The Hope of D.C.'s Aproned Ranks

Miguel survives.

An Exhausting Reality

They are like beat-up linemen when they arrive the next morning. They stagger into the kitchen between 10 and 1, bleary-eyed and clutching backpacks, aprons, knife sets and travel mugs of coffee. Restaurant kitchens are competitive and macho. What Merkado's cooks lack in polish, education or income they make up for in determination. And yet most know their bodies won't last forever in the kitchen.

Joel, a sous-chef, has bandages wrapped around his knees, and he's hobbling from a callous on his foot that needs a doctor's attention, but when? Tonight, the restaurant opens to the public.

Moises had worked 19 hours the day before, not leaving until the last pan was washed at 5 in the morning. That demonstration of stamina brings additional work today when he is shown how to clean squid. Chef sees the expanded duties as a reward. "He's gonna say to me in three months, 'My other Spanish friends tell me I can make 50 cents an hour more at another restaurant,' and he's gonna leave," Chef says. "Maybe he will. But maybe he'll think, 'Should I really leave to go to P Street Bistro for 50 cents more an hour when they are empowering me at Merkado, from doing dishes to prepping squid?' That's nurturing. It's all perception."

Reality is that Moises is still being paid dishwasher wages.

Reality is also that he's smiling as he cuts the squid.

Miguel shows Moises how to slice more efficiently. "I got a lot of respect for these people who are coming from overseas," he says. "These are humble people, man. They are swallowing."

Miguel goes back to stuffing poblano peppers with goat cheese. He hums Hector Lavoe, an old salsa king from Puerto Rico. Miguel grew up in Cayey, where the scent of the mountains drifted down. He came to the United States when he was 8, stepping off the plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport in winter with no jacket. A burned-out part of the Bronx replaced the scent of the mountains, but the island inside him looms large. When the cooks make small talk about where they want to be buried, everyone knows Miguel's answer. "I'll be in the sky, I'm like a bird," he says.

"Back to the homeland, eh?" Chef asks.

In the Fire

The grill is off, and the air is cool. In the early afternoon, the kitchen is sanguine. There's a looseness and ease as the staff prepares for battle. Miguel and Joel discuss the disgrace of ordering steak well-done. "It's not right," Miguel says. "Why do they do it, man?"

Miguel and Joel have been friends since they were kids living in the same Puerto Rican neighborhood in the South Bronx. Both served time in prison, and both ended up in the District. "One day, I was walking down the street near the train station and I bumped heads with Joel," Miguel says, and ever since, they have worked at the same restaurants. Miguel is dark-skinned and Joel is light-skinned, but they are South Bronx all the way.

"You takin' my buttah, man?"

"No one takin' yo buttah."

Sometimes Chef, who has a Korean accent, tries out his Spanish.

Miguel and Joel stare blankly. "What the [expletive] is he sayin'?" Miguel says.

Chef laughs. The hour is still young.

But as the opening nears, the chopping quickens, and the talking stops. Dirty aprons are traded for clean ones. "Okay, everyone, this is what you've worked for," Chef says. Actually, they work to survive, month by month. But they are nervous with anticipation. The owner enters the kitchen. He watches costs like a hawk. In the garbage, he discovered that a tin of $80 caviar and several kitchen implements mistakenly had been thrown out. He puts them on a table the next day for all to see, a reminder to the kitchen staff to be more careful, but implicit in the quiet display is that he misses nothing.

"Are we ready to unlock the door?" the owner asks the cooks. Then he checks on Moises in the dishwashing room. "Moises, cansado tu ?" he asks. Moises beams cheerfully and nods his head. Yes, he is tired.

Miguel watches from the corner of the grill. He likes this owner.

At 5 sharp, the doors are unlocked. A button is pressed, and Cuban music fills the dining room, wiping away all memories of the P Street that Miguel used to know. Outside, a truck lets off a handful of Latino laborers who still use P Street as a pickup spot, though the Duron Paints store they clung to has been razed for condos. In the waning Friday afternoon sun, they slump against the curb and sidewalk, bleary-eyed from exhaustion or the beers they start to drink, and watch the passing parade, much of it streaming toward Merkado and the fresh $8 pineapple margaritas now being served.

By 8, there's an hour's wait for a table.

