Hellos, Goodbyes, Etc.
I completely lost interest in the idea of going underground. A few weeks passed and I realized there wasn't anything I was reporting that couldn't be reported here. My kitchen is clean, it operates, I still get my ass kicked, and I am surrounded by people as crazy or crazier than myself. I thought that writing anonymously would allow for more interesting stories. Not so. I found that with no one knowing who I was or where'd I'd been on the road there just wasn't the interest in relaying the story. Really, there are no cooks throwing knives at people, losing their shit on the line; for all the teenage antics, it's a professional kitchen. So, let's get back in there.
Dax, sous chef number one, has left the restaurant. Today will be my first day in the post-Dax era, and I'm curious to see how the kitchen chemistry will change. In my mind he was a cornerstone: stud line cook, inventive, obsessed with food, great people skills. I learned a ton working with him. We have a new sous starting next week, someone that worked with Chef previously.
In the next week or so, Sam, our pastry chef, will be leaving as well. Dax and Sam represented the last of the original staff - it will be Chef Ryan's restaurant entirely, with cooks he's hired and trained, save for Joe, our lead line cook brought in by Dax a year ago. The rest of us are fairly green.
At a restaurant like this execution is everything. In the dining room, it's not much of an issue. We get shit very right far more often than very wrong. Chef wouldn't tolerate less. However, a big part of the hotel's business is banquets - weddings, anniversaries, that sort of thing. Once a week or so we get a party of 100 or more that we will feed anywhere from two to four courses. The menus are simple, typically steak and fish or chicken, a starch, a veg. When putting up 120 plates at the same time, it's less about level of cuisine than speed. But these sort of engagements require strict timing and choreographed output on the part of the kitchen and the front of house staff. In the kitchen, we have to know when plates are being cleared, when the next service needs to begin, how many people are a a given table. It's not complicated, but it can get tricky in a hurry.
I completely lost interest in the idea of going underground. A few weeks passed and I realized there wasn't anything I was reporting that couldn't be reported here. My kitchen is clean, it operates, I still get my ass kicked, and I am surrounded by people as crazy or crazier than myself. I thought that writing anonymously would allow for more interesting stories. Not so. I found that with no one knowing who I was or where'd I'd been on the road there just wasn't the interest in relaying the story. Really, there are no cooks throwing knives at people, losing their shit on the line; for all the teenage antics, it's a professional kitchen. So, let's get back in there.
Dax, sous chef number one, has left the restaurant. Today will be my first day in the post-Dax era, and I'm curious to see how the kitchen chemistry will change. In my mind he was a cornerstone: stud line cook, inventive, obsessed with food, great people skills. I learned a ton working with him. We have a new sous starting next week, someone that worked with Chef previously.
In the next week or so, Sam, our pastry chef, will be leaving as well. Dax and Sam represented the last of the original staff - it will be Chef Ryan's restaurant entirely, with cooks he's hired and trained, save for Joe, our lead line cook brought in by Dax a year ago. The rest of us are fairly green.
At a restaurant like this execution is everything. In the dining room, it's not much of an issue. We get shit very right far more often than very wrong. Chef wouldn't tolerate less. However, a big part of the hotel's business is banquets - weddings, anniversaries, that sort of thing. Once a week or so we get a party of 100 or more that we will feed anywhere from two to four courses. The menus are simple, typically steak and fish or chicken, a starch, a veg. When putting up 120 plates at the same time, it's less about level of cuisine than speed. But these sort of engagements require strict timing and choreographed output on the part of the kitchen and the front of house staff. In the kitchen, we have to know when plates are being cleared, when the next service needs to begin, how many people are a a given table. It's not complicated, but it can get tricky in a hurry.
