All I really need to know about restaurants, I learned from women

This Galentine's Day, a salute to the women who've taught me so much — in restaurants and beyond. And a pasta-salad recipe that's good good.

My earliest restaurant jobs were spent around men named Jesus and Juan Carlos, then Al and John, Victor and Roy. Each of these guys taught me things: how to pop the pit out of an avocado; how to par-cook chicken skewers so they don’t turn to shoe leather after reheating; how to chop a crate of parsley in less than two Kenny Chesney songs.

These were, as prep- and line-cooking go, helpful tutorials. But it was at my final restaurant, under the guidance of women named Elma, Nicole, Vicki and Barb, that I learned my most important lessons: how to craft specials from yesterday’s leftovers that didn’t feel leftover; how to cook rotini so it’s extra starchy and able to hold the proprietary dressing for which our lunch spot was famous; how to make it through a rush of red-hat-ladies and post-tennis-lesson-retirees whose “keep the change, dear” tips had to be offset by the leering-mortgage-broker types — the kind who called you sweetie and patted you on the hip, a little lower each time, after you delivered their endless iced tea refills — without crying.

This lunch spot taught me perhaps my most valuable life lesson. It came from Barb, the restaurant’s tiny blonde bombshell of an owner. She said it seriously and earnestly:

Get the hell out of restaurants; don’t look back.

It wasn’t that I was a horrible employee — I showed up and didn’t have any notable addictions. It was that she saw a different way for me, one where I wouldn’t have to work so hard for so little, one where I wouldn’t have to worry if the dishwasher would have a mild stroke mid-shift, or if the health inspector would show up the same day our hot-tempered kitchen manager left her prescription “vitamin” bottles strewn about the prep line.

Restaurants are Tough.

I thought I could Anthony-Bourdain my way through, find the romance in the drudgery. And maybe if I’d kept on — spent tens of thousands of dollars on culinary school, forsaken friends and family for a few years of unpaid labor in Michelin-rated kitchens in Provence — that would have been the case.

Instead, I listened to Barb and got the hell out.

This Galentine’s Day, I’ve been thinking of all the women in the worlds of food and writing who’ve shaped me. My mother who grew much of our produce in our suburban, postage-stamp yard. Jeannette who taught me how to yell at customers in this oddly endearing way that makes them stop touching you while still generously tipping you (she was an aproned Obi-Wan Kenobi). Dana who taught me how stupid “veggies” looks in writing. Tammy, the *crackly crisp* master of onomatopoeia. Wendy who showed me how to say in 20 inches what I thought needed 50.

I didn’t take all of Barb’s advice. I still look back. And I remain tangentially involved in the wild, wacky world that is restaurants. But I think of her words at least once a month, when I meet yet another naively new restaurant owner, or talk to yet another burned-out chef.

I marvel at the people who can make a restaurant work. The unicorns of the industry who care for and properly provide for their staffs have my deepest respect.

But I don’t miss being enmeshed in that world.

I do, however, miss that almost-famous pasta salad on occasion. While I remember the original recipe (I made it by the bucketful six days a week for almost two years), it involved so many hard-to-source ingredients, I could never recreate it from the Publix or Costco aisles. But this version is close and, dare I say, fresher and somewhat healthier.

Recipe: That almost-famous pasta salad from that lunch place

Ingredients

1/2 box, 6-8 ounces, pasta (casarecce is pictured, but any short pasta will work)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/3 cup Parmesan (or Grana Padano/pecorino Romano)

1 garlic clove, finely minced

1/4 lemon, juiced

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1-2 teaspoons vinegar (red and white wine vinegar work, or a citrus vinegar is fantastic)

1-2 tablespoons chopped parsley

5-6 grinds of fresh pepper

salt to taste, if needed at the end

Directions (and some asides)

First — a note about noodles.

The best cooking trick I learned at this lunch-spot: You don’t need gallons of water at a rolling boil to cook pasta.

That hot-tempered kitchen manager of ours knew, way back in 2004, what The New York Times (2009), Alton Brown (2018) and the cooking-gods at Serious Eats (2021!) wouldn’t learn for years later: The best way to cook starchy, sticky pasta is to start it in cold water.

Pour your box of short noodles into a pot, cover them with just enough water that they’re mostly submerged, add your usual amount of salt, then set them on the stove and bring them to a boil. You will have to stir occasionally to make sure the noodles don’t become a gluey pasta brick. But this method is quicker, simpler, uses less water and creates a pasta to which sauce generously clings.

To preserve that starchiness, please oh please DO NOT RINSE THE NOODLES. I let mine cool on the counter, stirring them every so often to make keep them happily separated. Or I’ll toss them in a bowl in the freezer if I need them cooled more quickly. Once your noodles are cooked and cooling, it’s time to make the dressing. That’s easy.

Add the ingredients to a bowl and whisk to combine. Check for salt/seasoning and adjust as you see fit.

Combine sauce and pasta to your sauciness liking and, as Nicole our French garde manger (aka salad girl) would say: Voila!

I like this pasta salad in combination with other salads. It can be the base for an antipasti salad packed with salumi, olives, cucumbers, sweet peppers, tomatoes. It can be a creamy add-on to a lunch salad with chickpeas and grilled chicken over a bed of arugula. It can be layered into a veggie (er, vegetable (sorry Dana)) pita or eaten on its own by the light of your fridge in the middle of the night.

Happy Galentine’s Day.