipment didn't break and things got done. But I loved being on the line. I loved those moments when the wheel is full of tickets and you have to figure out how you're going to get it all cooked. Quickly. It never seems possible and you do it day after day. I never made great money. I ruined my knees. I don't know why I chose such a rough job. I'm not even sure you do choose that job. When so many culinary schools opened and chefs became famous and cooking shows filled the screen being a cook changed. I worked with so many young people who expected to become a chef. A famous chef with their own place and their own food. Few of them were very good at cleaning up. Most of them went from one restaurant to another. 
I guess I did too. And I had other aspirations. (rock and roll) But I was a line cook.
Across from me on Oak Street is an Italian restaurant run by a family. They have one window rigged as a take out spot. They do family dinner specials, which they advertise on social media. Up the street is a deli. They always do rotisserie chicken. They have soups and salads and specials. They deliver now. I ordered soup, salads and chicken one day, which they brought to the patio below me. The sushi place around the corner has started doing these amazing pork buns on Saturday night. The Chinese restaurant where my friend Mandy worked closed for a few weeks but will reopen this weekend. Only carry out. There's pizza all over the place.
I admire all these places. I try to order from them a few times a week. I know how hard they are working and I wonder if they're making enough money to keep going.
Debbie wonders if she'll ever work again. Her work ethic and skill are both admirable but she's older. These days, not working, she has less joint pain. She should probably not do that kind of work any more. But she's been doing it since high school. It's all she's ever done. The place she was working at is a small neighborhood place with great food.  I don't know how all those charming little restaurants are going to come back. Is the future going to be full of chain restaurants? Fast food?
Last night I watched Cooked, the Netflix/Michael Pollan show. I forget that I had already watched it. It opens with aboriginal people setting little bush fires. Women catching a large lizard looking thing. Skinning it and cooking it. Something about those images calmed me.
Things will change. Food Trucks are already a way to have restaurant and not the expense of brick an mortar. Maybe there will be more of them. There are always ways and people who want to  ...  cook.
Or.
At least.
That's what I hope.