86 Ribeye's?? That's a Lot!!

One of my first tasks tending bar, was working the service bar in the kitchen of a very nice steakhouse. It was a good way for a kid who technically wasn't legal to drink alcohol to learn how to make cocktails. It was a good set-up for all as the waitresses could put in food and drink orders in the same area, saving time and a lot of steps in the process. Most restaurants don't have the space for this, but this one had been designed by a very good restaurant man. It was a busy place and I learned speed. There are only two kinds of bartenders: the quick and the dead. I was becoming a top hand. 

I was brand new to the business and fascinated by the organized chaos of the kitchen with the waitresses barking out orders to the cooks on the line, the cooks repeating those orders and all this getting done in a timely, tasty, manner. I picked up on what was going down, enough to know that I didn't want to be on either side of that line. It has always bemused me though, that it took me longer than it should have, to understand what "86" actually meant. To this day, I clearly remember the cook, Young Wayne, bellowing out "86 ribeye!" and my young ass thinking, "That's a lot of ribeye's!" But why was 86 the seemingly the milestone of the evening? He would later say the same number for Dover Sole. 

In due time that first Friday night I did figure out that "86" was restaurant lingo for "We are out of- " Cute. To the point. Everybody knew what it meant, and now I did. 

No matter what you may hear from our current POTUS, it does NOT mean "KILL THE RIBEYES! THEY ARE A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!!"

The denotation of 86 is that it is a number. The connotation varies, but its origins (not "oranges") are in the restaurant/bar business, it likely came into use during Prohibition at a bar called Chumley's on 86th Place in New York City. In the event of a police raid, customers were advised to "86", meaning use the 86th Place entrance to exit the premises. How it caught on all over the country after that- who knows. But it did. It may have connotated "kill someone" in a mob film in later years, but that's the way connotations can go. If we learned anything from the rock band, Led Zepplin, it's that you know sometimes words have two me-ing-nings. 

Donald J. Trump, deep into the second year of his Revenge Tour, recently determined that a rock formation photographed on a beach and posted by former FBI director, James Comey, was an obvious plot by Comey to assassinate him. We're probably minutes away from an Executive Order declaring "86" to most definitely and only mean "kill". While 47 denotes an Arabic numeral, the connotation of 47 can mean "the 47th president". That does get used a lot in everyday lingo. But don't bang the gavel on this case yet, because there are like a million restaurant employees who know full well that 86 means "We are out of (something)". As a bartender, I 86'ed jagoff customers or drunk ones often. It did not mean I killed them, no matter how much I may have wanted to. 

Trump is trying to fundamentally change every aspect of American life he can get his tiny, diseased hands on, but this ridiculous stretch of his will not fly even in one of his kangaroo courts. "8647" is not a threat. It's a dream, one shared by the majority of Americans and the world. God forbid those rocks weren't arranged to show "6847". He'd be demanding a blow job from Comey! 68 means: "You do me now and I'll owe you one". That guy never pays up!

*No ribeye's were harmed in the production of this post.