Bigger Groups, Longer Orders

Another day on pastry. We went from having 24 booked, to 44, to 60, to 80, to 32, to 41, and finally, 43. It doesn’t bother me too much how many people we have to feed, I just want to know so I can prep things accordingly. I began by scooping the sorbet – passionfruit tonight. Then weighing out the bread ingredients. I had to make three big batches of bread, because apparently any number over 40 people and you need a big batch instead of a half batch. Half batches make 20-24 rolls each, but the pastry cook told me guests get two rolls each. Whenever I ate there, I was only ever offered one roll, but he told me that’s because I’m too skinny???

Next I got straight to work – made chocolate mousse, passionfruit emulsion, white chocolate and lime ganache, cannelles, fananciers, assembled delices, made chocolate biscuit, plated the petit fours, made the breads – black olive, maple walnut, and apricot today, glazed the ganache, cut the biscuit, etc. Then I still had over an hour until service time, as our first table wasn’t even booked until 6:30p.m., so I asked the pastry cook if I could make some more mixes to have on hand in the freezer. I would have just gone ahead and done this myself, except when I am covering the pastry section he is on starters and watches me like a hawk for some reason, correcting things I do that aren’t even wrong and contradicting himself. I also had a question about one of the recipes. He told me it is easy to make and there was no need to make it now – just make it when it runs out. The head chef heard him say this to me and said, “Yeah, that’s his way of doing things. Wait until you are in the shits, and then worry about it.” SO then I did not have much to do until service time or during the start of service when it is fairly quiet.
I cleaned down, made tomorrow’s prep list, looked to see what needed to be ordered, thought of some more bread flavors to try in the future, went over what I found in the freezer yesterday with the pastry cook, etc. But service was still so slow at the start, actually all night is was fairly slow and steady. We had two tables of nine, two tables of five, one table of three, and six tables of two. Usually most of our tables are two, so nine is a big group. I helped with a lot of the starters tonight, and did some apps and veg. I impressed myself by doing twelve dessert orders at once when they came in. This is also the first night every single diner ordered a dessert!

Passionfruit jelly rolled around passionfruit cream. A tedious and delicate job,
but a beautiful component to the delice dessert when done right.

At the end of the night, everyone else had left and the mains cook was about to leave. He asked how many tables I was waiting on. I only had two left but they were a table of five and a table of nine. He asked one of the servers for the orders, and the two orders came in at once, so he helped me plate them. I would have been fine on my own but the desserts do get out faster with two people, and other stations have help during smaller orders so I guess fair is fair. He also may have been feeling a little guilty for all the times I stayed to help him vacpac. He even cleaned the pastry oven for me, but didn’t stay to help clean the rest of my station, although I had helped him clean his. Overall, service was fairly relaxed as the strict starter chef was off. I have been asked if I mind being the only female in the kitchen among three or four guys, and I discovered that, no, I really don’t. If anything it makes me feel proud and empowered. 

The other intern and I have been getting along really well lately, at home and at work. She is from the same school as me and we room together but don’t necessarily see a lot of each other between our schedules, even if we do work in the same place. She has been down in the bar lately. She has been putting on dessert specials and asking for my feedback and giving me samples, and in turn I let her taste some of my things in pastry. We check in with each other. We can even vent our work frustrations to each other, because we understand each other!