To(O) Many Cooks in the Kitchen

A whole year later……My Dutchess Reflection….”write from your scars, not your open wounds”

July 1, 2023

A year ago today I hopped in an old grey ford with red vinyl seats and was trucked down to the emergency room.  Dough dried up to my elbows and covered in ham juice I was a sight to behold with a thumb sliced nice and clean through to the artery.  Sliced the damn thing with the deli slicer on my tenth ball of ham, on my eighteenth hour, on my sixth day of work that week.  I joked as I put the last ham ball onto the slicer that it was “ The Last Ham Standing” and I laughed.  Very quickly I wasn’t laughing anymore.

I am not sure why I was slicing the ham again.  The sandwiches were a big hit.  We nailed the grinder early on with the fresh baguettes and layered meats….provolone, sliced shallots and pepperoncini, basil, oil and the salt and pepper…..drizzle of the vinaigrette at the end.  We also ran a mighty club and caprese.  Easy hundred and twenty sandwiches built every morning after running off the morning bake of bread….sixty sourdoughs, eighty baguettes, thirty sesame rings sliced in half and smothered with cream cheese and chives.  Sometimes oatmeal loaves, or cinnamon swirl brioche.  All in the oven by four o clock in the morning and out on display by seven.

I spent a year building out the restaurant and kitchen with the owner, my partner.  We had a crew of amazing workers that helped us put everything into place but the vision stemmed from a conversation the two of us had standing in her garden, armloads full of lettuce heads.  We had talked about a community bakery and restaurant.  We had talked about nurturing and being mothers. We wanted those to be the qualities running through our kitchen.  We are both strong women with visions grandiose and passion that runs through our veins.  This is to our detriment at times, as we are often disregarded as too much or too chaotic.  This term “chaotic” eventually became a word used by the restaurant partners to describe me.  It was by no means endearing.  Quite on the contrary, demeaning, and  I felt deep hatred beaming in my direction most days. As the months progressed my role as scapegoat for anything going wrong in the kitchen became deeply apparent, not only to me but to our staff who often came to me with concern over the things they had heard management and the partners saying about me.  There came a time when I was no longer welcome and my ideas were often regarded as “Kate and her opinions” instead of ideas for growth, better management and creativity.

I have now had some time to process and reflect.  I could go down the list of reasons why this collaboration didn’t work.  A deep lack of trust due to broken promises…..a difference in values and morals….personality conflicts……different philosophies in management and basic treatment of other human beings…..products that didn’t resonate…..inflated egos……competition…..bullying…..jealousy…..But really what it comes down to is I didn’t fit in.  I was involved in an LA corporate restaurant family that I didn’t belong to and it was no ones fault but my own.

I’m not sure I blame them for their frustration with me.  The core of the restaurant partners came from Los Angeles and directly from a very successful coorporate restaurant family.  Although the chain of LA restaurants each exhibit a unique vision, they are, for all intents and purposes, part of a formula business plan.  I was very ill prepared for the systems they had in place.  I was naive to the harsh realities of running a restaurant.  I was uneducated in the rules of working in a kitchen under male chefs.  I did not understand that there is only “one way” to run a kitchen and I was just simply not doing it right.

For years I had run my baking operation on my own.  Maybe it was unclear  to people that my output was directly related to me alone in my shop working endless hours upon hours baking bread.  My product was piled high, a reflection of a lot of time and dedication, not a lot of bakers behind the scene helping out . I was alone much of the time.  I built my own systems to get the work done but these systems did not resemble the corporate systems.  I was baking out of a garage.

At first I was under the impression that my partners knew this and found value in my participation because I had a different point of view and contributing skills.  If we wanted to change the way normal restaurant kitchen energy flowed, create less toxicity……create more nurturing energy for a healthier work environment then why run things the way they have always been run?  Toxicity in the workplace seems to be rampant in the food industry.  We take great pride in buying our food organic so as not to put chemicals into our body, but I would say that a  kitchen environment where everyone is making your food with frustration, exhaustion and anger is the equivalent of chemicals in your food.  It is toxic.  It goes against my nature to feed people like that.  Bread has always been love to me….we are here to feed people our love.

I had to remind myself though, if you have a list of successful high end restaurants in LA why on earth would you change course and try a different approach.  Their systems made sense in the industry we were in.  Mine of course did not.

It is possible my set of values were quite different coming from a small town.  I trust people and honor my promises as I imagine they will honor theirs.  I learned the hard way that this is an idealistic way of looking at things.  Promises reneged left no trust and no guarantee that the crazy time and energy I was putting in would earn me anything down the road.   

