🍽️ From Chef to Dish Pit Dharma: A Summer in a Swiss Pop-Up Kitchen
On paper, working as an assistant chef at Bar im Museumspark, a summer pop-up tucked behind the grand, castle-like Bern Historical Museum, sounded like a dream gig.
The menu had been developed by Markus Arnold, the mind behind Bern’s Michelin-starred Steinhalle and after reading up on him, was stoked to be whipping up Greek-inspired dishes from scratch like eggplant tartare, hummus, and wrapping spinach filled momos. It felt like a solid opportunity to learn under a chef like Markus and expand my culinary horizons.
Reality
But on the first day, as the head chef took us through the prep, it became clear this was more like a “single mother with three kids who buys a bunch of frozen food and brings it home and heats it up” type of job. Aside from chopping cucumbers, dicing tomatoes and slicing red onions, all of the heavy hitters; the momos, tartare and even the hummus, came straight from a freezer.
Regardless, I was excited to meet Markus, to look into the eyes of what the gastronomy world calls greatness and catch a glimpse of that fire and creativity. He came in briefly during one shift to drop off some ingredients and inform the head chef how he would like them utilized.
That was all.
It had the energy of one of those exchanges where someone of power comes along, fully expecting everything be immediately directed towards them, where he then says what he has to say and moves on with his day, as if annoyed he must engage with people lower than himself.
As my path continued to cross with people who had worked with him, the most common word used to describe him, often muttered with a cautious glance around, was “asshole.” One person, when I gently pried into their experience, caught themself mid-sentence, looking like they might cry. They said they couldn’t find the words, but instead shared a moment that summed it up: him scolding them with lines like, “Excuse me, but are you stupid?” or, “You know, you should just quit.”
Maybe it’s for the best if our paths don’t cross…
Unless I Break a Beautiful Decadent Glass Dish
Although... the other day, after finishing my shift and loading the dishwasher, I managed to break what was undoubtedly a very expensive, decadent piece of décor, a glass cake-serving dish with a grand base of ribboned edges and a large dome lid crowned by a solid, ornate glass knob. All I did was place it in the plastic dishwasher rack, and it just… poofed. A clean triangular shard dislodged itself and rested nobly against the plastic mold like it was mocking me.
Only time will tell if Markus asks my supervisor who the “fucking idiot” was that broke it, and maybe, just maybe, he'll want to see for himself.
🔥 Heat, Hustle, and Head Trips
Anyway, the job is either one of those where you show up and sit with you thumb up your ass watching the clock slowly tick by or trying to catch all the shit hitting the fan. Straight to cutting, shredding, and packing containers to the brim for the soon-to-come onslaught of orders that won’t stop until the doors close. It’s fast, in-your-face work, exactly what I was hoping for.
“when washing dishes, wash dishes” - a Thich Nhat Hanh rendition.
The kitchen is a wooden furnace in the summer heat. We’ve got one fan that just blows hot air back in our faces and by late afternoon, sweat rolls down my face in steady streams. Usually i am stationed right next to a roaring charcoal fire-oven where we grill the chicken and wurst. When I’m not next to that, my hands are moving pitas on and off a heavy iron panini press that radiates heat like a whore in church.
But honestly, it’s not the heat or the mountain of orders that’s the hardest part.
It was figuring out how to work alongside the head chef.
The head chef: a skinny black guy with a laid-back Jamaican vibe, the kind who greets you with a “wagwaan, maaan” and a slow nod like life’s just a warm breeze. Then there was the dishwasher, a 20-year-old kid from Mallorca, Spain. A workhorse. If I owned a restaurant, I’d a hired him yesterday: respectful, fast, eager. A model of work ethic.
And yet, every time I heard the chef try to “teach” him something, like how to drop fries in the fryer, I’d stop mid-chop and think, What the actual fuck is he saying? Instructions so mangled they could’ve been performance art.
Not only were his directions like following the flight path of a fly, but they changed just as erratically. He’d start showing us how to do something, and then, mid-something, he’d freeze for a beat, eyes glazing over like the gears in his brain just ground to a halt. Then, without warning, he’d pivot and show us a completely different way, like the first version never happened. As if we wouldn’t notice.
He seemed blissfully unaware of this. So when you’re standing there, cutting tomatoes exactly the way he showed you five minutes ago, he’d swoop in and casually rip you a new asshole for not cutting them the way he’d now like them cut, making it seem like you’re the one who didn’t listen. He ordered never to put knives in the dishwasher and then turned around and dropped one in himself. And the list goes on… If you tried to defend yourself, he’d flip it, get defensive, act like you were the problem and send you on break like a scolded kid. He was a walking contradiction that made this job feel like walking on egg shells.
