Miles Collins

In fifteen dialects…..

A prerequisite for any chef is that he/she knows what is on the menu, it helps when it comes to service. As blindingly obvious as this might seem I have worked with many chefs who, prior to service haven’t got a clue what is on the menu and fifteen years ago, standing in a German kitchen I was that chef.

Now I like to think I had and still have a decent grip of the German language, Mrs Collins taught me well and I enjoyed talking to my German relatives as a young boy. My talent for ordering a sausage in a bun followed by ice cream or telling the local kids I knew Kevin Keegan wasn’t enough to prepare me for a large and angry Swiss chef shouting orders at me a hundred and forty times in an hour and a half.

I had prepared myself mentally and physically (bullworker in bedroom) for every aspect of working abroad, I left no stone unturned except for one. I thought everybody in German spoke like Mrs Collins spoke to me; slowly and clearly and, critically, without a dialect. Standing in that kitchen listening to a Czech, an Austrian, a Swiss, four Greeks, five Turkish and German nationals from every corner of the map talking to you in their own unique version of German was agony. I felt like Henry Kissinger at the United Nations except I didn’t have big headphones and a glamorous translator. 

The Swiss end every word with ‘lie’ (pronounced ‘lee’) I could have spared the chef angina if he had explained this at the begining. “Ein bislie salz, Herr Collins!” “Er, Ja Chef!” What the hell is bislie? salz (salt) and ein (a) I had covered and Herr Collins was a given but ‘bislie’. “Ach du lieber, Englander! ein bischen; wenig, not zo much salz pleaze” he screamed as I flicked through ‘B’ in my pocket dictionary. Bloody bichen I thought, I caught Roland (the single most irritating trainee I’ve ever met) smirking. I told him I would kick his arse ‘ein bislie’ -he understood that.

The first couple of weeks were hell, sometimes there were more bollockings than food orders, I used to ask the chef if it was me he was bollocking because I couldn’t tell. “Ja, Englander, it is you that I am not zo happee with in zis moment” Thanks, just so I know. He once tore into me for not soaking some lentils for soup the night before even though he had written pea soup. I knew the German for pea and lentil (not much else) he then went red and said ‘erbsen’ was a pea lentil and that I had ruined the entire menu. I kept saying ‘ja chef’ as I cooked the red ‘quick cook’ lentils “Vat are you doing, Herr Collins? ze lentils are impossible to cook zo schnell” he spat. I carried on for Queen and country and twenty minutes later asked him if my finished soup needed ‘ein bislie mere salz’. I got it big time after that.

It wasn’t all bad, one day the head chef asked me if I wanted to go ‘Baden’, feeling at a loose end I said yes and dashed to the bank to get some money for a days shopping and beer drinking. “Were are your swimming shorts?” “In England” I replied merrily but slightly confused. “I think maybe you get arrested without them” he said. Thinking he was slightly drunk we carried on…to the local swimming pool. Now I was confused. “Is this Baden-Baden?” Now he thought I was drunk. “No, this is a big hole in the ground which we Germans fill with water and call a swimming pool, check your dictionary, it begins with ‘b’ and comes before bischen!!” It was months before he let that one go.