“The restaurant business is perhaps the last meritocracy—where what we do is all that matters.” —Anthony Bourdain
I’ve idolized Anthony Bourdain for a while now. The rockstar of the restaurant industry, may his soul rest eternally, spoke of life and his experiences in a truly raw and unfiltered way. In other words, he talked about the pain and pleasure of the human experience through the lens of food and the volatility of the restaurant business. I’m not gonna pretend like I’ve had similar experiences or anything because, let’s be real, he was in the fiery epicenter of haute cuisine for longer than I’ve been alive. I was just an intern. But now that I’ve spent the last four months working in an Eastern Mediterranean restaurant called NENI, on both the administrative and service sides, I certainly have greater insight into the cultural connections and personal relationships that form through working in a restaurant than I did before. And let me tell you, I’ve never experienced a feeling of belonging as I do now.
The wonderful thing about NENI is how it feels like its own international microcosm within a restaurant in Amsterdam. A group of people from all corners of the world (Poland, Egypt, Uruguay, The Philippines, etc.) all came together to collectively accomplish the goal of making and serving high-quality Israeli, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Turkish food.
As a byproduct of Bourdain’s teachings, I’m someone who’s constantly hunting for new cultural experiences. I find myself getting irritated by the stagnation of life if I stay in the same place for too long or go a long time without traveling to new places. In fact, I’m writing this entry at a (sweltering) café in Genoa as I wait for my bus to Florence. Therefore, interning at NENI was a blessing for me as I was able to observe firsthand how these dishes were crafted (and tasted) on a daily basis. All of this and I was never more than a 20-minute tram ride from my apartment.
The flip side of this coin is that when busy, a restaurant is a turbulent environment. Emotions run high, the fast pace hardly letting up with few moments to catch a breath when the pass is rapidly filling up with plates that need to be taken to their tables. But the tradeoff is the sensation of true camaraderie that comes with enduring a hectic dinner shift with your colleagues and finishing the night off sharing a drink and a cigarette. Those moments and the bonds that form from them are what makes working at a restaurant so special.
I realize I didn’t write much about the Communication Science aspects of my internship but honestly, my tasks as a marketing intern (though fruitful, fulfilling, and invaluable for my professional career) weren’t what fascinated me about my experience at NENI. It was rather the people I met and the cultures I experienced that left an imprint on me. Thankfully, I was offered a position at NENI as a runner starting this autumn. I’m greatly looking forward to working there as I finish the last year of my Communication Science degree at UvA and potentially the years that follow. Come stop by for a pita falafel and say hello.