banquets...oh my

So why can one day go so smoothly, and the next be so rocky that you feel like you have to pull teeth to get the food into the box?

Guess what?!?! It’s finally banquet season...and this is are heaviest week/weekend since last spring. My morning this morning consisted of four breakfasts...followed by four different lunches...plus prep, plus fixing the egg cook’s 3 gallons of broken hollandaise, and a myriad of other things. Yesterday was the same...and tomorrow more again. So why does it seem like today was so much headache?

Was it the fact that I didn’t get a hot shower before work because the water heater was off? I mean, can one little hiccup in the daily rhythm throw you off so much?

Was it that I had a different crew than yesterday? With an ’experienced’ banquet cook that kinda has his own way of doing things thrown in? I mean, he did end up cooking all 500 pieces of protein for today and tomorrow when he was only supposed to do today’s, and then help put the function in the box. So that he was taken out of my plan for assistance because he was doing too much? Like I told the exec sous...we got ahead on tomorrow by being behind on today......he didn’t understand.

True. I did make a mistake by reading the BEO a little too literally. I mean, what would you do if you read ’BBQ kalbi ribs’? I mean wouldn’t you make the ribs and then BBQ them with BBQ sauce? I mean that is what we did fo the ’BBQ pork ribs’ the other day. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Apparently not...the exec went balistic..and I am sure I will get a lecture about how I should be in his office going over every BEO line by line to make sure I know what the hell I am doing. But BBQ is BBQ...so WTF....if it said hawaiian style kalbi ribs...thats a different story.

so anyway...it was a scramble...3 boxes going out at once...and the two banquet cooks in their own little world and the exec sous correcting the rib fiasco...and me...the only one still plating so that we dont eff up all 3 events and not just one. I know that I am in charge...but the BEO and the prep list say 50 portions of chicken...do I need to stand next to you if you are going to grill them so that you dont do 250? Or if you look at the BEO and see fries and fried chcikne...shouldn’t you fill the fryer...or do you always need reminding...if I say crust and bake...that doesn’t mean sear and crust and bake...it means effing crust and bake and hurry up. If I let you know that as soon as the omelet station is done with, you need to wrap your mise and help us out because we are plating in one hour, then that doesn’t mean stop, make a list, do some prep, mosey around, and then look at the prep list. It means effing wrap your station as fast as you can pull plastic off the roll, and get the eff over here and help.

Like I said the seven functions yesterday went out smooth as silk...what is the difference? The prep list looked the same format...the menus were not that different, the numbers didn’t change. I mean admittedly, the functions yesterday were more spread out so that I pretty much took all the mise en placed items and put it all together and then did all the plating myself while the other two did prep. And I thought that was what was going to happen today...but not so much. I appreciate that you take pride in your work and want to get a jump on tommorow...but not at the expense of today.

And on top of it all to have the local union rep and kitchen instigator whining about how we never help her, when in fact we did extra prep two days ago for her just so that we could pull from her stocks when we needed...really pissed off several of the crew and got them flustered so that they weren’t on the a game either.

Anyway, all the events went out on time...with good food...and the clients are happy. So I guess that means it was a success, right?

We shall see...day three tommorrow.