…then get out of the kitchen. It’s a phrase intended to describe pressure, more specifically one’s inability to handle it.  A fellow writer recommended a narrative book by journalist turned cook, Bill Buford entitled Heat: an Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. If you love food and want to learn more about how your three star meal is prepared then you’ll enjoy every minute of this read. 

My close friends know my affinity for great food.  Many of my earliest memories growing up in a small southern town involved food, and lots of it. Every Sunday night my Dad cooked steaks on the grill while my Mama baked potatoes, prepared garlic bread and made vegetables the way I’m sure God intended – with butter, salt and pepper – and a bit more butter. My Dad’s steaks were so good that for years I would never order a steak off a restaurant menu. There was no use since they never measured up to his medium rare sensations.  

Last week while visiting friends I was taken to a local steak house on Krog Street in Atlanta.  I was immediately mesmerized by the rustic and manly décor. For a Monday night it was bustling – not just full of local business types or conventioneers (although I learned later a dental convention was in town and occupied some of the tables that evening), but catering to what looked like locals reducing the pressure of a long day and those seeking their quota of protein for the week. Let’s see, should I order salmon, Berkshire pork chop or the duck dish outlined in the menu? I hear they are all outstanding. Oh, my goodness, it’s a steak restaurant and as they say, “When in Rome…” yeah, you know the rest. 

Kevin Rathbun’s Steak proved the point many already know – you need to eat red meat and drink red wine at a steakhouse. Two of my friends suggested I order steak and lobster so they could each have a bite of protein with their salads. In complying, I eagerly anticipated my medium rare (on the rare side) small filet with a succulent small lobster, with a side of garlic spinach. It was superb! 

Yet the best part of the evening came after dinner when my friends invited me to join them on the patio. Lo and behold, who was sitting at our patio table but Kevin Rathbun himself? A burly guy with a relaxed smile and the build of a former Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman, Kevin was relaxing at the end of a long evening enjoying a glass of wine and smoking a cigar – a couple of my other favorite pastimes.  Partaking in both, our conversation soon turned to the art of cooking and how Kevin acquired his magnificent skill.  He actually attended cooking school at a community college in Overland Park, Kansas, across the street from where I once lived. 

We talked at length about his love for food and the dynamics of true cooking. So I asked him, “do you need to attend a culinary academy to learn the art of cooking or could you teach a novice like me from scratch?”  I’m dying to learn to cook and experience the pressure and perfection every restaurant strives to achieve for each and every customer; and some are much more demanding than others. Kevin offered to give me that opportunity and I’m trying to figure out if I have the time to take him up on it. I wouldn’t dare try to duplicate Bill Buford’s masterpiece writing of Heat or his unforgettable experience, but I would like to write about a guy from Kansas and how he’s survived the cow eat cow, high pressure world of cooking the perfect steak hundreds of times each day. Now that’s pressure!