T.J. and Jesse

Everyone in the restaurant business knows that the most important position in the kitchen, and one of the most tedious, is the dish washer. During the day we are very fortunate to have LaVonte Johnson on the job as Porter, who we featured in an earlier post. For dinner service, we have a revolving crew of staff that tirelessly attend to this back of the back of the house job, and while they may come and go, we never fail to appreciate them and make sure to feed them very, very well.

The pot-washer comes in at 4PM to face a large stack of assorted dirty, greasy sauce pots, roasting pans, rondos and sheet pans that have been used by the cooks in preparation for dinner. The dish person comes in at 6PM, after service has begun, and runs racks of dishes, silverware and glassware through the dish machine. They work together - the dish guy helping the pot guy more often than not. And when they hear one of the guys on the line yell "Pick UP!", that means run around to the line and get the pans they've been using during service. Or someone might call out "We need plates", which tells the dish guy to hustle over a stack of clean plates or bowls for the oven.

They do this all night long, until the end of service, when things get really rough for the pot washer. As the cooks break down their lines, they take all of the used cooking gear to the pot sink to be cleaned, dried and put away for the next use. The piles of pots can cover the back table in pretty short order and always looks to be a rather daunting task. Eventually everything gets cleaned and put away, after which the pair sweep and mop their end of the kitchen, take out the trash and the recycle and call it a night. They are always the last staff out the door at the end of the day. They work very, very hard.

The two fellows pictured above are quite a pair, working three shifts together every week. On the left, TJ is a recent Queen Anne's County graduate who lives in Chester Harbor. He's been working here since May of last year, three or four shifts a week, all year round. Jesse, who will be a senior at Kent County this fall and lives just north of Kennedyville, inherited the spot from his brother a few months ago. Both boys are tremendous workers, with hilarious personalities; they are two very important cogs in the BT wheel.