Recipe for Disaster

Recipe for Disaster 

“Recipes are just algorithms — right?”

“Uh… yeah, in a way.”

“So, do it. I dare you!”

You don’t dare me when it comes to food preparation. Usually. Because I’ll take the challenge!

I’m a competent cook — not a five-star Michelin chef, by any means. Who would want to be? 

Imagine the stress… it would take all the fun out of cooking!

Which brings the side point: is cooking still actually fun, in my daily job?

I’m not even sure whether I qualify as a chef. What is a chef, exactly? 

Technically, chef de cuisine is a fancy French term that, in plain English, means “head of the kitchen”. I’m certainly that.

But “chef” tends to imply some sort of high-class culinary training with a certificate of completion. 

I don’t have certificates to hang on the wall. There’s the occasional splatter of sauce on the splashback (why do you think it’s called that?) when I try to multitask too much — does that count?

So, anyway, back to the challenge.

Gino — his name is really Gene, but everybody calls him Gino — is trying to convince me to revamp the menu. 

“Gino. The customers don’t care about the menu. This is a truck stop,” I remind him. “Most of them probably can’t tell you the restaurant’s name. I’ve heard them on the phone: ‘Oh, I’m eating at the truck stop…Yeah, it’s a decent place… Food’s good, plenty of it, prices aren’t bad.’”

“Yeah, but — ” he tries.

“And furthermore,” I interrupt, “Mack would have a hissy fit if I did that without notice!”

🥘 

Mack gives us the go-ahead. 

We don’t exactly tell him how we plan to go about the menu revision, just that we are bored with fixing the same six dishes day in, day out. 

Our dinner menu consists of the standard truck stop diner fare: fried chicken, chicken fried steak, flat iron steak, meatloaf, pork chops, fish filet, and a weekly chef’s special. The weekly special is what keeps me going.

But my food is better-than-standard quality. We don’t use pre-made or canned anything. It’s all from scratch. Still, it would be nice to mix things up a little.

Mack’s one proviso is, “Don’t mess with Ray’s breakfast menu.”

Ray is in charge of the kitchen from five to eleven a.m. (In my life, five a.m. doesn’t exist. I’m asleep.)

He’s a grizzled older guy, former military mess hall cook with an ever-present toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth. I don’t know if he ever changes it. That toothpick could be older than I am…  

When he talks, the toothpick wiggles up and down. It’s mesmerizing.

Ray does basic food really well: fluffy scrambled eggs, perfectly browned sausage patties, bacon cooked to order, the best oatmeal you’ve ever had. And really, really good sourdough pancakes.

“We won’t mess with breakfast,” we promise.

🥘

“So — what are we going to replace? Everything? Are we expanding, completely revising? What?”

Gino is chopping cabbage for coleslaw. 

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

We go through a lot of cabbage.

“Well, it’s up to you, but I was thinkin’, if we’re gonna do it, might as well go whole hog.”

He answers without looking up, because I have strict rules about knife safety in my kitchen.

I mull over the idea as I mix up a batch of meatloaf, on auto pilot because I do this every day. Ten pounds of ground beef mixed with one of sausage. A dozen eggs. We sell a lot of meatloaf.

If you want to taste it, come on down to the truck stop. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Except, we may be taking it off the menu.

🥘

Before I go on, I’d better introduce Charlene. She’ll be peeved if I don’t. 

Charlene’s our waitress. We're not up-to-date enough to call her a “server”. 

Besides, she’s not the type to bounce up, flash her teeth, and cheerily inform you,

“Hello, my name is Charlene, and I’ll be your server today.”

Nope — she’ll march up to your table, Crack! her gum, and ask,

“What can I getcha, hon?”

But she’s a pro. She takes orders with her hands behind her back, never writes them down, and never makes a mistake.

So that’s Charlene.

🥘

This whole thing with the menu overhaul started with Chip.

Chip is Gino’s brother. He’s several years younger than Gino — only sixteen — and he’s a whiz at computer coding. He does freelance work, and has a chunk of money put away already.

Currently, Chip is obsessed with neural networks. 

Chip explained to Gino — who told me — how these mysterious virtual brains function. 

I’ll probably get the terminology wrong, but the idea is that you can train an AI to understand patterns of human language.

AI programs “learn” from data, so when they’re trained to recognize desired patterns, they can classify input and predict what is reasonable to the human brain.

They operate on algorithms, which are processes or sets of rules. 

Recipes are processes and sets of rules.

Cooking is science.  

Sooo… with the proper input, machines can create recipes. 

I’m not sure I like that.

🥘

I can’t sleep. My mind is darting all over the place, thinking about possible reactions to the upcoming menu makeover.

