Slothrop's Restaurant

[Rich Clavey]

Back at another restaurant where Fred and I used to work, there was a grease trap underneath the dish pit. A deep one. A fucking Jacuzzi of a grease trap. One night I was working and I saw water start to spread across the kitchen floor: backed-up toilet out in the hallway. Maybe it's a simple plumbing problem, I hoped. But then a turd floats in, then a tampon, then toilet paper, and then I noticed the grease trap steaming up. FUCK. This is 7:30 and the dining room is full.
The first option, the win-the-lotto option, was jam a coat hanger down the grease trap and see if it's a plastic bag blocking it or something. But it wasn't. And it was now three minutes later and the restaurant wasn't any less packed and there was shit water creeping up, so I did what you do if you want to go around calling yourself a chef: I took my shirt off and my friend and cook Alex held me by my ankles as I descended into the grease trap with the top half of my body.
My eyes closed, and my mouth closed. It was just muck. Fecal, bilious muck. And I put my hand in the drain and I pulled out who knows what--fucking pasta and flour and a nut of shit. I dug it out and heard a sucking sound of the trap emptying itself out and Alex pulled me out.
It was just like being covered in rotting corpse oil. It's in your eyes and your mouth and your ears, and it doesn't come off with just soap. I had to wash down as quick as possible, as best I could, and get back to cooking because the dining room's full and that's my fucking job. You're thinking about how nice your duck is and I'm thinking about the shit that's still down there deep in my ears.

From: The Art of Toilet Cleanliness According to Joe Beef/Lucky Peach #3


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