Midcoast Maine Travel Blog

The Switchover

Written by Craignair Inn | Jan 24, 2025 8:37:18 PM

Everyone (secretly) believes their job is harder than yours. The grass is always greener, and all that. Within a workplace, there are often notorious rivalries and prejudices. Labor versus management. Administrators versus creatives. Servers versus cooks. In restaurant life, though all employees are technically on the same side, with a common objective, are often friends, and frequently drinking companions, between front of the house and back of the house, there is a serious divide. The relationship can be contentious, especially in the heat of service. Each department genuinely believes their job is the more stressful, strenuous, and underappreciated work, while those guys have it easy. A server walks into the kitchen, hollers out an amendment to an order, an on the fly request, probably a curse word or five, and breezes back out onstage through the swinging door. Cooks are working with fire, under pressure, in the weeds. And while generalizations are often unfair or unfounded and not exactly evidence-based, I have personally been made to cry by more than one antagonistic chef on many occasions. I, too, have been a waitress. 

Front of the house means your position is customer-facing. You are a host, a server, a bartender. You are there to add fun to an evening out. There’s a song and dance to it, it’s theater, it’s the big show. Like an actor stepping out from the wings, when you enter the dining room, you turn on your service smile. Usually it’s genuine, but there are always times when one must will one’s face into a mask of pleasant deference and feigned enthusiasm. You are most likely, historically in this industry, working for tips. But you like people, the guests, the patrons, the public. You enjoy the performance. You derive satisfaction from the interaction, the social atmosphere, the element of surprise. When you are a server you must love the game. The other components of serving include, but are not limited to, appreciation of food and knowledge of alcohol. Money is made on the drink. You have to think quickly, memorize new information each night, about the menu, about the diner’s preferences, plotting many moves ahead. Yes, it’s like chess. How long will this table take, can it turn for another seating? Which direction to go in? Who needs to be checked next. 

Cleaning is a big part of every shift. For all the flirtation and showmanship, you are often up to your elbows in greasy water. Servers wipe and polish and sweep and mop and vacuum. At the end of the night someone has to clean the bathroom. It is often a server’s responsibility to cover food and put it away. Once, decades ago, at my first restaurant job in a fish house in Connecticut, it was my job to mix the salad dressing in a paint bucket with a stick and heft it to the walk-in. This was not exactly a high-end establishment, and I was a teenager, doing the grunt work. I had to skim the skin from yesterday’s tartar sauce and scrape the remnants of lobster bodies and clam shells into bins. I slipped in drawn butter and spilled au jus from a tray full of prime rib slabs onto the lap of a customer who already didn’t like me. Your server makes your frothy cappuccino, garnishes dishes, plates dessert, finds the right knife for a steak, spoon for soup or coffee, and makes sure the butter is soft, the food is hot, the diet Coke has the red straw, your bill is split 5 ways, remembers where all the food goes and who’s allergic to tree nuts. 

Cooks, on the other side, in the back of the house, behind the line, make every single thing a guest consumes. It’s honestly magic. They definitely don't get enough credit. Preparation of ingredients often starts hours before service, and can get pretty intense an hour or so into the night. I already mentioned the heat. There’s a grill, an oven, many burners shooting open flame, a vat full of scalding oil for frying, lots of sharp knives, and tight places. Cooks work alongside one another in close quarters. In summer kitchen temperatures soar far above 100. Temperature is a major consideration but timing is everything. Chefs, it would seem, must work collaboratively with their colleagues, so that courses go out when they should, the pacing is right, the correct sides are alongside the right main, and an entire table’s order is ready at once. Juggling, balancing, getting it just right, a cook’s concern requires attention to detail and small adjustments as well as bold movements and feats of strength. It is all action, with little room for contemplation or error in the moment. That seems incredibly terrifying to me. 