"We got pollo workin' hard, right?" Chef calls, turning to the grill, where Miguel is turning tuna and flipping steaks.

For the next four hours, they go full-tilt. Their break consists of a mad dash to the men's room once or twice. Tony the prep cook is not moving in synch with the rest of the line. He's dragging from his day job at the Wyndham Hotel. Earlier, Chef asked him whether he was able to work a full schedule at Merkado. "Of course I am," Tony said. But tonight, he's error-prone. When he makes a pork empanada instead of chicken, Chef gives a look of disgust. The others smell death.

"Focus," Chef yells.

For sanity, Miguel divides his mind in parallel tracts. Part of him is cooking and the other part is somewhere else.

"I'm thinking about my son," he says, anxiously, about the boy's upcoming surgery to reconstruct his windpipe, a high-risk procedure.

"I think about my friends in the penitentiary," he says. "Are they watching TV or writing letters or drawing?"

The flames of his grill grow higher. "I'm thinking about Venice, because I'd like to go there."

Looking Upward

Merkado is up and running. On the one-week anniversary, a rainy weekend night, customers order mussels and martinis, it's two-deep at the bar, and the wait is an hour. In the kitchen, the glow of the opening has worn off. The repetition of cooking the same thing over and over has begun.

Miguel's effort to drum up catering gigs on the side has paid off: A job comes in for a bridal shower for 40 in Maryland. He designs the menu -- petite filet mignon sandwiches and shrimp with tomatillo sauce, for starters -- shops for all the groceries, and in one brutal all-nighter after getting off from Merkado, prepares everything in his postage stamp-sized kitchen at home and delivers the food in a pouring rain the next morning.

"I need something on the side so I'm not just making somebody else rich," he says. He dreams of opening his own restaurant in Southeast, with good food and nice service. "People need to be respected and pampered," Miguel says. Last year, he took his fiancee to the chic Ceiba downtown for her birthday. Sitting in the suede chair, spending a half-week's wages on one dinner, he enjoyed himself fully. "Oh, no question, it was wonderful," he says.

Back at Merkado, the heat of the grill blasts him. Moises the dishwasher had his first day off and slept 22 hours. Now he's at the far end of the kitchen, delicately trimming a container of bright green things. " Como se llaman ?" Moises asks a sous-chef.

She turns to him and carefully enunciates: "Snow peas."

Two young new dishwashers have joined the crew, Ermis and Geraldo. Geraldo, who wears an FBI cap flipped backward and has a mouth of silver teeth, is covered in piquillo slop and empanada detritus. Joel shows him how to prep squid, saying in Spanish, "Watch what I'm doing. That way you won't have to stay a dishwasher forever."

Before the dinner rush, Joel dishes up two plates of chicken and rice and calls to Miguel, "Ask the kids, they are hungry in there?"

Miguel looks back toward Ermis and Geraldo in the dishwashing room. He smiles. "They hungry."

When the last of the orders are in at 11:30, Miguel and Joel step out into the alley for a smoke. They squat to relieve their knees. Their skin glistens from grease. They are damp with sweat. Above them are new lofts, glass and steel. "Just look at the way they got 'em all hooked up." Miguel says.

"Sweet," Joel says.

Back in the kitchen, everything has to be broken down. Cleaned. Hosed. Scrubbed. Taken apart. Washed. Dried. Put back.

The owner orders a rare steak, and he sits with a glass of wine. A manager joins him and then Chef. A bottle of red wine is brought to the table, and soon the creators of Merkado Kitchen are toasting their victory after months of work and sacrifice.

Miguel is standing on top of the grill, pulling down the stainless steel backsplash for washing. Sticking out of his pocket is his first week's paycheck: $596.75, including overtime.

Joel yells for the crew to hurry it up. "Let's try to break a record," he says. "I got 12 missed calls on my phone. Let's try to maintain a social life here."

Miguel gets home by 1:30. His fiancee and son are asleep. He goes out to the balcony. Their condo in Anacostia sits high on a ridge facing west, offering a poor man a millionaire's view. "My hideout," Miguel says. "This is the place I rest my head." He picks up his telescope and observes his city below: the Washington Monument, the Washington National Cathedral and somewhere in the field of lights, Merkado Kitchen.