♪ KAREN AKUNOWICZ: I'm busy texting my dishwasher, saying, "No, I'm sorry, you cannot call in sick tonight."

Did I mention we were running out of food?

JAVED REZAYEE: I let a sigh of relief out, just like the one when you're not sure which line to cut in a time bomb.

ALAN WHITE: When I was a kid, the kitchen was the hottest, scariest room in our house.

THERESA OKOKON: The theme for tonight is: "Kitchen Confessions."

For some people, cooking is a total refuge.

It's a way that they relax, kick back, and share their love with their family and their friends.

The kitchen is oftentimes where the real magic happens and where relationships are made.

Now, on the other hand, for some people, cooking is a total nightmare, because they're trying to throw together a meal when they don't have enough time, they don't have the correct ingredients, and maybe they don't have the money that they need.

Now, the storytellers that we have for you here this evening and also experience of a little bit of mayhem.

♪ AKUNOWICZ: I am the chef and partner at Myers + Chang restaurant in Boston.

I've been in restaurants for about 21 years now.

So you're a three-time James Beard nominee, you've been on Top Chef, and you're a published author.

But then, I understand that this is your first time storytelling, is that right?

It is, it's my first time storytelling.

So what is this like for you?

I'm really excited, I'm definitely nervous.

I know it probably seems so silly to you... (chuckling) is because I love storytelling, so I'm a really big fan of Stories from the Stage, and I...

I listen to storytelling podcasts on my way to and from work, and I have always wanted to get on stage and tell a story.

So tonight's theme is "Kitchen Confessions."

AKUNOWICZ: Yes.

OKOKON: So can you tell me about... What does this mean for you, and how did you pick your story?

It's kind of an everyday shift, and it's... it's a little, like an everyday shift maybe on speed.

(laughing): Or something like that.

It's a big day, but it's kind of what we go through every day.

That's sort of our normal life, and there's also a little bit of reflection in it.

8:00 a.m., New Year's Day.

You're all still in bed.

You're sleeping off celebrating the night before.

You're dreaming about resolutions you're not going to keep, and inevitably, in a few hours, you're going to roll out of bed, and you're going to head to brunch.

I really hope you guys made a reservation.

I'm walking in the door to my restaurant, I've got an extra large coffee in my hand.

It's my second of the day, and I'm really hoping that the caffeine is going to kick in soon.

Last night was New Year's Eve, so we served up specials like truffle chawanmushi, Nantucket Bay scallop crudo, crispy Peking duck, in addition to a million dumplings, wok-charred udon noodles, and pork belly buns.

My back and my feet tell me that we fed everybody who lives in Boston, but in reality, it was about 250 or 260 people.

This means we're out of everything.

So the minute I walk in the door, I'm hit with a chorus of "Chef," "Chef," "Chef," "Chef."

"Chef, I'm out of bok choy."

"Chef, I'm out of chicken stock."

"Chef, I think the dishwasher's broken."

And my favorite-- "Chef, we're out of eggs."

(laughter) I put my apron on, I slide into my clogs, I throw some pots on the already crowded stove.

I check my prep list, I check with my cooks.

I find out what's the most important thing, what do we need first, and I get moving.

I look over at my sauté cook-- he's worked for us for two weeks and he looks panicked.

I make a mental note: be encouraging.

I pat him on the back, I say, "Sam, you've got this."

I'm opening brunch because my sous chef is sleeping off a hangover from the night before, and my other sous chef quit a few weeks earlier, with no notice, writing me an email, because the work was too hard, and it was on a day that I had a guest chef coming in for dinner.

So, getting ready for brunch, a front-of-the-house manager comes up to me, and she tells me it's 11:25.

I think that five minutes ago it was 8:00 a.m., so I'm not sure how that happened, and she lets me know that there's a line around the corner.

Now, we're a busy restaurant.

I like to call us "the little kitchen that could."

But the reality is, is that I was just on a reality TV show, so we're busting-at-the-seams busy, and the real reality is that my kitchen didn't get any bigger, I don't have any more staff, and the staff I have on are probably all hung over from last night.

11:30, the doors open.

And the dining room gets flat-sat, and that means that every seat in the restaurant gets sat at the same time.

And all of those people are going to want to eat at the same time.

12:00, I'm expediting, I'm running food, I'm jumping on stations, I'm trying to dig people out of the weeds.

I keep moving.

We're out of bok choy.

I 86 bok choy.

I call my purveyors.

I beg for two cases to come in in the afternoon.

I switch to gai lan, I keep moving.

Now we're running out of bread.