Not all cooks, but many that I have known, have a pretty strong aversion to people. For a long time chefs had an anti-social, antagonistic reputation. And again, these are blanket statements and preconceived notions, but I think if your chosen line of work is fettered to a stove, you want to put your head down and get on with it. You aren't there to fuss or make excuses. There’s no bullshit in cooking. No artifice. Sure, there’s fun. Restaurant kitchens are boisterous, loud, music-filled, irreverent, bustling places. It’s not that it’s so serious, but there’s less room for error. Someone could get really hurt. Chefs are intense, as a lot. Creative, certainly. Some are taciturn, others obstreperous. Some use long, probably Norwegian tweezers that are more like medical instruments and others go, “BAM!”  But they all have elected to be behind the scenes, for the most part. Maybe they have an open kitchen. Maybe they come out to take a bow, or do a bit of glad handing around the dining room, but then they retreat, they go back where it is safe from people, where the only danger is actual bodily harm. 

Immersed in this culture clash with full knowledge of these frenetic scenes, we decided to change up everyone’s lives for one night only. All credit goes to Craignair/Causeway co-owner Greg, who is often shaking things up behind the bar, when he's not building a toboggan or plotting our next event. Greg is a party mastermind, an attentive boss, and has a keen understanding of both sides of service. He hears all the complaints, accusations hurled, and knows exactly how hard both teams are working to give guests a marvelous experience. Our food has a fairly high level of difficulty. In part because we source a lot of ingredients locally, using what is available, in season, and cook whole food from scratch, our chefs have to be proficient with serious technique and consistent execution. A high functioning restaurant must have front of house staff that understands flavor profiles and style, knows the nuance of sauces, how the fish is prepared, the way a great bottle of wine will elevate a meal, the way to sell a special or talk about dessert. They know the product. They tell the stories. They connect. Greg knew that the way to built unity and increase empathy was by orchestrating a night where you took over another's role, walked in their nonstick shoes, and solved problems on the fly. 

We decided that coming back from our short winter break that we would re-enter the arena with a switchover night. Chefs would serve. Servers would cook. The guests would be friends of the restaurant, inner circle types, locals, invited because we knew they could hang and would give us grace if we made mistakes. The team agreed to the game plan, but their jangling nerves were apparent upon arrival. I overheard a little friendly smack talk as they took up unfamiliar positions. But everyone seemed afraid. BOH arrived dressed up and spiffy. Cheers went up among the staff to see cooks in skirts and suits, with makeup, jewelry, and bows in their hair, with tentative smiles on their faces. Chef was behind the bar, having never been on that side of things before. They learned the Point of Sale System, the table numbers, how to fold the napkins, which forks go on the outside, how to set the tables, add centerpieces, light the fire, and carry trays. There were varying levels of comfort and a palpable spirit of competition.

In the kitchen there was definitely a bit more levity, though they were busy, concentrating. They were working quickly, rolling meatballs, starting the mirepoix, making polenta, getting ahead on the dishes in the pit. What I witnessed there was a beautiful thing, which was collaboration and intercommunication across the aisle. I saw people taking risks, and getting out of their comfort zones. I watched these folks doing things they have never once done before, the first steps toward a new skill set or at the very least an empathy for how someone else spends their working hours. The spirit of the entire night was just so great to behold. The guests were good natured. And everyone ate. The food was good, the drinks were strong, and the whole experience was terrifying, entertaining, and just a little infuriating, which all meaningful endeavors are. We learned that a change of pace, a shift of perspective, and doing new things is valuable. We learned how skilled, how smart, how essential our counterparts are. 

The spirit of the night, the rivalry, the friendly competition, the banter, the nerves, the frenzy was all in good fun. But the purpose goes deeper. Gaining insight into the minds and jobs of your colleagues is a pretty profound experience that impacts company culture in numerous ways. Developing empathy is always a good idea. We heard from one of our senior cooks that hustling for tips was a lot harder than they expected. It seems, a week later, that everyone is content to be back in their rightful respective positions, from the pastry chef who cooks the inn breakfast and starts whirring the enormous stand mixer around 7 every morning, to the host who got a taste of dishwashing. One sous chef did end up back at the host stand later that weekend; it turns out Adrian has a real charm with guests and enjoys dressing up for service. Listening to employee feedback is one of the aspects of leadership done especially well around here. Our head server said it best, “just further proves what a great team we have” which we already knew but it brings tears to my eyes, to work with these people and get to be in their orbit for a while. 

Join the fun at The Causeway! Make a dinner reservation, get stuck in at boozy Sunday brunch, come for a Friday night cocktail or a Thursday night pairing. There is always something interesting and good going on at The Craignair Inn by the Sea in Spruce Head.