Maury. Maury is a long-haul trucker who shows up every couple of months. He never fails to order meatloaf, with sides of mushroom gravy and coleslaw. He’s a giant of a man, nearly seven foot, with a bit of a paunch. A gentle giant.

I’d hate to disappoint Maury. 

What if he has a secret life as a serial killer? 

Bob and Carol Altenreuther. They’re locals who come in about once a month. 

Bob likes variety. Carol most often orders fried chicken, because she doesn’t like making it herself. 

Bob’s mother, old Mrs. Altenreuther, came to live with them about six months ago. Her first visit to the diner was quite an experience.

Picture this:

I’m stirring mushroom gravy, inhaling the familiar earthy scent while pork chops sizzle on the griddle.

I feel a sneeze building up, as usual, five minutes after sprinkling pepper on the chops. I can almost time it.

“Aaaa-chmpf!” I stifle the sneeze in the crook of my elbow, grab the mushroom sauce off the burner with one hand, and pull a tissue from the nearby box with the other.

I’m blowing my nose when Charlene pokes her head in the door.

“Callie!” she stage whispers, and flicks a thumb toward the dining area. “Customer wants to see you!” 

Crack! goes her gum.

Oh, no…Good, or bad?

“Gino! Keep an eye on the chops, willya?”

I wash my hands and follow Charlene.

Bob and Carol are seated at their favorite table with a tiny elderly woman. She looks up as I approach, her fuzzy white hair backlit from the lamp shining behind her.

“Are you the cook?” she creaks, spearing a chunk of meatloaf. She’s squinting at me appraisingly, but I can’t read the expression in her beady, birdlike, dark eyes.

“Yes, I am,” I acknowledge, nodding, with a tentative smile.

She swirls the forkful of meat in a puddle of mushroom gravy and raises it to her mouth. I watch as a blob of gravy drops onto her blouse.

“Well, dear,” she says, popping the food in while she talks, “Congratulations!” She points the fork at me and uses it to punctuate her next words.

“Thish ish the besht meatloaf I’ve ever eaten!”

She refuses to try anything else on the menu.

Maybe we should keep the meatloaf.

🥘

I know it’s after 2:00 when I finally fall asleep. Going to take a lot of Ray’s coffee to keep me running today.

Gino and I sit at the booth closest to the kitchen, absently slurping coffee and shoveling in scrambled eggs while we brainstorm a list of ingredients. 

I’m feeling stressed from lack of sleep. What are we doing? I wonder to myself. Here we are at the diner, during our own free time, plotting a new menu. 

“What will the algorithm do,” I wonder aloud, “if we give it ingredients we don’t usually use together? Will it try to combine them? Will it make separate recipes?”

“Dunno,” Gino shrugs. “That’s the fun of it!”

🥘

Chip’s still in high school, so he has to fit in the recipe renovation between school, homework, and his freelance contracts.

But he’s jazzed about it, so he’s got the results of his first attempt ready in just a few days.

I stare at the printout. It’s gibberish!

“Chip…” I don’t know what to say. 

“Don’t worry,” he reassures me. “I mean, I got this. Ya know, babies aren’t born knowing how to, like, talk. They have to go through, like, a babbling stage, then a few words, and so on, ya know, until they can, like, communicate. This –” he jabs his finger at the page, “is the program, ya know, babbling. I’m, like, um –” A red flush creeps up his neck, staining his pimply cheeks. He’s embarrassed, for some reason.

“A-a parent,” he stutters awkwardly. “I-I mean, as far as teaching the AI to, ya know, like, talk.”

Clearly, Chip is better equipped to communicate with machines than humans.

🥘

Chip is a computer geek. He doesn’t know beans about cooking, and I don’t fault him for that. He can’t tell if or when the algorithm turns data into a palatable recipe.

“Umm, how’s this?” he asks hopefully. “Is it, like, good yet?”

I hate to disappoint the kid, but I am not optimistic when I see the title:

“We rolled a piece of meat.”

It does have the format of a recipe though. 

I glance through it, holding back a chuckle at some of the “data and processes”.

It seems to be a sort of meat pie in a puff pastry. Sounds pretty good! Beef, onion, eggs, garlic. Red sauce? Could be ketchup.

But then the AI goes rogue and adds an unreasonable quantity of fresh pineapple, some peanut butter, way too much sugar, and a couple of exotic-sounding things that turn out to be (according to Google) of West African origin. 

I take a deep breath and look Chip in the eye.

“I can work with it,” I tell him, and high-five his sweaty palm.

🥘

Cooking is science. Recipes are processes and sets of rules.

But that’s not enough.

A good cook has to interpret the ingredients of a recipe — say, in the way a musician interprets a musical score, or a writer interprets a collection of thoughts.

Cooking is fun when people enjoy the food.

We have some new specials — but we’re keeping the meatloaf. 

Come on down!