I call the bakery.

I beg for 24 baguettes.

I jump back on the line.

It's 1:00.

My sous chef walks in the door.

I'm busy texting my P.M. dishwasher saying, "No, I'm sorry, you cannot call in sick tonight."

Did I mention we were running out of food?

I walk back through the prep kitchen and my sous chef is standing still.

Never a good sign.

He's holding his hand, he's ghost-white, and I look at him and say, "What happened?"

He says, "I cut myself."

I say, "Let me see."

It's actually bad.

He's a big kid, he starts to go down, I grab him from behind, I get him onto a milk crate, I bang around the corner, I go to the bar, and I get him a glass of orange juice.

I may or may not have put a little bit of whiskey in it.

(laughter) I keep him talking, I bandage his hand.

I finish butchering the salmon that he was working on.

I'd love to send him home tonight, but he's the only person I have to work sauté, so I figure out in my head how I'll get him off from work tomorrow.

I keep moving.

It's 3:00 p.m. My dishwasher comes up to me and says, "Chef, I can't take the cardboard out because the dumpster is full."

Now, if our dumpster is open even this much, we're going to get a $250 fine from the city.

And there's this woman that lives in the neighborhood that walks around taking pictures of everybody's trash and sending them to the police, so I know that I need to get the dumpster shut.

I go outside and I know that the reason it's overflowing is there's a box that hasn't been broken down somewhere inside of there, even though I have signs all over the restaurant that say, "Please break down every box completely."

The only way to fix this is to actually take the cardboard out, get into the dumpster, find the offensive box, break it down, stomp on everything, and get it flat so that I can close the lid so that I don't get the fine.

So in the dumpster I go.

And as I'm breaking down the boxes, my phone rings in my pocket.

It's my friend.

She's pregnant and she's going to have a baby.

And she's really excited to take this time in her life to slow down and concentrate on what really matters.

And just really be at one with the universe.

And I'm literally standing in the garbage.

I'm freezing, I've got no coat on-- I'm almost 40.

I never see my family, and I wonder, not for the first time, what am I doing with my life?

I can feel tears, hot behind my eyes, start.

And I see 20 years of restaurant work flash before my eyes, and then I remember: I was a square peg in a round hole before I found this work.

I didn't fit anywhere.

And I love the magic of cooking, and I love making people happy, and I love the chaos, and I love the fire, and I love the hustle, and I love the crazy.

It's 4:00.

The back door opens, and one of my line cooks comes out looking for me.

I smile, and I keep moving.

After all, it's time to get ready for dinner service.

(cheers and applause) ♪ You know, there are more details.

I always figured that, you know, it's my every day, but for most people, it's behind the scenes, so I really wanted to get into maybe a little bit more-- maybe a little more about the food, but in reality, it's like, there are days that I spend putting out fires all day long that have nothing to do with, you know, putting the food on the plate.

Yeah, I think I would've included, maybe going into dinner service, but it seemed like a pretty, pretty good place... pretty good place to end.

OKOKON: Why don't we get started with you just telling me a little bit about yourself?

I was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, and educated in the United States.

I am a writer, and I also teach Storytelling for Social Change.

Do you tell stories about Afghanistan, and why do stories about Afghanistan matter for you?

I tell stories about Afghanistan.

It matters a lot, because most people, what they know about Afghanistan is war and bombs and killing.

Mm-hmm.

Although that happens, there's also a whole humanity happening there.

People live their lives.

Everything that happens in any other part of the world happens there, too.

A mother loves her child, there's a relationship, there's family, there's everything else, and I think that there's a lot missing in the information that we're getting from Afghanistan.

OKOKON: Yeah.

REZAYEE: Because it's very selected.

Like, somebody said, if you don't know about certain people, you fear them.

When you fear them, you tend to destroy them, and so, storytelling, true personal storytelling brings the true nature of what people are about, who they are, to the audiences, and you know, the magic of connection happens and I think that, to put it simply, it feels like, "Yes, they're also just human beings like us."

OKOKON: Yeah.

REZAYEE: I'm chopping.

Faster and faster.

My hands are running ahead of my mind.

I do first, think after.

I'm chopping onions, eyes burning, then more onions.

Tomatoes, then more tomatoes.

I've chopped piles of leeks, carrots, and cucumbers, and I still need to chop more.

Now, this is not a cooking show or a busy restaurant.

This is my apartment in New York City.

I'm behind chopping, but there is something more important lurking in my mind.

I'm concerned that the rice, which is the pinnacle of my culture's culinary pride, is going to be ruined tonight.

