I Grew Up in a Diner

When people find out I've spent most of my life in restaurants, they often assume that means I learned how to cook at a young age. However, that is not the case. The front of the house operations and cooking skills came later. The first thing I learned about, without even knowing it, was people; everything else seemed to follow.

I grew up in diners and I do not just mean working in them, but living in them. Long before I was old enough to hold a job, the diners were simply where I spent my time. If my parents were there, I was there.

When I think back, I don't immediately remember the food. It's the sounds of the service I remember. The chitter chatter of a busy dining room. The sounds of the plates clanking together, the register opening and closing. Servers talking to themselves as they hurried from table to table. The never-ending saga of who didn't do what side work still haunts me to this day. The cooks speaking Spanish to one another in the kitchen. The sound of eggs cracking against the side of a bowl and a fork rapidly beating them into an omelet. The fryer basket dropping into hot oil. The knives chopping a mile a minute. The broiler opening and closing.

Looking back, it all sounds chaotic the way I explain it, but somehow it is almost comforting knowing that it was all intentional. Everyone knew where they were supposed to be and knew they had a job to do. Somehow it all worked, every service came together like bread and butter. As a teenager, this flow became normal to me. It became my everyday.

Most of my memories are from the evenings, even if I wasn't working I would have my father come and pick me up so I can be at the restaurant. I remember sitting at the counter, especially the last stool near the bar. The original Johnny D's had a black-and-white granite counter with those old-fashioned stools bolted into the floor. The bar itself was tall mahogany with floral-patterned stools that probably looked outdated even back then, but I loved them.

Diners have characters, and ours had plenty. There were regulars who sat in the exact same seat every single day. Some were so attached to their stool that if someone else was sitting there, they'd leave and come back another time. The first two stools at the counter were always popular because they sat right next to the POS station. Guests loved sitting there because they could watch everything happening around them. The servers were constantly putting in orders, chatting, joking, and sometimes flirting. Some of them loved the attention. Others avoided that POS station whenever possible. As a kid, I sat there and watched all of it.

I remember certain guests who seemed larger than life at the time. I remember a couple that used to come in regularly, and all these years later, the husband still follows my journey. Twenty-five years have passed and that connection remains. There's something special about that.

Sometimes when I look back at what I can remember from my younger days, many of the employees we had, stuck with me. For better or for worse, I remember so many of them. It makes me laugh sometimes thinking about the most random memory I have of some of them. I learned a lot of lessons and also have some nonsense living rent free in my mind.

There was a woman in her mid twenties who could take the order for nearly twenty people without writing down a single thing. One day a guest offered her a hundred dollars if she could get every order correct and when she did, he paid up. I was fascinated by her ability to remember everything. While she worked for us, she was involved in a serious car accident. Another car blew through the intersection and caused her a lot of harm. She recovered, but she never had that same memory again. Even to this day, I look both ways, even when I have a green light.

I watched a host smart off to a guest that was impatient with the wait times and the chaos that erupted after. I learned quickly, do not do that. I remember the married coworkers who began an affair and the harm that it caused. I won't soon forget the baker that taught me to make cheesecake. The same cheesecake, I still make today. The cheesecake that my cream cheese icing recipe was inspired by.

The server who worked the early morning shift seemed to know everything. I used to suspect she had hidden microphones. I watched countless servers, come into work after drinking all night, thinking that will never be me. However, I feel a bit obligated to admit, that lesson I had to learn many times over again.

Looking back now, I realize, I wasn't just learning from recipes; I was learning from people. The thing about growing up in diners is that you're exposed to life much earlier than most kids. Adults can easily forget a young person is listening. Thinking back now, I should not have been listening to most of what everyone was saying. People would just talk openly around me. I overheard conversations about relationships, breakups, cheating, addiction, money problems, abuse, dreams, failures, and bad decisions. I heard stories about what happened the night before. I heard employees argue, gossip, laugh, cry, celebrate, and occasionally make terrible choices.

But it was real. What I learned early was that everyone is carrying something and has a story. I also learned that when all of those personalities come together under strong leadership, something remarkable can happen. A dining room full of chaos becomes a beautiful service. A hundred moving parts somehow move in the same direction.

While the people around me taught me plenty, I learned just as much from watching my parents.

Both of my parents were there as well. We all lived the restaurant life, whether we were in the building or not.

When I picture my mother at the restaurant, I see her behind the counter handling cash or sitting in a small office doing payroll and bookkeeping. She always looked put together. Her hair was done. Her clothes were neat. She wasn't loud, but she was always present. Every so often she'd pop her head over the office wall to talk to me or hand me something. I am not sure that it was obvious to all the people around her just how much she juggled. She cared for myself, my sister, and my brothers, was always doing household tasks, took us to appointments, even ironed my father's shirts. Meanwhile, payroll was never late or wrong, the books were balanced, we were never hungry, she got the stains out of all our clothes, she could sew a mean button and she always looked so pretty. I learned a variety of different things watching my mother over those years. Many of which are still part of my everyday life. As an adult, I no longer have to wonder why she was tired in the mornings and came to work a little later.

I pictured my father a little differently. He wore the same thing every day. A darker colored suit, a white-button down shirt, a tie and a pair of dress shoes, every single day. He was so particular about his appearance. He believed that it was respect for your guests to look professional. It didn't matter what he was doing; he did it in that tie. He would be in the kitchen in the middle of July, sleeves rolled up cooking, tie tucked in between the buttons of his shirt. Outside every spring digging in the flower beds. I've watched him clean a grease trap in that same outfit, although he did take his tie off for that. He even kept spare shirts in his office, just in case. Although, I don't remember a ton of stains on his shirts, but I suppose that could be credit to my mother.

When he wasn't busy doing one of the many tasks he did every day, he was sitting at the curve of the bar. That was his favorite stool, and like his regulars, he was fond of the stool he liked. Looking back, I think he chose that stool intentionally. He would sit slightly turned to appear more approachable and it allowed him to see the dining room better. He liked to know what was going on at all times.

Growing up in restaurants gave me far more than a career. It exposed me to some of the best parts of humanity and occasionally some of the worst. It prepared me to understand that people can be as complicated as they are remarkable. Most importantly, it taught me that everyone has a story. Looking back, I didn't just learn the restaurant business at a young age.

I grew up in a diner.