Dishes

I have a complicated relationship with dishes. My wife and I love dishware; a mixed batch of vintage and new pieces make up our plateware, hundreds of mugs (found, thrifted, purchased on travels, and made by relatives and friends) fill an entire hutch, dozens of decorative plates cover our living room walls and antique silverware acts as our everyday utensils. 

Most of our meals are eaten at home and we have three kids, so those plates get dirty fast and multiple times a day. Before we leave for work or school the sink is overflowing. Coffee mugs, last night’s tea mugs, plates covered in egg yolk residue, bowls of soggy cereal, a blender from a smoothie, sippy cups, strawed water bottles, and cups, oh my the number of cups that kids use. Most of these can just go right into the dishwasher but that still leaves the pots and pans, the cooking utensils, the handcrafted mugs, and plenty else to wash by hand still. 

When I originally wanted to write this essay, I meant it to be an ode to washing dishes. A love letter, per se, to the zen of washing dishes. How one can find meditation in a simple task, with an end goal, and organization. Then my dishwasher broke and the labor of doing dishes overtook any of its meditative properties. The romanticization of labor only comes with the privilege of not having to do it. Washing dishes became a sisyphean task. Dishes piled up, other housework piled up, this essay stared back at me laughing, unfinished. I felt like Lucy at the chocolate factory, the machine fueled by my family's need to eat, myself unable to consume the never ending conveyor belt.

Dishwashing machines allow us to cheat, to remove a large portion of the work. The hard stuff, the minutia, is done for us. Utensils, cups, glasses, plates, anything with small holes, cervices, and pieces, modern technology and detergent washes it all away while we do anything else. The big stuff; the pots, pans, trays, and knives maybe we also throw in the machine, or at least those we do ourselves. This makes us feel accomplished. Their grit and grime is big and visible. Some might be caked on, hard to remove, we get the scrub brush, the scouring pad. We fashion new tools out of other dirty utensils, spatulas scrape off flat surfaces, spoons dig into corners. Some residue defeats us, but we look to it, knowing that one day we will return to try again. Locked in battle with the residue of our own existence. Our need to eat, to live, creates a mess in the world. We waste something no matter how much of our plate we clean, a residue remains, and we leave something of ourselves behind in saliva and germs. An offering to the gods of consumption and merriment. Then it all goes down the drain, eventually returning to the earth from whence it came.

I escape into dishes. Life can be overwhelming. With three young kids at home, I need a break, and I’m not getting it on the couch while they’re awake. In a fight with my wife, I can always hide in the kitchen. No one can get mad at you for doing the dishes, right? It’s a chore, it has to be done. I’m helping! Even if it’s an inappropriate time. Washing dishes allows me to cool off. I don’t have to think about the task, I can just do it, and allow my mind to wander or just turn off. How often do we get to just “do” in our lives? Though the dishes may seem to keep coming, every night there is an end to them. A task for the day that can be completed. Something to feel accomplished in doing. Somewhere to hide from the pressures of life, finding solace in a mundane task.

Whenever someone dies I immediately find myself at the sink. I cannot do anything about their death but I can clean up. It keeps my hands busy. I may not be able to bring them back but I can at least accomplish this chore. For a few minutes to put order back to life that may feel like it has been ripped apart.

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Many of us are so far removed from real labor we romanticize it. How many soft handed urbanites fantasize of moving upstate to start a farm so they can get their Carhartt’s dirty for real? But in every restaurant kitchen, in every corner of the world, there is a real person, a dishwasher. Though many, especially in the first world, are sidekicked by a machine that does most of the work. This does not make the task any easier. Those machines are big, and loud, and hot. They throw out steam that will fog your eyelids. They’re full of harsh chemicals that corrode your skin and burn your lungs. Special aprons are required to not soak one’s clothes and long gloves to not burn one’s hands. The bottom rung of the kitchen brigade, and arguably the most important, dishwashing attracts a slew of characters. Some of the nicest and scariest and most interesting people I met in professional kitchens were the dishwashers. I’ve known dishwashers who sold heroine, who used heroine, who spent years in jail, who were generals in foreign armies, who were con men, who were bounty hunters, who lied about their age, who wrote poetry, who spoke seven languages. But they all had one thing in common, they worked their asses off for the lowest wage in the restaurant. Dishwashing is honest work, it's simple work, and it's hard work, and it deserves respect.

I believe it’s in The Soul of a Chef when author Michael Ruhlman walks into The French Laundry to sees a thin man cleaning the floor, only later to realize it was the chef Thomas Keller, arguably one of the greatest chefs in the world at his three Michelin starred restaurant. Any chef worth their salt does the dishes at some point. The other night I walked past the new fancy bakery in my neighborhood and through the window I could see the chef, standing on a prep table, scrubbing the top of the hood. 

Working as a cook in a professional kitchen beats you down. I’ve described restaurant service as the fourth quarter of a game and you’re down. You have to give it your all some nights just to make it through. There is constant pressure to perform, to finish, and to do it perfectly. You have to constantly be thinking on your feet, remembering orders, organizing tasks. There’s prep lists, and order sheets, and scheduling to do. But after all that, and during all that, everything has to be cleaned. In order for a kitchen to function, there is always something to clean. Many chefs started as dishwashers, so there sometimes is a nostalgia there for simpler work, but there is also a mindset, in any good chef in my opinion, that there is no work beneath you. No matter how high your toque or how long your tweezers, if a toilet has to be plunged during service and you have a moment to do it, you fucking do it!

After culinary school I did a short stint at a fancy white tablecloth restaurant on the Upper East Side. Whether it had a Michelin star or not, I don’t remember, but it was full of culinary blowhards, mostly young white men who would have been equally suited for military service. One day me and another extern, after doing our daily tasks meant to break our spirits as much as prepare food, left a large mess in the basement dishpit and went home. Our mess meant that one of the dishwashers had to then spend extra time and work cleaning up after us, so our punishment for this offense was to work service that night in the dishpit. The other extern was distraught. I myself wasn’t thrilled but we deserved it. He spent the whole time sulking, like a kicked puppy, while I had one of my favorite days at the restaurant. I got to joke and laugh with the African immigrant dishwashers while all the cooks lost their minds. No one else working there was laughing during service, they were either too far up their own asses or too busy getting yelled at. 

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I do not know who the quote belongs to but I have always loved the line “All food turns to shit in the end.” I’ll add to that with “All dishes get dirty.” Whether by food or dust, they all have to be clean, eventually. That task falls on someone, whether they have the help of a machine or not, a human has to clean the dishes. So don’t let it get you down, at least in part find joy in the process, the alone time or the shared job, because no matter what there will be more tomorrow until the end of time.