Does the positive spirit of a kitchen create better food?

August 14, 2008

I finished my last shift at Greens tonight as Dave is coming to town on Saturday (yeah!) and we're going to be vacationing. I can't really call working long days and nights a vacation and I'm totally exhausted so I'm looking forward to Dave's arrival and relaxing finally for the next two weeks up north, with a stop in Fort Bragg in Mendocino County so I can take a course at the leading gourmet raw vegan place in the country called the Living Light Institute.

I know a fair bit about raw food through working with my friend Yuki in Tokyo at her mainly raw restaurant in Tokyo called Veggie Paradise, through training at the leading gourmet raw restaurant in North America called Pure Food and Wine in NYC, and through other colleagues and teachings, however I wanted to take a course from the school itself, to experience the school firsthand and learn more as I have heard a lot of good things about it and I'd like to be able to add more gourmet raw components to my menus.

I've been working over 10 days straight in restaurant kitchens and it was hard to continue at the end. I don't know how the kitchen staff do it night after night but it could be the youth factor. ..

When I said last said good-bye to some of the guys in the kitchen they were skate boarding home. Seems like a lot of people skateboard as a means of transportation here even with all the steep hills. Actually, one of the guys from the kitchen had a motor scooter and the other guy was on a skate board and holding on behind by a bike lock. I saw an extremely steep hill ahead and wondered what would happen, and the senior cook driving me home again, said, "Yep, they're going to do it, go up that hill together that way." "Crazy, up that very long steep hill?"(you should have seen the pitch of that hill - it looked a for experts only run at Whistler!). "Yes, they do it all the time," he said. I guess there was not enough action in the kitchen for them tonight with around 220 covers, or again it could be the youth factor. I did pretty crazy and stupid things at that age too and am living to writing to you now.

During the drive home, I was able to find out more about the beginnings of Greens, which fascinates me to no end...

Apparently, the food was so good at the Zen Centre that people kept on telling them that they should open up a restaurant, and through one's person's vision to follow through with this idea they did it. He also helped create an organic farm called Green Gulch at the Zen Centre in Marin County and they opened up in 1979 Greens with Deborah Madison, who was a zen practitioner at the time, and opened the restaurant only on Fridays and Saturdays at first. The restaurant began with only zen practitioners and then became more popular, bigger and more professional over time, eventually hiring a lot of new people, in particular students from culinary schools.

Apparently, when the people from the farm go to sell at the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Terminal Building they are almost mobbed for all their great produce that they so lovingly grow and bring to market. I hope to make it finally to the Farmers Market this Saturday - it's open on Tuesdays and Saturdays - as it's my favourite place to go to and be at with all the local farmers, sustainable produce, and related entrepreneurs, and throngs of chefs and the public that come to shop.

I love our very own Farmer's Market as well in the city, at Lansdowne and also at St Paul's University, and love supporting it for what it is and what it can become. Only through the vision of people to hold the market and people attending, can it thrive.

Look at the Green Market in Union Square in NYC. Before this, most of the restaurants were buying from larger suppliers and not necessarily local, and starting a Farmers Market in the heart of the city changed a lot - more local farmers coming to market and being encouraged to be local farmers, chefs from the numerous restaurants in the city supporting the market, and then there are the crowds of people that love having the market there and support it.

Even in the Bay area with all this great local produce, it is only through leaders like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse that really promoted and encouraged, and bought herself local and sustainable produce for her restaurant, did the movement really begin to take off.

I helped tonight with some prep and then helped with the cold pantry station. The night chef asked if I enjoyed myself, and I told him I certainly did and thanked him for allowing me to be there and for being so nice and welcoming. It's nice to have had the opportunity to experience a positive and nice restaurant environment and see firsthand the impact this has on different fronts. Although there seems to be only one zen practitioner working there still, there is still the foundation, the beginnings, that underlie everything they do, carrying on the food and spirit of the original founder and chef Deborah Madison and then Annie Somerville, the current executive chef.

Does the positive spirit of a kitchen create better food?

I'm not sure that it can be measured on this level. Some of the greatest restaurants with very highly rated food from the critics and pubic still have abusive chefs and very negative work environments. Then how about other measurements?

How about creating a more positive and humane environment for people that work in restaurants, so they enjoy being there and stay on. This may not necessarily create better food, but at the end of the day the public decides whether a restaurant stays open or not, it votes with its fork, and this is particularly true in San Francisco with some of the finest restaurants in North America, strong competition, and a food savvy and critical audience.

Many people that are highly sensitive will tell you that they can feel the energy in the food. My yoga teacher says she can't eat at most restaurants as she can feel the negative energy from the kitchen in the food (I often ask her about my food as I'm curious and I'm happy to hear that she loves it and it agrees with her). I've spoken to other yoga, meditation, and similar practitioners and they tell me the same thing.

This reminds me of the movie Chocolat and a good book I read long ago, I believe it was called Coyote Cowgirl, about a young Mexican cook in a restaurant and whatever she was feeling would go into the food. She tried to be happy but if she was angry, then the clients would be angry that night at dinner. Crazy? Nonsense?

Well, many cultures believe that food has life, energy, and spirit and therefore treat the making of the food with as much respect as the serving of it, and always try to use the highest quality and freshest produce. In Japan, food is made from the heart or kokkoro and an offering of food is an offering of yourself to your dinner guest.

Perhaps having the general North American attitude of only caring about the final product is contributing to the problem with our food supply system and how we evolved for it to come so far one way that it is making us sick and our children sick. We only care about the final food product and how convenient it is and how nice it looks, and often don't care how it was made or what's in it, even if we are buying from countries that are knowingly exploiting their workers and/or have unsafe or questionable food supply systems, or from companies that knowingly fill their food with harmful chemicals and additives, especially for kids, to make it look and taste better. I know that there is people out there that care, that people are starting to wake and are trying to take little actions when they know and when they can, including me, and don't kid yourself as each little action and step makes a difference. Did you ever see the movie about the butterfly effect?

Food for thought.