I'm petrified that I won't be able to make the dinner as exquisite as my guests, especially my African competitor, is expecting of me.

Let me back up a little bit.

I'm son of a chef.

Yet then to, like, come to college in America, I even didn't know how to boil pasta.

I had to call my sisters in Kabul and Canada to get help.

My culinary inabilities weren't entirely because I grew up in a society where moms and sisters always prepared food for the family, but because my dad didn't want us siblings to get into cooking seriously.

He wanted the apples to fall a little far from the tree.

Majority of Afghans didn't have formal educations, so it was easy for youngsters to fall into labor-based employment, if not war.

My parents, just like any other parents, wanted us to become doctors and engineers.

My dad worked as a chef for American diplomats, their families, and U.N. officials for almost 40 years.

Although it was a great career, and he benefited a lot from it, he felt he missed on something bigger-- education.

And that's where he focused us.

In addition to school, he put me in typing and English-language courses.

Despite war-related problems, I eventually made it to college here, at Tufts University, as an adult student.

Six years later, when I got a job in New York City to move there, I found myself in the heat of cooking.

My roommate and I, him also an Afghan, loved to entertain once we realized Americans liked Afghan food.

It was also a way to show that we immigrants had something to contribute, something that we were proud of back home.

You know, like you have B-52, but we have exotic lamb dishes.

(laughter) Inevitably, we got into a bit of rivalry.

I remember asking him how he prepared lamb broth before adding rice in it, and he went, "Uhh," as in, "Dude, this is not how rivalry works."

He would hide his spices and methods, and I would steal glances of them, pretending that I was grabbing a beer from the fridge.

Sometimes, he was a good guy.

He would show me how to marinate kebab or something, but I couldn't understand his patronizing tone.

Things like, "You know, if you lower your ambition, everything will be perfect."

Then came the most spectacular of my challenges.

A house party with a former DJ in it.

Among 40 guests, we have people who my roommate and I are both trying to impress for professional and romantic reasons.

Highlight of the menu is heavily publicized on Facebook, and it is the Afghan kabuli palaw, which is long-grain aromatic rice brewed in lamb broth and sautéed raisins and carrots.

I see some people salivating.

(laughter) I also see vegans cringing.

(laughter) Side note: I am weekday-vegan, these days.

Anyway, so I'm chopping, and I've chopped heaps of fruits, too, for sangria, but my mind is at kabuli palaw.

I'm concerned that the rice is not going to turn out the Afghan way-slash- Central Asian, which is soft, but not sticky, which we call "shola," and shola, back home, is what keeps the suitors away.

I don't know how long I have soaked the rice for, I've cut a finger, I've burnt another, and I've got a no-show from another friend who was supposed to be over to help me.

And I'm looking at the clock, and somebody's intentionally just fast-forwarding the hour.

Lost, and my reputation and skill, I did something I hadn't done in almost 20 years.

I talked to my dad about cooking.

I Skype him to show me how to do the rice right.

I'm taking the phone over to the boiling pot and the screen fogs up, I'm screaming into the phone because the connection is weak on that side, and I'm telling him, "Dad, this is going to be shola."

And he says, "Calm down, tell me what kind of rice and how long did you soak it for?"

The first thing that occurred to my mind was, "Dad, how can you be so calm?

Can't you see?"

But I took a deep breath and explained the situation to him.

And he said, "Make dough and seal the pot lid with it."

"Like, air-tight the rice?"

He said, "Yes."

when you're not sure which line to cut in a time bomb, and then you get a professional tip.

It was like that.

I had done it.

I removed the lid later, and I realized the dough had captured all the aroma of the rice and had infused it back into it.

I scooped out a little bit, and the grains are falling one by one, just like they should be.

So I'm eating this, trying it a little bit, and then something makes sense to me.

So for a long time, I was subconsciously building resentment towards my dad for not sharing his skills, because if he could, I would be a celebrity chef in Manhattan today.

But, I realized, if he had actually, I wouldn't be in America in the first place.

So my roommate shows up, and he's trying the food, and his head is down and he's nodding and saying, "This is really good, this is really good."

And I said, "You know, man, sometimes you can be ambitious, and some things will turn out perfect."

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) I Skyped my dad again that day and I told him how well the dish turned out, and also, I got a chance to thank him for, you know, keeping us away from cooking so that we could focus on education.

And so that was the first time I got a chance to officially thank him for that gift, which I'm very happy about.

♪ WHITE: I am a professional actor and theater artist.

I've been working in the theater community here in Boston for about 17 years now.

OKOKON: Oh, wow.