💧The Moment Everything Shifted
And then one night, it all came to a head.
I was on dish duty, busting my ass to keep up with the pileup of returned plates and cups, trying to keep the return table clear for customers. He came over and asked for help, he needed tubes of salad dressing filled immediately. I dropped what I was doing and filled them as quickly as I could. Inevitably, while I helped him, the dishes piled up on the table.
When I handed him the full bottle, instead of thanking me, he lit into me. Rushed over and cleared the return table by tossing the dishes into the sink and thoroughly slammed me for letting the counter overflow. Reeming into me that I needed to keep the space clean, smile at customers, thank them, just do my fucking job.
It nearly broke me. I took it as a deep personal slice. He’d been head chef at this pop-up for over three years. He knew the flow. And in that moment, I believed he’d set me up, ordered me to help him knowing it would make me fall behind, just to have a reason to tear me down. It didn’t feel like a coincidence. It felt like a calculated, psychological jab. And this occasion wasn’t rare. It was just one example, the straw that broke the camels back. So after the wave of customers, I took my dinner break and started planning how to talk to him, not to attack, but just to tell him how it made me feel.
But when I walked back into the kitchen, I saw him, on his knees, sleeves rolled up, busting ass at the sink scrubbing under the shelving unit. Doing my job. Doing any job to finish the day as soon as possible. And seeing that shifted something in me. Maybe it hadn’t been personal. Maybe he hadn’t set me up. Maybe that was just the way he moved. Intense, reactive, tunnel-focused. Regardless, one thing was clear: the man worked hard. And from that moment on, I saw him differently. He wasn’t too proud to do the dirtiest jobs. He was there to grind.
🥊 Grit, Grime, and Grace
Since then, we’ve slowly come together. Found a rhythm. AKA I became a very obedient dog that never did anything but what he asked despite my internal disagreements or ideas of doing it better. I laugh when he lays into the young Spaniard for not understanding his dog shit way of explaining things. And now, for the most part, we just work. He’s seen my work ethic , I’ve seen his and somewhere in all that, a mutual respect took root. I’ve come to enjoy his presence, (when he’s not laying into me) and sometimes even look forward to it. He pulls me out of my head, opens a release valve for the pressure I carry.
And as much as he drives me up the fucking wall, I can look him in the eyes while he tears into me and still see the armor. Thick and sturdy, built from decades of constantly fighting to keep his place. He told me he’d come to Switzerland as a refugee from Africa over 25 years ago, still basically a kid. Based on my own experience here, I can’t begin to imagine what that must’ve been like. Starting over from scratch in a foreign land, no language, no safety net. A Black man in a very white world, trying to survive and stay standing.
There’s something raw about his hustle, he has this edge, a grit that comes from having to fight for everything. He’s always dropping stories, nights in jail, life on the street, navigating the system as a refugee, working odd jobs with others in similar positions. Through him, I’ve come to understand just how little I know about the rest of the world. I grew up so focused inward, taught to see America as the center. Meanwhile, people like him are crossing oceans and borders just to find a foothold, something most Americans never think about, let alone understand. But he’s lived it. And hearing it firsthand, seeing it in motion, I can't help but respect it. Behind the contradiction, the chaos and the wonky instructions, is someone with a kind heart and who makes the world a better place, despite fighting for every inch of it.
🧘♂️ Lessons in Fire
I treated this job like a personal test. Like he was some kind of twisted guru disguised as an angry little chihuahua, constantly nipping at my ankles, testing my patience, my self-control, my ability to stay calm under pressure. I’ve always believed that people like that cross our path to teach us something, giving one an opportunity to evolve. It’s up to the individual to reframe their perspective in order to adapt to their situation.
And I sit back and laugh at my ignorance, at the idea thatI think I know what i need to evolve. That every time I think I know what’s coming, life throws a curveball. I thought this gig would just be a temporary skill-builder, pay the bills for a few months, give us some breathing room, figure out our next move. But no. Life decides to turn it into an emotional and psychological test. And it reminds me of an Alan Watts quote, how underneath it all, its not certainly that we want as humans, rather its uncertainty :
“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
🥖 Chnöpfi’s Is Coming
It makes me wonder if this is life showing me without telling me what will continue to happen if i continue to put my urge to start something on the back burner. Like when I got here, instead of creating, I played it safe.
Tried to work for Patrice at COPAIN (failed).
Applied to every fitness gym in Bern (failed).
Tried stacking hours as a garbage man (failed).
Yet all along, I’ve known exactly what I want.
So Nicole and I are going for it.
We’re buying an oven, just big enough to crank out enough bread to start a micro- sourdough bakery.
We’re calling it Chnöpfi’s — button in Swiss German — after Lou’s nickname, Knopf. (button in High German)