Last Day Of Work

Today was my final day of work here on my internship, and if you think I slacked off or took it easy, you are completely wrong. I was in bright and early – may as well make the very most of my last day – to which the head chef just smiled and shook his head. Straight away I made two pans of vanilla and lime crème brulée, a quadruple batch of chocolate mousse, and a batch of blue cheese parfaits. The restaurant would be even more short staffed once I left, so I really wanted to leave my section in good shape for whoever would be taking it over, and ensure there wasn’t much prep to be done for tomorrow since the chef on pastry would be covering another section as well.

With these major tasks completed, I proceeded to my usual sorbet scooping (raspberry), petit four baking and traying, and bread weighing and making (tomato basil, sour cream and onion, oatmeal raisin). I assembled some more fruit flowers for the crème brulée garnish. I wanted to cut up more fruit to have for backup for this, but it was either have time for this or have time to make croutons. We had enough of both for today and tomorrow, and I decided to make the croutons since it was a slightly faster job and they would last longer than fresh fruit. Both jobs are tedious though, and require good knife skills. I also made sure to clean out the fridge and reorganize it for ease of use, relabel everything, and go through everything checking for orders and whatnot. I left three lists behind – a prep list for the next few days, a list of the amounts of each mise en place item I left on hand, and a list of all the bread flavors I tried, in case they wanted to get creative again. 

Throughout the day I was saying goodbye to people, and they were all complimenting me on what great work I have done. I didn’t slack off, but I was a bit chattier than usual. Pretty much every single one of them asked me if I would come back, so I am thinking I really have to return. I apparently will always have a job offering there if I would like it. Two head servers told me I was always so polite, several servers told me I was the nicest chef here, a chef de partie admitted she would miss my singing and my bread, and the chef de partie who basically taught me everything I know about pastry wished me the best of luck several times. 

A special dessert I made for the servers tonight

Service went very well – there were only thirty-three diners in tonight, and the quiet, casual night made for a light and fun atmosphere in the kitchen, exactly what I would want for my last day here – no stress. At the end of the night, one of the chefs was telling me the estate is technically short five chefs now. He said there is a huge shortage of chefs, well good chefs. Which is why I will always have a job here. He went on to say how well I had done, how it is basically unheard of to have a student responsible for an entire section in a five-star hotel restaurant; it just does not happen. Yet here I was, beating the odds again! 
To celebrate, a crowd from work headed to the pub where we laughed and reminisced.