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Erik: How do you decide to stage in California restaurant kitchens, and what did the experiences
teach you? Cathy: Oh, man, I love staging, so I just
love butting into kitchens, no matter if it's a real restaurant or a supper club production
of some sort, or my friend's dinner party. So I was in San Francisco for a month and
I really wanted to stage a tartine bakery. And they were doing some renovations. They
were like, "Yeah, come back tomorrow." "Okay, yeah, I'll come back to tomorrow." I was like,
"Shoot." So I went around town asking to stage other places, and in one case, it was actually
like a no-brainer. I was sitting at a bar, having a beer, and then somebody walked in
wearing a chef's coat and sat down and like drank a beer in like 5 seconds and then got
up and was about to leave to go back to cook. And I was like, "Oh, what restaurant?" He's
like, "Oh, this place in SoMa district and," you know, he described it, and I was like,
"Can I come cook sometime?" He's like, "Yeah, sure." And it was great. And then I made some
friends or I had some friends in the area, who very graciously -- I think that it's a
small world or in the food scenes, I don't know, but he knew everybody. So he hooked
me up with a stage opportunity at Chez Panisse, which was pretty amazing. Loved it.
Erik: What did you learn? Cathy: Well, I feel like I have a good sense
of the differences of California cuisine and New York cuisine. They use so many herbs,
it's insane. Like going into their walk-in, there's like a whole walk-in just for herbs.
And there's like drawers of like every single kind of herb. Chervil? Who uses chervil in
New York City? I don't know of too many. But they all have this. And sometimes salads are
just like simply a pile of beautifully fluffy fresh herbs. And I mean, they're lucky they
can grow it anywhere. It's temperate. They have it all year round, you know, kind of
spoiled, right? But, yeah, I mean, that's -- and that's naturally what they cook with,
you know, all these--you know, sometimes wild fennel because it grows everywhere, we used
that -- and oh, Chez Panisse, there was a great dish where they pounded the wild fennel
in this mortar and pestle. Chez Panisse is really into using archaic instruments too.
At one point, we were pounding roasted red peppers with the mortar and pestle and I was
like, "Why aren't we using a food processor?" But that's -- you know... It's all about doing
things by hand. Erik: And what questions did you ask?
Cathy: Aside from "Why don't we use a food processor?" I don't -- I didn't really wanna
ask too many questions. I like the idea of being silent and being told what to do and
just doing something manually for a long time. I think that's a good intern at a restaurant--just
listen, just zone out and like listen to everything that's going on.