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A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

After a night of scrubbing, our food critic understands why top chefs are trying to give the position its due.

After years of performing tasks no one else wants to do — cleaning nasty messes, taking out trash, polishing Japanese wine glasses priced at $66 a stem (at Quince in San Francisco) — the unsung heroes of the kitchen might be finally getting their due. And in July, workers at the esteemed French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., one of master chef Thomas Keller’s 12 U.S. restaurants and bakeries, voted to give their most prestigious company honor, the Core Award, to a dishwasher: Jaimie Portillo, who says he has never missed a day of work in seven years. The slightest pause in the action, and they’re looking for something to do, whether it’s returning a 40-quart, half-their-size mixing bowl to its proper station or taking out the trash, which involves maneuvering plastic bins full of solids and liquids through the confines of the kitchen, through a cooler and a storage room and the rear of Caracol.

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