Just Another Manic Monday

Do I wish it were Sunday? Not at all – Sundays are way too crazy! But today was busier than I had anticipated for a Monday, as they are usually quiet. I was banking on a quiet day to get some prep done after my stores were fairly depleted following yesterday’s busy service. No such luck. Though the orders seemed to come in two waves – the lunchtime rush from 12:30p.m to 3:00p.m., and the suppertime rush from 6:30p.m. to 9:00p.m. It did get fairly quiet in the mid-afternoon, but still a few orders trickled in. What was particularly annoying was, unlike Sundays where diners look for their roasts and steaks and chicken dishes, on Mondays people seem to want sandwiches and fish and chips. So for a while there, all the orders coming in were for my side of the line, and the cook on mains didn’t even have to move. I did get some prep done – small jobs that I could do in between orders such as filleting salmon, slicing bread, making garlic mayonnaise, cutting mackerel, slicing lemon, making bound prawns, picking herbs, and got someone to make onion rings for me, as I desperately needed them and they are a full-attention job. But still, I didn’t feel like I accomplished much today. It was a rainy, slow day where you don’t feel compelled to do much. Usually I move fast, especially with orders, but today everyone in the kitchen seemed tired. What kept us going was when one of the cooks made milkshakes and gave me a sample of her dish of the day – delicious tagiatelle with smoked salmon and cream sauce. 
I feel I moved quickly on the line during service tonight though, and although there was a third cook helping us again, he was mostly helping with the main courses between hopping over to fill pastry orders. What is confusing, is we began a new ‘summer’ menu. I guess tourist season is in full swing now, which is also why we are getting so busy. We did sixty covers at lunch time, which is quite a few for a Monday lunch, and about 130 covers between 7:00 and 9:00p.m. It felt like less to me, which is a good thing, because I used to think I had done way more covers than I actually did! Luckily for me, nothing on the new menu changes on the starter side. It would have been very annoying to have just learned every dish and then have to learn changes. But there are a few different main courses or variations on existing ones, and the dessert menu changes to feature ice cream dishes such as banana splits, sundaes, and coupes, instead of bread and butter puddings and warm tarts. 
I do feel a little bad for not leaving the cook on starters in better shape with less prep to worry about on my day off tomorrow, but sometimes it is hard to get stuff done when service is so busy, especially while I am still fairly new at this. 

Milkshake as a snack - I added chocolate sauce to mine, of course!