i took this picture at a plated dinner last weekend. the event was for the golden barristers at cwru's law school over alumni weekend and went very well. anyway, the reason i took the picture was that it put me in mind of one of my favorite things. from the day i started in this business until now, i've had this really odd aesthetic fascination with the way it looks when you've got hundreds of identical plates all lined up and waiting to be served. somehow, the sight of this has always spoken to me and, i suppose, the fact that such a thing would somehow stir my soul is a good indicator that i was meant to be doing this for a living, instead of being a lawyer or professor as i'd initially planned. that's kind of one of the funny things about this business. i know and meet so many people who were on their way somewhere else in life and got side-tracked into a restaurant job, only to find that it was meant for them. obviously, these stories range from wonderful to wondefully depressing, but, i think especially for those of us in the kitchen, we each found a place in this world that made sense to us in a way that nothing else really did. my buddy mikey uses the catch-phrase "live to cook", which i believe is true. i think it is equally interesting, though, to realize how many of us were simply born to do so.
