A day in the life of the Loews' South Beach kitchens
I'll never look at restaurants the same way again.
I walked into the kitchen at the Loew’s International Hotel on South Beach a naïve volunteer. I had raised my hand to work an 8 hour culinary prep shift at the hotel during the South Beach Wine and Food Festival.
Known as SOBEWFF, the festival hosts 105 events, welcomes over 500 experts and something like 60,000 guests over 4 days in February. It is a fund-raiser whose net proceeds benefit students at the Culinary School at FIU (Florida International University). Since 1997, it has raised over $35,000,000.
Behind all these numbers are a host of hard-working volunteers, professional chefs and cooks, producers and sponsors. I was one of them. I wanted to meet some of the students and chefs and see what it was like to work in a commercial kitchen.
And it was a day to remember.
9:00. Introductions
I met a Volunteer Coordinator at the front desk of the Loews’s. She gave me a bottle of water, a very official-looking chef’s coat and told me to take a lunch break. She handed me off to The Director of Food and Beverage who introduced me to Chef Sebastian, the executive Chef, who quickly passed me over to Chef Souman, who told me to report to Chef Gary. All this happened while we were walking through the maze of kitchens at the Loews.
Over 50 people were prepping food for multiple events – the day’s food for guests, the next day’s Bubbles Brunch for 1000 people and a couple of smaller special events hosted by celebrity chefs.
9:30. The kitchen
The kitchen was humming. Chefs and line cooks were already chopping and stirring and lugging heavy vats of steaming liquid from one place to another.
The counters were stacked with grapes and strawberries and cabbages and lettuces.
Everything moved so fast and so efficiently in the claustrophobic space.
I panicked! “I’m unskilled; I have a healing broken arm. Is this the time to flee?”, I wondered. But, no, I decided to put on those big girl pants and give it a go.
10:00. On becoming “Bacon Girl”.
Chef Gary, the AM Kitchen Supervisor at the Loews, makes sure the chaos of the kitchen keeps under control. He oversees food delivery (the hardest part of his job, he tells me), and keeps the kitchen staff busy and productive. Today the kitchen is also filled with guest chefs here for the festival and student/volunteers from FIU.
Oh – and today Lucky Chef Gary is responsible for me too.
He gives me my first job: Bacon Girl. It’s the perfect job for an unskilled volunteer. Here’s my bacon station:
For four hours, I take sheets of bacon out of their shipping packs, load them onto large trays, cover them parchment paper and place them in large movable racks.
After 10 minutes I want to go home.
After an hour, I am in that zen space where I could do this for days.
11:00. “Behind you”
One of the most commonly used kitchen phrases.
The kitchen is crowded and cramped. People grab work spaces where they can. The aisles behind the work spaces are narrow and slippery. When people pass, they say “Behind You”. That means people, trays, hot foods, whatever, is passing by. Be alert. Be aware. Stay out of the way.
12:00. Family meal time.
“Toma un plato y come”.
That’s what the family meal chef says, as she points to a makeshift cafeteria line. The employee cafeteria is on the floor below the kitchen, but kitchen staff rarely has time to go there. Instead, they grab a bowl (toma un plato), work their way down the line, fill their bowls, and eat (come), standing up, where ever they can find a space.
Cafeteria staff menu:
Masitas de Puerco (Gentle fried pork chunks). A cuban specialty
Fried Plaintains
A mash of Yuca with garlic (A breakfast staple in the Dominican Republic)
Steamed spinach (Seemed a little out of synch with everything else but I went with it)
Diving into that meal made me feel a part of the team
1:00. Bonding with Guest Chefs Melissa Tung and Grace Ramirez. Hire them if you can.
Chefs Melissa Tung and Grace Ramirez are guest chefs for the Bubbles Brunch, a premier event at SOBEWFF. Along with 3 – 4 FIU students, they are prepping their Spanish omelet and cheese plates at the workstation beside mine.
These two young women trained at the International Culinary Center. They are talented, caring and successful. Both put in stints at Jose Andres’ World Kitchen as he worked to sustain over 200 restaurants during the Pandemic.
