Boar Lane Bourdains and the Joy of Potwash: How working in a kitchen made me better at essays and love this city

I needed to make money, that much was clear. About to embark on my fourth and final year of a language degree, I should have had more academic problems on my mind than how I was going to afford my daily sustenance, but a combination of bad luck and questionable decisions made balancing the books seem impossible on my student loan. I had to do the unthinkable. Get a job.

The places to which I could apply was determined by the decision at the tender age of sixteen that waiting tables and pouring pints wasn’t for me. Admitting in my Wetherspoons interview that I regularly drank there using a fake ID probably didn’t help in my bartending career, but it landed me a job washing dishes in the kitchen. With this twist of fate began a long saga of kitchen jobs which funded my continued existence through my late adolescence and early 20s. It was to this old, reliable source of cash that I returned this September when, out of 40 or so applications, I received one callback, one interview, and one job. 

I won’t give exact details on where it is. This is partly to protect the anonymity of my coworkers, and partly to stop any of you degenerates from complaining about me directly when your plate comes through smudgy. All you need to know is it’s in central Leeds and it’s more high-end than a McDonald’s. You’ve probably been there, or at least walked past, but what goes on behind the scenes will be the same as any other restaurant on the big high streets of a city like Leeds.

I was offered a job as Kitchen Assistant; a job formerly known as Kitchen Porter, and most accurately called Dish Monkey. I like washing dishes. It’s easy, satisfying, and takes one far enough away from the action that you’re relatively unlikely to be on the business end of an 80-hour-a-week chef’s ritual daily crashout. What it also gives you is time to think. In between the sisyphean task of washing the dishes and making sardonic chit-chat with the floor staff, it’s just me and my thoughts. I am not exaggerating when I say that the majority of my dissertation so far was written in the back of my mind while I was scrubbing god-knows-what from the bottom of a saucepan. It’s like how the best ideas come in the shower, but what I’m washing actually serves a purpose (I’m just kidding, fourth year’s going GREAT). 

The other great joy of the job is the characters I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. As lovely as Leeds’ student population is, we’re hardly a representation of the true soul of the city. The ability to step through the staff room doors, put on chef’s blacks, and be entirely removed from student life is a privilege that I truly miss in less lean times. There’s something about panicking your way through an understaffed Saturday dinner rush that makes conversation flow freely and turns former strangers into rocks to cling to. 

I remember early on in my time at the restaurant, when we were flooded with customers and I was given a precious 10-minute breather. Lucy, a veteran of the front of house team, burst through the back doorway onto the stairs where I was getting some fresh air, an already-lit cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. “You’re the new KP right?”. I replied in the affirmative. “I’m going to break up with my boyfriend,” she said with a far-away look. Doing my best to sound concerned, I asked why. I won’t repeat exactly what she said, but it involved him being unwilling to engage in some pretty specialist acrobatics with her and his best friend. At the time, I was still unsure of her name. 

The camaraderie of the kitchen goes even further. Leeds being a diverse city, we get people from all parts of the world working behind the grill. Miguel, a sous chef from Senegal with an excellent taste in Afrobeats and proficiency in every language this side of the Prime Meridian, has become a true confidant. Initially stoic and quiet, upon learning I speak Spanish, Miguel has taken to telling me everything and anything, ranging from his time on the other side of the law in Andalucia to when so-and-so spilled an entire plate of food down the front of a Tory MP’s freshly ironed suit. Maybe I’m just getting old, but it beats someone telling you in a Hyde Park basement how they’re not really into Civil Engineering and are going to try to make it big as a DJ. 

None of this is to cast any aspersions of the value of a purely student experience in Leeds. We’re all very lucky to be studying here, and I have met some of the most interesting, kind, and driven people on this campus. Arguably it is better to write a final year project in the library, and it is for that reason I fear my time behind the dishwasher may be running short. All I dare suggest is that if you find yourself needing extra cash, a manual job doesn’t need to be a painful chore. Even without the obvious financial benefits, I have found my time spraying leftovers from the bottom of plates to be a truly enriching experience, and one that I would genuinely recommend. Then again, I’m yet to set up an OnlyFans. That sounds way easier. 

Words by Will Garrood