Cooking at the Bristol

GRUNT WORK Is Bristol chef Chris Pandel, left, sadistic for asking Michael Austin to pick parsley for hours? Maybe.

Wearing a chef’s coat I grabbed off a hanger in the basement, I report to the tiny kitchen at the Bristol (2152 N Damen Ave, 773-862-5555) a little after noon for my first task: parsley picking. I’ll be helping this Bucktown gastropub prepare its simple yet serious fare—though when it comes to my tasks, simple is the operative word.

A cook named Zeeshan Shah sets me up with two bowls, each big enough to hold salad for six. I pinch and pull, dropping stems and yellow leaves into one bowl, green leaves into another. I’m facing a wall, listening to a Bill Withers CD, as a cook sings along: “Lean on me….” This is one laid-back kitchen. It’s also a painful one—an hour into the parsley picking, my back aches.

Two hours into the task, my back no longer hurts; it burns. Plus, my feet are throbbing. I pick faster so I can finish sooner and get assigned a less mind-numbing task. Darkened parsley has infiltrated my fingernails; it looks as if I’ve been working on cars or an oil rig.

Three hours into it, my back and feet are on fire, and my neck feels as if it’s stuck in a vise. At 4:30pm, it’s finally lunchtime. I wolf down a bowl of spicy pork chili placed in front of me by sous chef Justin White, then return to my parsley. Pinch, pull, pinch, pull. I close my eyes and bend over to get blood moving to other parts of my body besides my hands.

At 6pm, I pluck my last leaf and victoriously throw my hands in the air like a rodeo cowboy. Congratulations abound. As a reward, Shah places a bone and spoon before me. I dig out the marrow and chase it with one of my parsley leaves—but only one; filling that bowl nearly broke me.

Next, Shah has me measuring ingredients for brunch the next morning: butter, flour and grated Gruyère for Mornay sauce; butter and flour for tasso gravy. I separate 16 egg yolks and whites, whisking sugar into the yolks.

From 8:30–9:15pm, I roll out dozens of cherry-size balls of sausage for the restaurant’s famed Scotch olives. Finally, around 10pm, I peel off my chef’s whites and collect my things downstairs, where a server is folding silverware into napkins for tomorrow’s brunch, giving me flashbacks of that debilitating parsley-picking task. So when you’re eating at the Bristol and you spy a sprig of parsley in your dish, think of my aching back; it’ll make your food taste even better.

TOP LESSONS LEARNED

• When blended herbs (basil in pesto sauce, for example) turn dark and nasty, it’s usually from the heat of the spinning blade—so drop a couple of ice cubes into the mix.
• When boiling pasta or vegetables, use one gallon of water for each pound of solids. Make sure the pot is big enough to hold the ingredients without overcrowding, and your food will cook evenly. Your pot won’t boil over, either.
• For thicker, fluffier pancakes and waffles, instead of cracking whole eggs into the batter, separate the yolks and whip them to soft peaks. Gently add the whites to the batter.