Meet the Short-Order Cooks So Good Waffle House Officially Calls Them ‘Rockstars’
And this is what they taught me about food, labor, and (my toxic) masculinity
The grocery store in my part of Brooklyn has a small diner tucked away in the back, with a short-order cook turning out regular American breakfasts every morning. Something I like to do on a weekend is go there to eat, when it’s at its busiest and people are hungry and impatient and crowded close to the counter worrying after their food. It’s the best time to indulge one of my preoccupations: to watch the cook as he works, in the hopes that he will, finally, utterly, and dramatically, crack.
The cook is a hangdog sort, slouchy and grim, with a thin mustache and a wry, put-upon mouth. He doesn’t look to me to possess the spatial organization and concision of movement demanded of a crack short-order jock, one hand waxing while the other paints the fence. Where are the martial rows of bacon, the craggy peaks of starch, the metronomic clang of the spatula against the flattop, the fastidious shriek of a grill scraper channeling away rivulets of rendered fat? His eggs scramble in alarming proximity to his French toast, his pancake batter contaminates the bacon, fried potatoes go lost among the hump-backed and defaced crescents of his omelets, and his over is…
