Just imagine how frustrating it would be to shine forks for hours on end. How long could you really do it? And how long would a restaurant even need you to do it? If guests get a new fork every course, how many forks would that be? Two thousand a night? Three thousand? At 20 seconds a fork, you could knock out 2,000 in a little over 11 hours of work. But lord, what a mind-numbing 11 hours that would be.
That’s why you have to sympathize with Richie a little in “Forks.†Carmy sent him to stage for a week at what’s supposed to be the best restaurant in the world, and Richie, seeing basically no alternative, gets his ass out of bed at 5:38 a.m. to go shine forks for seven straight days. He’s convinced it’s a punishment — Carmy getting him out of the way — but after a conversation with his supervisor Garrett (Andrew Lopez), he starts to come around. Perhaps it’s the realization that 5,000 people are on the restaurant’s waiting list at any given point or Garrett’s impassioned speech about “how stoked they are to see us and how stoked we are to serve them,†but Richie comes to respect his hours spent de-streaking forks at the culinary equivalent of the Super Bowl. He also comes to respect the work and time everyone puts into the restaurant, which he seems to take a particular shine to after sitting in on a meeting that includes a discussion about comping a couple’s meal after seeing a note on social media about how they’re teachers who have been saving up for years to dine at a three-star spot.
(Side note: I wasn’t sure how Richie would take the whole “berating everyone for a smudge†thing, but he seemed okay with it. Perhaps it was the spiel about how “We’re not children. It’s okay to make mistakes. We can smudge things, but we need to own up to them with immediacy, integrity, and honesty.†Also, who smudged that plate? Do we think it was Richie, somehow?)
While Richie’s on break, he gets a call from his ex-wife, Tiffany, whom we now know is played by Gillian Jacobs. While Richie has good news about Uncle Jimmy getting three Taylor Swift tickets, she’s calling to let him know that Frank proposed and, she said yes. They both seem kind of sad about the whole thing, but it’s also clear that Richie’s ship with Tiffany sailed a long time ago, and they’re both just doing what they hope is best for their daughter (and that includes Richie embracing his T. Swift fandom with a solo “Love Story†sing-along in his car later in this episode).
The morning after the teacher couple gets free dinner, Richie comes in to discover that he’ll actually be trailing Garrett instead of just shining forks. He takes to the job like a fish to water, save all the cussing. When he tells Garrett that wearing a suit is “like armor,†Garrett quips back, “Yeah, man, that’s the point,†which it seems Richie takes to heart. For the rest of the day, through Garrett and a woman named Jess (Sarah Ramos) who expedites in the kitchen (and who I think Richie might be a little sweet on), the elder cousin learns the ropes, picking up tips about how servers get messages across without talking in the dining room or kitchen, how restaurants research their guests, and how, to quote Jess, “every night we make someone’s day.†He also sees the wonder on guests’ faces when they’re served everything from a “hibiscus cloud†to a surprise take on Chicago deep-dish pizza, which he helps execute with a quick run to Pequod’s. (Which is hands down the best deep dish in Chicago, though I would argue that the chef’s cookie-cutter scenario robbed the guests of the caramelized crust that is part of what sets it well above others.)
In fact, when Richie gets the honor of delivering the deep dish, he even gives the table a little hospitality spiel, telling them he’d never let them leave town without sampling one of his favorites, trying to sell a few more drinks, and making a little joke about how “that old-fashioned’s not going to finish itself.†(He also calls Bacardi and Diet Coke “a little B&D,†which I will now use forever, thanks.) Later on, we see him back in the kitchen doing some timed blind tasting, correctly identifying apple cider gastrique, something I wouldn’t have thought he could do even hours earlier, so whatever he’s learning must be working.
Unfortunately for Richie, his week at the restaurant is almost over. He marks its close with another meaningful chat with Garrett, who started his dalliance with “acts of service†during his sobriety journey, as well as some quality time with Chef Terry, who — surprise! — is played by Olivia Colman. She’s cleaning mushrooms in the kitchen because she thinks it’s “a nice little fun detail that, when the diners see it, they know someone spent a lot of time on their dish.†Like Richie, Terry’s dad was also in the military and made a point of teaching her standards and self-reliance, and she’s brought that into her work in the kitchen. Time spent doing something like cleaning mushrooms, she tells him, seems like time well spent, as well as a sign of respect.
Chef also tells Richie that she knows Carmy, and Richie apologizes for Carmy calling in a favor. She tells him that, actually, she didn’t do Carmy a favor; she took Richie on for a week because Carmy said he believed in him and that he was good with people. Richie and Terry seem to get along like a house on fire. He quickly opens up to her about how Donna was like a mom to him, and she tells him about crashing and burning on a much larger restaurant years ago.
It’s never too late to start over, Chef Terry says, before sliding into a story about how, when her dad died, she cleaned out his stuff and came to learn all about this man she never really knew. It turns out he kept notebooks with hundreds of entries, all things she thinks he wanted to pointedly remember, from the shape of palm trees to a time he tried escargot to “this time the ocean looked purple.†He signed each entry off with the same line, which she’s about to say but gets called away before she completes. It’s then Richie realizes the significance of the phrase written on the prominently placed sign in the kitchen: “Every second counts.â€
It’s a lesson you’ve got to hope Richie takes to heart, and this episode suggests he will. Sure, he’s 45, but he’s not dead, and he knows now what he loves and sees the purpose he was flailing after back in episode one. Let’s see if he can make something out of the years — and episodes — left to come.
Small Bites
• The restaurant where Richie is staging is fictional but was filmed at Ever, which has two Michelin stars and is run by Chef Curtis Duffy, formerly of Grace (and the 2016 documentary about it). Chef Duffy cooked all the food seen in this episode — including that cotton candy, which is on Ever’s menu through the summer.
• On Richie’s last day in the restaurant, he walks down a hall and there’s a pic of Carmy and Luca framed and hanging on the wall. That confirms that, yep, Luca was talking about Carmy, and that somehow both chefs know Chef Terry, even though I can’t really see, timeline-wise, how they would have worked either with her or in one of her Chicago restaurants unless she also worked in Denmark at some point in the past 14 years? Even though this restaurant opened in 2011?
This recap has been updated with information about the restaurant featured in the episode.
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