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A goal of mine the summer following my college graduation was to “formalize and monetize the gifts that I take for granted.” Encouraged by my boss, the journalist Jarrett Hill, to seriously consider the food and wellness space in my aspiration to work in media and entertainment, as well as the constant positive responses to my Instagram stories when I posted my food, I knew that the world of healthy eating x sustainable living x social justice had to be formalized and monetized.
First, I started obsessively documenting my food and travels. When I was couch surfing in LA after crossing the graduation stage, I “paid” my rent by cooking, and then photographing, dinner. When I visited my college suite mate in her hometown of Hilo on the Big Island, I photographed our time going shrimping, my hostel’s community dinners, and the cocoa pods and mangoes picked on our hikes. When I visited other friends in San Francisco, I took videos of our Big Sur pit stops and wrote the recipes of our family dinners. Now, having moved back home for the moment, I recognized the sheer amount of time I spent cooking (back with my beloved knives!), monitoring the Instagrams of food editors, and studying the menus of new Seattle restaurants. I scroll through Yelp like most people scroll through Twitter.
While documenting on my phone and informally through Instagram, I was constantly encouraged by friends and family to “start a blog!” This was mostly for my recipes, but also because they knew I wanted to work in media. But I felt that I didn’t have anything particularly new to share. “How many white-women-healthy-food blogs are there out there already, though,” I’d tell myself. But in documenting and traveling, I saw that how I approached food had an impact. I showed my aunt in LA how to char vegetables so they were more appetizing than steaming (yes, this is new to white women). She said that in the week I was there, she went from having to take three antacids a week to none at all. In Hawaii, I shared my ever-transportable marinated Beach Salads and bruised-fruit smoothies with my hostel mates. It was one of the gifts I took for granted. Time to formalize.
Back in Seattle, I started losing my mind because I was accustomed to working constantly at school or exploring constantly while traveling. I was busy doing applications, but one can only do applications so many hours a day before you begin to question your own skill set. Upon my mom’s suggestion, I could talk to the restaurateur in our neighborhood who recently opened a new restaurant to see if they needed a server. I filled up with that stress-energy familiar when I have to do something outside my comfort zone, but felt myself lacing my shoes and walking towards the restaurant. “If I see him,” I thought to myself, “then ‘great,’ we’ll talk and see what comes of it. If we don’t, then I’ll have gone for a summer walk.” Sitting outside the restaurant, as was manifest, there he was. I walked past him. I stopped, exhaled, smiled, and turned around. “You may not remember me. . .” I started, but he exclaimed a friendly, “Ciao!” and greeted me with two bisous. Long story short, we arranged an interview, a day to shadow a server, and a start date.
Being a server has taught me valuable things about careers in general. My first day serving, I was petrified. My mom’s serving horror story of when she accidentally dropped an enchilada down a customer’s back rang in the back of my head. I don’t speak Spanish, so the prospect of explaining a Peruvian menu with ingredients like Chilcano, Choclo, and Alcachofa was dizzying. So, like the good prep-school x liberal arts college graduate I am, I used that energy to prepare a study guide. I copied the menu to a Google Sheet, bold-faced unfamiliar words, and defined them below. In the menu item, Anticucho, for example, I defined “panca chili,” ”choclo,” “salsa chalaca,” and “aji carretillero.” Believing it was also a server’s job to know wine pairings, I looked through my family’s cocktail books and sommelier blogs to find wine pairings with the notoriously fusion-forward Peruvian dishes. Who knew that a Peruvian-Chinese dish like Lomo Saltado, balancing chiles and soy sauce, is complemented by a strong malbec! I presented my Server’s Guide to the owners the day I started, much to their surprise. She asked to keep it. Not only did it help me prepare, but the Peruvian co-founder said she also learned some things. It was a good way to build trust with the owners that I was taking the job seriously and with the guests that I could confidently clarify their questions and cravings.
Only a few days later, a restaurant that I had expressed an interest in working at followed up months later to my email application. I had been encouraged to apply by one of their servers, who had approached me when I was ogling at the open kitchen of his previous restaurant. I met with him for an informational interview about the restaurant industry and subsequently submitted my email application. When I arrived at my interview for a position, I not only presented my study guide for the restaurant I currently served for, but had drawn up one for their restaurant too. “This is what I do anyway in my spare time,” I explained. “This is just the tangible, formalized version of it.” The manager said it was “better than anything we’ve made,” and I was given an offer.
What this has taught me is how to prepare for interviews outside the restaurant industry. Formalizing my curiosity about the company’s product or service is an impressive way to show why I’m interested in them specifically. The research not only prepares me, but is a preview to how I can be an informed advocate for their brand.
This experience also taught me what it feels like to interview for an industry you’re truly passionate about. When the manager asked me, “So what’s the point of this for you? Why do you want this position,” it was easy, natural, and fun to answer. I told him that I have always cooked, that this transitioned into writing formally about the food and wellness industry through my digital media studies and anthropological lens at Pitzer, and how I procrastinate by researching restaurant openings and their menus. Whether I open my own restaurant, become a food editor, or host a cuisine-centric show fostering intercultural understanding, working at a restaurant is a necessary experience to give integrity to these aspirations.
I believe that everything happens for a reason, including not getting what you so desperately want. Working in service has thickened my skin for a future of working with others. College is so independent; you do your own research, write your own papers, present your own conclusions. Service is, by necessity, collaborative, yet at the same time, territorial. You want your guests to feel cared for individually while giving them space. I’ve learned how to multitask by remembering multiple orders and their substitutions; how to make sure all tables have their drinks, appetizers, wines, dinners, coffees, and desserts with enough time to not feel rushed, but not so long that they feel neglected or, god forbid, hangry. I’ve learned how to remain poised and positive when I’ve made a mistake, such as entering the order to the wrong table or being reminded by a guest that, hey, “You don’t look Peruvian!”
Serving is exhausting because it's mind reading for five hours straight. The kind of experience your guests want is conveyed through unspoken cues and codes. A table that wants space may say, “We haven’t even looked at the menu;” a table that trusts me off the bat may ask, “What are your favorites?”; and a table that wants attention may ask, “Are you still in school?” Properly reacting to these cues has prepared me for client interactions by tuning me to the subtleties of communication. I’m reminded of the viral Youtube series, “Back to Back Chef” from Bon Appetit magazine, where Chef Carla Lalli Music instructs a celebrity on how to make a meal from verbal cues alone. As both prepare the same recipe in real time, you can see what assumptions the professional chef neglects to bring up and what the professional actor does instead. Chef Music is an incredible chef, but she’s been in the game so long that communicating some assumed step is lost. When serving, I was unfamiliar with the menu and had the foresight to think, “what will they ask me, what wines will this go with, and what the dish will look like. This foresight is useful for managing expectations that, say, the arroz con mariscos will come out more like a paella than a cioppino. Reinforced by the fact that elite companies still hire and generously compensate management consulting firms and branding agencies, I think this outsider foresight will be useful in any job I have in the future.