Prick with a Fork: The chef's special but the waiter's a bit snarky
Readers of Fairfax's foodie columns will recognise the name Larissa Dubecki, the fearless restaurant critic, but before she had the privilege of sitting at pristine, starchy-clothed tables, with staff running hither and thither to bring delectable morsels to her discerning attention, Dubecki spent a good decade in her 20s as a put-upon waiter.
Prick with a Fork is a riotously funny account of these 10 long years, charting the windy road from lowly service drone (filled with grizzled chefs, splintered glassware and belligerent customers) to professional reviewing.
Prick with a Fork lifts the lid on restaurant wait service and kitchen relationships. Photo: Supplied
It's a particularly gratifying twist of fate as Dubecki was never a precocious gourmand but a self-confessed connoisseur of instant noodles, tinned spaghetti and Vegemite toast.
As relayed with lip-smacking relish, during her waiting stints at numerous venues (including juice and internet bars; Italian and Mexicana joints and freelance catering gigs), she was disgruntled and woefully inept, and sabotaged "blameless people's night-outs through boredom, indifference or pure evil intent". With no ambition towards management, Dubecki never aimed for anything higher than "finishing my shift and necking down a knock-off beer, maybe two if the boss wasn't looking".
Kudos to the designer, whose cover has a fork with three of its prongs bent over, and a middle (finger) one standing straight up. Visually it's an apt symbol of the snarky tone of this memoir.
Dubecki is very much a half-full glass type of gal and her culinary experiences are mostly of curdled stock. She canvasses a wide range of topics, including the sexual and political frictions and factions of her workplaces and her scorn for the cult of "celebrity chefs" as well as her impatience with the arty food movement: "Our ancestors were so busy trying not to starve to death they simply didn't have time to invent edible 'dirt' and spherified peas made from peas turned into gel to resemble peas."
Like Anthony Bourdain's expose in Kitchen Confidential, the unsuspecting reader is granted restricted access past the glossy, smoothed-down surfaces of the dining room, to the splattered commercial kitchen within.
The introductory note in Prick with a Spoon offers ominous warning of the content to follow: some names have been changed to avoid being sued, "but it all happened".
Indeed, along with Dubecki's own experiences, interspersed in the book are excruciating anecdotes from various waiters. Here's a random example from Kathy: "A woman at table 21 vomited in a glass and handed it to me."
Unsurprisingly for a writer used to garnishing her prose with wondrously sensual adjectives, there are many guffaw-out-loud moments, such as Dubecki's descriptions of oysters returned to the kitchen – "rejected gobs of sea snot" – and her advice on handling food poisoning complaints (hint: it involves saying the words "stool sample" without sniggering.) Then there's her account of how she nearly killed a stripper with a sharp knife.
But not only is Prick with a Fork entertaining, it's also edifying for outsiders mystified by commercial food culture.
Within its pages one will learn innumerable titbits, such as why smoking has a two-fold benefit for hospitality workers; how to troubleshoot a returned plate; why a busy table service is akin to an endurance sport ("It's Olympic race walking with plates"); and why restaurant cooking tastes better than home cooking,"because chefs are on very cosy terms with all the evil things that make food taste good".
Dubecki does concede that there are some good things about being a waiter – reinvention, for one. The transient workforce (mostly consisting of disaffected young folk and "economic tourists") means fabricating one's history is remarkably easy.
If there's but one lesson to be dished out, it's that excellent table service should never be underestimated. As Dubecki (rightly) opines: "Ultimately. even if the food has been knitted from fairy wings and the restaurant is a high-concept take on Lady Gaga's bedroom as designed by Marc Newson, if the waiter is un-nice then the experience is going to be a dud."
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, Thuy On, 13th September 2015
Originally published as: Prick with a Fork: The chef's special but the waiter's a bit snarky
