While you're listening to Smooth Jazz....

You enter. The sounds of clinking glasses and forks twinkle invitingly through the air. You are greeted by a heavily perfumed woman, her hair twisted into a french braid, and a large, brown clip adorns the top of her head. Cheryl promptly takes your coats in exchange for a ticket, and whisks you into a large, burgundy dining room. You can smell the Alfredo Sauce and A1 Steak Sauce wafting from the tables around you. The clientele are middle-aged, most of them done up in their finest, elated, as they sop the remnants of their roasted portobello and red pepper salads. It is, in Buffalo, the high life.

But as Cheryl kindly produces busboys with water, napkins, and bread, she continues on to the typical double doors to the the kitchen. In there, she is greeted by the rap music playing by the dish station, the bursts of steam, the sailor-like lingo of the teenage dish dogs. As she passes by the line, classic rock is blaring a few octaves below the expediter, who is using "direct" tones in getting what he needs NOW or more often, 5 MINUTES AGO or YESTERDAY.

A gripe I have with the "real kitchen" in Manhattan is the lack of music. People here are used to silence while scrambling. My chefs have claimed it helps concentration. I beg to differ. On the rare occasion that the cussing and demanding halts momentarily, it would be nice to hear a little more than the silent tears we're crying into our beurre blancs. I see I have been more than dramatic.

In the spirit of claiming that the whole world is not this way, as a reminder to myself and a promise to others who firmly believe in the importance of silence, I'm sharing my list of the songs that all the Cheryls of the world are hearing in kitchens all over Buffalo.

Oh, and Cheryl, wipe the lipstick off your teeth. Good girl.

Here are the top 10 most likely to be heard in a Buffalo, NY kitchen. In no particular order.

With Love, JP

1. "You Shook Me All Night Long" - AC/DC
2. "Tush" - ZZ Top
3. "Money" - Pink Floyd
4. "Barracuda" - Heart
5. "Ramble On" - Led Zeppelin
6. "TNT" - AC/DC
7. "Paint it Black" - The Rolling Stones
8. "Killer Queen" - Queen
9. "Benny and the Jets' - Elton John
10. "Bad Company" - Bad Company