Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Hot App's Assistant on the Line

It has been a week since I had gone to the restaurant. The airline job took 6 of my days last week. Summer is definitely here with all the summer travel woes, thunderstorm, and misconnects  which not only cause chaos for the passengers, but is also disruptive for the crews. So, I finally made it in today for some restaurant work. It was nice to see everyone. I did a full 5 hours of prep which included bagging veal and chicken stocks for the freezer, cutting some beans, peeling some tomatoes and shucking LOTS of English peas. The fun began when the service started.


The Hot App guy, after checking with the Sous Chef, asked me if I would like to help him on the line with some plating. He told me that if it got too busy, I could just watch. "Deal"! Well, we were slammed right out of the gate, so I watched him deal with all the simultaneous orders. He slowly worked me into the action by giving me small plating tasks, garnishing, saucing, along with a little bit of stove work by asking me to watch the risotto, the scallop, etc.. It was really the first night I have been a part of the line and "felt" the flow of it. Up until now, I have mostly observed during service, or helped prep things for various station if they ran out of their mis en place. Tonight was an entirely different experience actually being a part of the rhythm and mentally staying with the "dance" on the line.


 Afterwards, I thanked both the hot app and the Sous for including me. It was a long but rewarding day.

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