Aaron learns a lot more than he expected when he gets a job as a cook at a Chinese Restaurant owned by an Iraqi-American family.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Music: thomas j. duke
TRANSCRIPT
S3 Episode 5: The Chinese Restaurant - powered by Happy Scribe
Hi. My name is Maurice Benard, and I am from General Hospital and State of Mind. I was a guest on 7 Minute Stories last year. I'm a big fan. The reason I love 7 Minute Stories, first and foremost, because I love Aaron Calafato, and I love saying the name Aaron Calafato, but he's a great host. He's a big fan of mine. But we just had a great time. What can I say? Peace out.
You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato. This is Season 3. If you want to connect with us or grab some merch, visit us at 7minutestories.com. That's the number 7minutestories.com. This episode, the Chinese Restaurant.
I'm walking down this hallway and I hear this very distinctive sound. It was the Islamic call to prayer. As I'm walking, I'm wondering, "Where is that coming from?" I wasn't where you may expect. In fact, I was walking down a hallway inside of a mall. In fact, we called it the small because it was a small mall, and it was about 10 minutes outside of the university where I was attending in the early odd years at Bowling Green State University, and this was the little suburban mall.
At 6:15 AM in the morning, so the entire mall is closed, had no one in there. I had to go in through this little side door, and I was heading to the first day of my job at the Chinese American restaurant in the food court. As I'm heading towards the food court, the sound is getting louder and louder, and I realize, "Oh, it's coming from where I'm working." It's coming from this little radio that's in the back window of this kitchen. I look and I see the co-owner of the store, this woman, who is my boss.
Let me tell you quickly how I got to this moment. A day before, I'm sitting in the food court during the operating hours of the mall, and I'm eating Chinese food from this restaurant. I would go there all the time. I would have sweet and sour chicken, General Tso's Chicken, Mongolian beef. I was a fiend. I notice I'm spending all this money on Chinese food, and I don't have a job. I'm broke. I'm like, "I need some cash. I can't live this way."
I look over at the restaurant and I noticed something I didn't notice when I ordered, which was they had a help-wanted sign. I walk over to the counter and I meet this guy. I asked him, I'm like, "Do you work here?" He goes, "Yeah, my wife and I own this restaurant." He tells me this amazing story about how he and his wife had moved from Iraq here. They've become citizens, they have daughters who are going to school, and they recently bought this restaurant from a Korean American family, and he was really excited because he got all these recipes, and he thought this Chinese restaurant was going to make him rich.
But he's like, "I really need help just lessening the load and helping in the kitchen and cooking and preparing." He's like, "Can you cook?" I was like, "Well, I can cook Italian food." He said, "Any cook that can cook Italian food can cook any food." He goes, "You're hired. I'll pay you minimum wage and I'll let you eat all the food that you want, and you can eat with my family and I the food that we prepare after business hours." I was like, "That's great."
That's how I ended up standing in front of this little restaurant on my first day of work at dawn, not knowing what I was getting into or what I was doing. I make eye contact with this woman, his wife, the co-owner of the store, and she comes out front. Before she does, she turns down the radio because I think she had just finished praying. She comes out, and she smiles and I smile at her. I wanted to make a good impression, so I walked up quickly and put my hand out and said, "Hey, my name is Aaron. Nice to meet you," to shake her hand.
She smiled and put her hands up and said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She blushed a little bit. She was like, "I can't shake your hand without my husband or my family present." Inside my head. I'm like, "Oh, Aaron, what an idiot. Way to make a great first impression." I didn't know the religious custom here.
She was graceful with me. She could tell I was embarrassed. It was an awkward first exchange, but we got over it and she walked me into the back of the kitchen and showed me her domain, everything that she did in this restaurant. It became very clear, even on the first day, she ran this place.
She may be a co-owner, but she was the boss. She was the heart and soul and the blood pumping through this restaurant. She taught me everything back there, everything she had to do in the morning, like taking the meat that came in, the raw meat, from the distributor, putting it on these trays in rows and then putting it into the freezer and freezing it. You have these giant frozen rows of meat, beef and chicken.
Then she would take it by hand and slice it with a meat slicer. These things had to be 50 pounds each, I swear. She's slicing this without blinking an eye. Then she takes the slices and makes them into smaller slices by hand with a knife. Then she's like, "You try." I'm trying it, I can't even do it for 10 minutes. I'm sweating. I'm like, "I want to quit." I really almost did.
But there was just something about our developing friendship, because I noticed that I liked every time I got better at something, she would have a little bit more time to just sit down for a second or have a cup of tea. I'm sure she's thinking in her head, "See, you're not such a wuss." I still was, but I was getting better.
Then she taught me how to cook using the wok. This was amazing because she was a ninja. I have never seen artistry like this in my life. She took the wok with the vegetables that she had pre-cut perfectly, and the meat and the oil. She's flipping it six different ways and using her knee to adjust the flame underneath. It was something out of a movie. It was unbelievable. Then she's like, "I'm going to teach it to you." So she teaches me.
Her husband would always work in the front and deal with the customers, and I'm making the food. I had a line around the food court where I used to sit. People eat my General Tso's Chicken and sweet and sour chicken and Mongolian beef and all this stuff.
Between all of this chaos, she and I would have conversations. She would ask me about my life, my family, where I came from, what my aspirations were, my dreams, all this stuff. I would talk to her about her journey over here from Iraq and living in America and raising a family here and the beautiful experiences she had here, but also because it was only a couple of years after 9/11, some of the horrible ignorance she had to deal with and the hate and the vitriol, some of the things that were said to her on a daily basis. It was really hard to hear that, especially getting to know her.
After we would close up the restaurant, she would feed me and I would eat with her family. It was this amazing experience of eating food that she would cook. Oh, my gosh, it was unbelievable. This went on for months and months. Eventually, things changed with my schedule, and I had to quit. That was a really difficult day because I had to say goodbye. I know it was hard for her, too. I could tell she even got a little emotional when I told her that I had to go on.
I guess the one lesson that I learned even from that last day, it was very poignant. We were really busy in the kitchen and I'm making lunch and she was back there helping out. But I was really so busy that rice was going everywhere, more than usual all over the floor. I saw her on her hands and knees picking up every single grain of rice and putting it in her pocket and then throwing it away. I was like, "No, listen. I can sweep all of this up later. Don't worry. Let's just get through the lunch hour."
She said, "Listen. I'm sorry, I can't, because if you and I step on any of these grains of rice, it's like stepping on the mouths of people who can't eat." That's always stuck with me even now when I cook in the kitchen decades later. When I spill a piece of rice on the ground, I pick it up. I get on one knee, I pick it up, and I throw it away, and I think about her and our little Chinese restaurant.
7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken Wendt. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead, original music by TJ Duke. If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company Valley View does just that. Reach out to them at valleyview.fm. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts, and I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
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