I will forever remember a horrible interaction one morning with the owners, a month after opening.   I found myself with feelings of deep frustration and upset as they accused me, out of the blue, of having a negative attitude.  I had been in the kitchen since 3:00 that morning trying to get my work done so I could break for a half an hour to attend my daughter’s science fair,  before returning to run the bread dough for the following day’s bake.  Instead of letting me get through the work and scheduling a time to discuss everyone’s frustration and possible solutions they walked me out to the back dumpster next to the storage shed.  My exhaustion and frustration had me in deep tears and all I could think about was how I was going to pull myself together and look happy and presentable at my daughter’s school presentation.  All the while they discussed how I was incapable of doing the job I was hired to do and they were going to have to renegotiate the partnership  agreement.  That was the beginning of the end.  I knew that I would wait out the six months. I had promised myself I would. Then I would leave.  All trust was lost, my heart had sunk, my gut was sick and I went to the bathroom to clean myself up before heading off to school.

The next morning I arrived to the kitchen at 3:00 to find that the storage shed had caught on fire and burnt down to the ground.  Immediately, my first thought was, “They are going to blame me!”  Although an irrational and absurd thought it became clear that those were the feelings I was having regarding the people I was in business with, the people I had partnered with and that I was giving all of my time, energy and creativity to.  I was not seeing my daughter. I was living with such deep rooted anxiety that I was feeling physically ill.  For all I know the energy from the previous day’s fight has ignited the shed, although the fire department wrote it off as dirty rags and burning charcoal from the dinner skewers that hadn’t been doused properly.  Maybe it was the ghost of Bill Baker sending me a sign.

I hate that it all ended the way it did.  I hate that my partners, people I truly admired and found kinship with at the beginning ended up with such disdain for me.  They are all good people, living their lives and doing what they need to to make a living and survive.  They are hard workers with a passion for their craft which is no different than me.  I have no hard feelings towards anyone, but I was sad for a very long time.  I was sad that I invested so much of myself into something that didn’t work out.  That I gave away my ideas for free and walked away with nothing but a deep sense of disappointment and failure.  I was sad that I felt used.  That I couldn’t fix the problems, the deep miscommunication, the anger and frustration from everyone in all directions.  That as an empathic and sensitive person I now had enemies that I had never had before.  I was sad that no matter how hard I tried to make it work and fit in I just couldn’t. Was I to blame? Was it all my fault?

You can’t escape from things in a small town.  You can’t run away if you are a mother.  You learn to live with discomforts.  You learn to make the most of things.  You learn to move on the best you can.  You learn that time does heal.  You learn that nothing is ever for naught.  You learn that people are human, that we are all going through things.  You learn that not everything is for you and that’s okay.  You learn that most things are temporary.  You learn that reinvention is a gift.

And sometimes there are just too many cooks in the kitchen and someone has to step aside.

A year ago today I left The Dutchess.  I had discovered the name written on the old oven when we first walked the building in February 2021.  I had fallen in love with the idea that Bill Baker’s original oven was called the Dutchess. Although it was simply the name of the baking equipment company from New York that the oven hailed from, it gave it a personality, an identity……regal importance of a peasant baker’s tool. I had mentioned it’s name in a partner meeting when talking about how ovens used to be in the center of town.  The oven was the communal gathering place……the hub, the watering hole. They symbolized a gathering place to bake bread, to break bread.   This was the vision for our bakery.

We sat around a table with my homemade samosa hand pies.  I had made them for Chef to try. Puff pastry filled with potato and spices….dipped in a tomato Chile jam. It was one of my baking prides as it all came together in a perfect bite. I was excited to share. Our owner and beverage buff quietly jotted down “Dutchess” in his notebook. He asked how it was spelled.  I said with a T.   The next day he came in and told me I would be happy. We were naming the restaurant The Dutchess.  For a moment it all felt right.

I have no regrets. Apart from the puff pastry samosa handpie and tomato sauce recipe of mine that they kept and still run a year later…..and the mustard in the ham and cheese croissant. That mustard and three cheese combo with the sliced ham was my specialty at Kate’s Bread.

I am grateful for having the courage  to trust my heart and gut and get out when I did.  I am proud that I know myself well enough to know what matters and what is most important for me and my daughter.  

A year ago today I left The Dutchess.  It was my choice.  It was a restaurant I had poured my heart into, gave my vision to.  A restaurant in my town for my people.  In the end I walked away with very little, apart from the experience and a deep understanding of what I don’t want and perhaps a closer understanding of what I do want.  That is a very valuable thing.