Chef Melissa’s cooking has taken her from Sous Chef at Tavern on the Green to cooking privately for Presidents and Royalty. She is a positive force in the kitchen, calm at the center of the storm. She constantly encouraged and nurtured her young support staff, urging them to drink enough water, eat enough food, take enough breaks. I could see them transform from nervous young students to confident prep cooks during the day.
Chef Grace is an energy. A cookbook author, TV personality, recipe developer with a Latino heritage, she labored over the fry pan, moving the potatoes in the bubbly olive oil (Only olive oil for Spanish omelets! Nothing else will do!), making sure they were cooked through but not over cooked.
She gave me tastes – the thrill of my day!
2:00. I got promoted!
Bacon Girl is no more. I am now a knife wielder – coring 25 pounds of tomatoes with a paring knife. Strangely proud of myself. And I wanted Chef Gary to be proud of me too.
3:00 Another promotion!
I got to handle a Chef’s Knife! My job: chopping parsley, into tiny, tiny pieces. Chef Gary tried to teach me Paul Bocuse’s famous fast cutting technique, which looks like chop chop chop turn turn turn. I was not particularly good at it.
But I was driven to make sure my parsley was diced perfectly. I wanted to please the people who were ultimately going to eat it. No stems for my guests. (OK, if you look hard, you can find some stems. But at least they are small!)
3:30 Snack time
As food preparation started to move toward actually cooking, various cooks on the line started to pass out tastes - grilled flank steak with chimichurri sauce, thin sliced pieces of manchego with membrillo (quince paste) and smokey thin sliced chorizo, seasoned small potatoes, crunchy on the outside and creamy inside.
Chefs take care of one another in the kitchen. They frequently share and trade tidbits. It really is a family.
4:00. My final promotion
Coring, deveining and chopping red peppers, 50 of them. Maybe 100. I lost track.
I conquered the technique for coring and deveining. The fast chop technique still alluded me. I knew my shift was almost over and I wanted to finish my job. Chef Gary came and worked with me for awhile. We chatted about life in the kitchen, the difference between working in a home vs. a professional kitchen. He asked about my kids. He acted as if he had all the time in the world for me. In turn, I wanted Chef Gary to think of me as a valuable part of the kitchen team.
4:45. What a difference a day makes.
My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My back hurt. My shift is over. I want to go home. I don’t want to leave.
When I arrived this morning, I was mesmerized and overwhelmed by the size and maze of the kitchen itself, the intense focus of the staff, the over-flowing boxes full of chicken and beef, the vats of vegetable stock. I couldn’t fathom how meals were going to emerge from all chaos and the oceans of food I saw.
Walking out, I felt in awe of the huge, diverse, hard-working and still welcoming team of kitchen professionals and staff who turn out the meals we often take for granted and sometimes complain about.
I returned my coveted chef’s jacket at Volunteer HQ in the Royal Palm Hotel, then, like any good chef at the end of her shift, I headed to the bar to decompress with a glass of Prosecco. I wanted to share my experience with the bartender so she’d know I was part her community. I know that was a crazy thing to think, but somehow my experiences during the day got inside me and made me feel a part of a larger community. I imagine that’s why people are drawn to the hard work behind the scenes of the food/restaurant world.
Looking back, I want to send a huge thank you to FIU, SOBEWFF, Chef Gary at the Loews as well as Chefs Melissa and Grace.
You welcomed me into your world.
You took the time to explain and to train a new and unskilled volunteer.
You gave me the opportunity to see behind the scenes and understand the level of commitment, hard work, dedication and caring it takes to put food on the table.
You enabled me to be part of a larger community that supports a diverse group of students who want to be a part of the food service world.
I am humbled by the experience and grateful to have had it.
I’ll be back next year!
Outstanding experience! I enjoyed seeing the restaurant from that position. THANKS!!
What a great description of the organized chaos in the kitchen. Thanks for sharing your experiences in a jovial way. It must have been exhausting as well as educational.
Alice Miller March 6