Sunday, August 30, 2015

One Long Work Day

This morning I got to work before 11:00a.m., knowing Sundays are busy. My schedule said ‘restaurant/bar’ so I wasn’t entirely sure where I was working. The starter cook told me I was in the bar and the other intern was in the restaurant, but I’m not sure if that’s what he truly thought or just what he wanted to happen. So I immediately began making up the welcome basket, then setting up the pastry section. When the head chef came in, he told me I was in the restaurant and the other intern was in the bar, and that I would be working with the other head chef on starters. Since he wasn’t in yet, I stayed in the bar and offered to do some jobs – and was put to work cutting up sandwiches for a function. Then I went upstairs to pastry, as the pastry cook wanted to explain some things to me (so I would know when I had to do them), and the head chef came up and demanded to know why two people were working on pastry today because he needed more help. I said I was going to help him, but it turned out he didn’t even have that much to do.

On the starter section, I was put to work making citrus cream, sweet white port and onion soup, brioche, soups discs, pear and lime chutney, and ratatouille chutney. This was already more than the original job he had given me, and he was in good shape now so I asked the mains cook if he needed any help, though I knew he would give me a mindless chopping job which I really did not want to do. Indeed, he got me to finely dice five red and five yellow peppers for ratatouille again, during which the head chef had to tell me I was chopping them wrong, even though when he demoed the ‘proper’ way, it was literally the exact same thing I had been doing.
Exotic fruit flowers - garnish for the crème brulée
Next I did go to help the pastry cook since there was nothing else to do and he was really hungover from last night’s village music festival and acting a bit loopy (singing Christmas songs in August???). I made fruit flowers and cut passionfruit and finished the petit fours, then I set up the section for service since that would be my job – it’s easier for me to do pastry service since I know it best, and for him to help with starters, appetizers and veg during service. Service went well, we had about seventy people in tonight, up from the fifty we had been expecting. The only tricky part was when I got five orders in at once, and one was a table of ten people but I managed just fine and it made service go by way faster. The head chef gave out to the pastry cook for not staying until pastry service was done, since he had been on pastry all day, but I didn’t see the point in both of us sticking around to finish service, and he left. I finished service before 11:00p.m., but stayed late to make sure the pastry section was cleaned down very well, as the head chef made a comment earlier to the pastry cook about it not being cleaned properly. 

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