John Clarke gets to the hard core of every kitchen.

At the end of the bar at the end of the night, well clear of the gaggle of giggling women and braying young men, a solitary figure is hunched over his drink. This is your line chef, pencil in hand going over the next day’s prep list and orders sheet.

Our industry has many arms, legs and heads, but its backbone is the line cook.

What we mean in New Zealand by line chefs is rather different from what they mean in the northern hemisphere. We don’t have large kitchens with brigades of chefs, as they do in Europe where line cooks are required to be consistent, accurate and mindlessly repetitive. True, in New Zealand’s tiny, under-manpowered kitchens we need these skills too, but much, much more is required. For the restaurateur the line chef is solid gold.

Without these guys and girls the industry would fall on its face. They don’t need to be the greatest culinary innovators in the world, banging out a new signature dish every week. Often the best aren’t classically trained and for many their first honorific was not chef, it was probably dish bitch.

You know who they are.

They are the poor bastards you have just put the hard word on to come in at short notice. The ones you can always hit up to do back-to-back shifts. They may grumble, but they get there, even if they sweat like a pig for the first hour or so. Because after that one drink hunched over in your bar they go out to the hospo rat holes where our late nighters unwind from the tension of their jobs, usually until dawn.

Chances are the reason they do their jobs with such care and perseverance is not because they are sleeping with the owner, although it’s not that unknown. No, their reason for being there is just that line chefs are strange beasts and the kitchen happens to be their natural environment.

Line chefs tend to be nocturnal by nature and by the time they are any good they suffer from chefs’ leprosy and bad feet. They go to bed thinking about today and wake up thinking about today.

By the time they stagger in to work they have a pretty good idea what the shift will throw at them. They will be hoping the prep is up, but will expect it won’t be and have worked out the weaknesses in the brigade and will be prepared. They have their own favourite implements, usually well hidden from the kitchen riff raff, and spare cloths secreted in unlikely places. Their mise-en-place is always completed without hassle and they cope quickly with any prep shortfalls.

These guys don’t plan, they prepare. Planning is for those who don’t think. And you need to think on your feet. They may not be great strategic thinkers but most are tactical geniuses.

As the line of dockets grows they are in the midst of service and suddenly the kitchen is slammed. This is when they shine.

Now is when all the preparations come together, when they need to be at their most efficient and when they will start bitching about lack of consideration out front; about the inability of waiters to organise a brewery picnic.

But if you have time to stand back and watch them hold a kitchen together, you will see organisation and skill that at its best is ballet. They have the ergonomics down pat and all the moves – in a smooth kitchen there is no wasted action. The good ones are aware of whole operations and move with spooky precognition. There may be dangerous, hot gear all over the place, stressed waiting staff, orders piling up, but they keep all the essential balls in the air, and they do it with pride. This is their strength.

Between them line chefs will know every dish on menu and how to fix a quick sauce or patch a mistake without missing a beat or losing concentration. They quickly rearrange their timing when they need to react to the inevitable disaster. Most important they are fast and consistent, and they are inevitably clean.

The fact is most line chefs hope for a slow night, but the best thrive on pressure, (which is perhaps why the slow nights have the most cock-ups) and the hotter the service the better they perform. Then, after 300 or so couverts they turn to and clean down their station, do the ordering for the next day and check the prep lists. They might even grab that one staff drink the boss so kindly offers. Then they will probably slip across to the petrol station, on the way to some drinking hole to chill out, and grab a maggot pack – because the last thing they want to face is the food they have been bashing out all night.

You know that things will work when you walk into a kitchen as a guest chef and there’s this type of team. These are the professionals. When you show them what you want they don’t complain, although they may gently suggest a few local variations before they settle down to it without hassle.

It is always gratifying to start in a kitchen containing a bunch of these guys, to slot into a hot night knowing that they’ve got it together even if you haven’t. You don’t have to look over your shoulder, you know it’s right and that they have the capacity to make any executive chef look as good as his or her reputation.

Given their role, the lifestyle of a line chef is not generally conducive to placid domesticity, and there are too many examples of chef burn-out, of individuals swearing off the trade and kitchen pallor for life.

But there is a good chance that in six months time you will find them in another shop bashing pans again. They answered a call, confidently walked into another kitchen and picked up the pieces. They can take up any station with ease, backing up and doing damage control. Coming from who-knows-where they pick lost establishments and help put them back on the rails.

Revivers and sustainers, good line cooks carry an immense store of knowledge and experience that makes them the core intelligence of our kitchens. They pass on a massive fund of tricks and skills to those they mentor, and are the ones who give the restaurant business its backbone. Everybody in the hospitality business knows who they are, and they deserve our respect.

These are the guys that invented staunch and they will be back – tonight.