A Night on the Line
Every Thursday night in Los Angeles, there is a restaurant dedicated to serving one of the greatest comfort foods of all time: The Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Since it opened in 1989, Campanile has always been one of the most acclaimed restaurants in the city, and has always been committed to putting out refined, yet rustic Mediterranean cuisine. Having trained under chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, and Jonathan Waxman, Mark Peel’s cuisine has always been ingredient driven, and his Thursday night special menu, consisting of 12 different variations of the grilled cheese sandwich, is a perfect example of that fact.
I have been staging at Campanile for a few weeks now, and my favorite night of the week to work is Thursday night. In a city full of restaurants, and an economy forcing people to pinch their pennies, doing 300 covers on a Thursday night (which is slow) focused around a culinary staple is truly something magical. Like any dinner service, there is always dead time, and there is always a rush. Linda, the sous chef who runs the grilled cheese station, and I, set up our mise en place and got ready for the craziness to ensue.
Dinner service starts at 5:30pm, and Linda and I joked about the calm before the storm. For the first hour or so, a few tables were sat, but most of the business came through the bar as various agents, bankers, and real estate executives came in for their post-work cocktail. At around 7:00pm, the madness began. Ticket after ticket came in over the printer and Linda and I were in the weeds before we knew what hit us. I have never seen so much gruyere pass through my fingertips as I did in that night. Whether it was the Croque Madame (classic ham and gruyere with a fried egg), Croque Monsieur (ham and gruyere with béchamel), the Autostrada (cured Italian meats with aged provolone and cherry peppers), the Reuben (classic pastrami with sauerkraut, gruyere, and russian dressing on rye), a BLT (served with slab bacon) or the Cuban, (with gruyere, cornichon, and sofrito), Linda and I were single handedly serving the restaurant, while the rest of the kitchen was standing still, as most of the patrons came in for a sample of the most famous sandwiches in the city.
Three hundred covers and 40 pounds of gruyere later, the clock struck 11:00pm and the kitchen was closed. We cleaned the station, labeled and dated the surplus of ingredients, and returned them back to the refrigerator. Since I am working for free, my payment always seems to be food. I made myself a giant Cuban sandwich, threw my apron and chef’s jacket in the laundry bag, and devoured my food during my two block walk back home.