I’ll be the first to admit, cooking has never really been my forte. Though to be fair, my cooking has gotten much better in recent years, “much better” meaning that I’m actually making an attempt to cook for myself and can successfully make toast that doesn’t crumble in my hands. Still, I’m convinced that I could live off cereal and peanut butter and jelly, or anything else that excludes cooking.
Untill there comes a day when there’s a market for the all exclusive cereal and peanut butter and jelly bar, I never pictured myself toiling at the grill of a small scale diner during the busy weekday lunch hours.
Yet toil I did in an afternoon working at the Caboose Diner on East Main Street in Norwich, thanks to the hospitality – and patience – of the diner’s owner and sole operator Kristina Passafiume. Passafiume awarded me the opportunity to work with her, side by side (and a little in the way) on a sunny Thursday afternoon, and generously overlooked the worst case scenario of me running out her customers and accidentally burning down her restaurant. I trekked the approximate 200 yards from the comfort of my cubicle at The Evening Sun office to the eatery housed by the unmistakable 100-year-old freight train caboose on East Main.
“It’s usually unpredictable,” Passafiume said while looking around at a still empty dining room at 11 a.m. “You never really know when you’re going to be busy and when it’s going to be a slow day.”
Still, even a lack of foot traffic yields no spare time for a diner owner flying solo. Passafiume was eager – almost too eager, in my opinion – to put me on dish duty. The pile of dishes left behind from the steady stream of breakfast regulars awaited. Usually, dishes aren’t a problem for me. I’ve done my own dishes for years and my broken plate count is still well under ten. However, I don’t usually wash spoons that have been in the mouths of strangers; but all is fair in the game of cook and serve.
Just before 11:30, the first lunch order came in. It was a call-in order from someone requesting that day’s special, a buffalo chicken wrap served with bleu cheese and side of chips. “But he doesn’t want it as a wrap because he says wraps are ‘girly food,’” Passafiume laughed. She took to the grill like a duck to water, tossing bits of raw chicken on to cook. I, as the rookie chef and someone who could manage to burn water, was put in charge of occasionally stirring the chicken on the surface of the grill to ensure even cooking – an important job in the right mindset (properly cooked chicken saves lives, I thought). I did the same for the next order, and the order after that. By the end of the day, I like to think I was the best raw chicken-shuffler on the northern end of Chenango County, falling just shy of using the spatula to invoke the same awe of a Hibachi chef.
Slowly but surely, the daily lunch crowd began to file in. Passafiume prides herself in getting to know her customers, calling most by their first name. “I love the conversations here,” she told me. “That’s probably one of the best parts of working in a diner.” Evidently, most customers feel the same as dining patrons returned the personal diner touch by calling her “Kris.” Not quite the stereotypical diner waitress names like “Flo” or “Margie,” but it presents that original diner feel just the same.
Passafiume put me in charge of waiting on a table of four customers sitting together at a corner booth; each of them ordered the special (more chicken-shuffling for me). When their food was ready, I carried it to them with a sense of style, grace and elegance acquired only through hours of working in a diner ... well, maybe I wasn’t so graceful, but at least nothing was spilled in the process.
The lunch rush is usually pretty brief, albeit busy at the Caboose, Passafiume said. “You should have been here the other day,” she told me. “It was so much busier than this.”
Customer by customer, the Caboose emptied out as slowly as it was filled, and one o’clock drew near. Most people left a generous tip (though not for me) on their way to the door. Having fulfilled my diner duties for the day, I followed suit, making my way back to the customer-free cubicle of The Evening Sun office.
All in all, not a bad day, Passafiume assured me. And nothing burned down.