Backstage

Mention George Orwell, and most of us think of his classic 1984, or maybe Animal Farm. But Orwell was a fairly prolific writer, and I just finished reading his early semi-autobiographical work Down and Out in Paris and London.

Based on his own experiences as a starving young man in the late 1920's, Orwell describes his work as a plongeur (restaurant dishwasher) in Paris, primarily in the dining room of a luxury hotel; and as a tramp roaming about in southern England. I was most fascinated by the Paris chapters of the book. Although I have close relatives who own and manage restaurants, my own familiarity with such establishments has been pretty much limited to sitting at a table and eating. I found Orwell's lengthy description of the loud, cramped, smelly, sweaty, chaotic conditions in the kitchen of one of Paris's finest hotels illuminating:

It was amusing to look round the filthy little scullery and think that only a double door was between us and the dining-room. There sat the customers in all their splendour -- spotless table-cloths, bowls of flowers, mirrors and gilt cornices and painted cherubim; and here, just a few feet away, we in our disgusting filth. For it really was disgusting filth. ... It was an instructive sight to see a waiter going into a hotel dining-room. As he passes the door a sudden change comes over him. The set of his shoulders alters; all the dirt and hurry and irritation have dropped off in an instant. He glides over the carpet, with a solemn priest-like air.

Only the Pixar movie Ratatouille comes close to Orwell's effectiveness in showing the contrast between the customer's experience in the dining room and the reality of how food was prepared in the kitchen. But the kitchen in Ratatouille was a shiny, sterile hospital operating room by comparison with Orwell's stomach-wrenching inferno of culinary madness.

As I pick at my next restaurant meal, I'll recall that I've been in the kitchens of both my nephews' establishments. They are clean and relatively orderly. Also, unlike Parisians of a century ago, we Americans today are protected by generally well-enforced state health regulations. Nevertheless, I remember that I'm always at the mercy of the cooking staff's whims and moods. "It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup." Probably not just French cooks. Human nature transcends national borders.

Perhaps, it's best not to think too much about such things. Bon appetit!