So what do you feel like is the value of storytelling, for you?

I grew up feeling unseen and unheard as an individual in my family, which was a very loving family.

But, you know, a very opinionated and controlling family.

And in my community, because when I was relatively young, my family moved to a predominantly white community in New Hampshire.

And so I had to, sort of, navigate both the high expectations of my family, and, sort of, the societal expectations of being a person of color.

And I navigated a lot of that by making up this persona of what I thought people wanted to see.

and I think I did a lot of self-damage by not sharing my own stories.

So for me it's both a very healing act, but it's also a way of connecting and being very vulnerable with people in a way that I never have before.

OKOKON: So tonight's theme is "Kitchen Confessions."

Can you tell me what that theme means for you?

The kitchen was the center of my family culture growing up.

OKOKON: Mm-hmm.

WHITE: And the kitchen is, still to me now, the most important room in the house.

And it took me a long time to realize where and how my happiness and my growth as a person was actually connected to my kitchen.

♪ When I was a kid, the kitchen was the hottest, loudest, smelliest, messiest, smokiest-- and according to my friends-- scariest room in our house.

Because the kitchen was where my entire family would gather, once a day, for dinner.

Six of us-- mom, dad, and four kids, all around the kitchen table, talking, shouting, laughing, fighting, arguing, teasing, joking, and sometimes, slipping food under the table for the dog.

Even when my four siblings moved away to go to college, and my parents got divorced, Mom and I moved away.

We kept the kitchen and dinner as central to our culture and the heart of our home.

Mom and I had a new apartment that had a tiny galley kitchen.

It was barely big enough for both of us to stand in.

So to stay connected to that culture, I asked her to teach me to cook.

By the time I was nine, Mom was coaching me as I fried eggs, made toast, and brewed coffee so she'd have breakfast before she went to work.

And I would watch her and learn as she prepared our dinner in the evenings.

And the kitchen was the heart of our home.

When I grew up and had my own home, the kitchen remained central to my life.

My three favorite books were "The Hobbit," "Frankenstein," and the "Better Homes and Garden Cookbook."

(laughter) And I fell in love and got married to someone who wanted nothing to do with the kitchen.

It was fine, at first, I love to cook, but we were a two-income household.

She would come home from one job and decompress for hours in front of the television.

I would come home from one job and start a second one cooking and cleaning in the kitchen.

And then we would eat a dinner, not speaking, with the television for our soundtrack.

I tried to get her to join me in the kitchen, but I failed to communicate why it was important to me, and she felt like I was trying to punish her.

And maybe I was.

Because I was alone in the kitchen, and I didn't know how to share my heart.

So in the end, we got a divorce.

And I had another long relationship with someone who cooked for me.

Or I cooked for her.

Or she cooked for me, or I cooked for her, or she was in the kitchen, or I was in the kitchen.

But we were never in the kitchen together.

And we were unhappy, because we were alone in the kitchen and I did not know how to share my heart.

Which brings me to the relationship I am in now.

Which, full disclosure, is with someone who is a professional cook, and puts my home-schooled kitchen skills to shame.

I really think that the moment I first fell for her was when she took a live lobster and split it in half with a carving knife before my eyes.

(laughter) But one of the first things we did together was cook.

And it was as awkward as the first time you have sex.

We were in her kitchen, and I didn't know where anything was.

We bumped into each other, I was in the way, she almost hit me with the cabinet, I almost hit her with the refrigerator, and it was loud and noisy and we argued and laughed and joked and made a mess.

And I found something in that kitchen that I hadn't found in a long time-- trust.

We began to learn a rhythm, and I realize that I could peel and clean the perfect, fresh shrimp, set them down, and trust her to take them up and transform them into the perfect scampi while I cut an explosion of garden vegetables for a salad.

In time, our hands found a rhythm and began to dance together, like partners who knew they would not drop each other.

But while our hands may have become Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, our bodies were still the Three Stooges.

To this day, we still bump into each other and get in the way, and slip, and make a mess, and talk, and laugh and shout in the kitchen, but I think-- I think we're happy.

Because we're not alone in the kitchen, and I've learned how to share my heart.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) My mother actually passed away about three years ago now.

And sometimes I, I...

I feel like I remember things that we did together in the kitchen, and I feel like she's close.

But, you know, there are definitely days where I wish I could cook with her one more time.

Watch "Stories from the Stage" anytime, anywhere.

Visit WorldChannel.org for full episodes and digital extras.

Join us on social media and subscribe at Facebook Watch to hear new stories.

Only on World Channel.

♪ ♪