Its Been A While

So its the new year. 2010. A time of fresh starts, turning new leafs and other lies to make us feel good about ourselves. One of my especially good ideas was to decide to write this blog more than once every three months. So, I am going to write about anything especially exciting that happened in the particular day I'm blogging, as well as anything awesome in the past week. I hope this will not bore you too much, and if you want to you can skim over the posts a little.

Don't worry, I won't blame you.

Anyhow, to catch you up on what has happened since the last post, I was hired about half way through September. So now I make a whopping $8 dollars an hour! Yes! Awesome! I can't really complain though, considering it's $8 an hour more than I used to make. Plus, the Oyster Bar makes tips now! The O-Bar used to be in "the back of the house" (the kitchen), but now the station has really been revamped. Now we work in "the front of the house" (take a guess at what that means; if you didn't say, "the dining room", then seek help). The station looks really nice, all of the shellfish is out on displays, we carry a wider variety of oysters and we have our own set of refrigerated drawers to store all of our salt-water creatures. And, due to the ridiculous laws our Communist-like, left wing, California State Government has created, everyone in the front of the house gets a share of the tips. EVERYONE. Luckily I'm in the group implied when the word EVERYONE comes into play.

So, long story short, I no longer have to worry about paying for parking.

There has only been one other major change since I last blogged. One of our crew members, Ryan Vesper, no longer works at the Watergrill. Don't worry, he didn't get fired or anything. He worked at the Watergrill for over a year, and he knew all of the stations, the grill station especially. He had been saving up money for a while and decided to go on a soul-searching trip through Europe staying in hostels, trying new food and meeting new people. He taught me a whole hell of a lot the entire time he was there, and he is a really nice guy, so I just wanted to wish him luck and thank him for his help.

Other than that, things have been going pretty smoothly. Of course this is not to say it isn't exciting. It is exciting. I'm learning my basics. I have continued to learn about how a kitchen works, the responsibility of crew member, how to prioritize all of your time to get as much prep work done as possible before service starts and how to stay afloat during service. Both Chef Ted and Chef David have taught me new ways improve my work and keep my own quality control and timing at the expected level in order to progress.

For example, an interesting thing happened to me today. It was rather slow, so although I was stationed at the O-Bar I was also covering for Luis while he was on his dinner break (Luis being the cook stationed at the salad station). Chef Ted was running the kitchen as he does every Sunday evening. Things were slow, as I mentioned earlier, so when an order for a Pumpkin Blue Cheese Salad came in I took my time and really made sure the dish was perfect. And I mean fucking perfect. The blue cheese mouse was a perfect little circle on the plate, with a perfect ring of red wine reduction around it; the pumpkin was perfectly seasoned and perfectly arranged to hold the perfect amount of salad, and it was all topped off with a perfect piece of fried sage to garnish.

So I bring this modest salad up to the pass, and Chef Ted gives it to a runner to bring to table whatever, but as I'm walking away he calls me back and asks me, "Sean, why did it take you 6 minutes to make a blue salad?" When I tell him that I wanted to make it perfect, he asks me another question, "How much time should it take you to make a blue cheese salad?" I answer that it usually takes me about 2 minutes. Then he says, "If you were a guest in this restaurant, would you rather have a well prepared salad in 2 minutes or a "perfect" salad in 6?"

If anyone who reads this knows me at all, they will tell you that I would definitely rather have my salad in 2 minutes. Hell, I order my steak rare in order to get it 3 minutes faster. So I tell Chef Ted I would rather have the salad in 2 minutes, and he tells me the guest would probably agree with me on that point.

Now after that conversation I learned a lot about time priorities and such, but Chef Ted decides I have another lesson to learn. The next ticket that comes in is a ceasar salad with sauce on the side, or S.O.S. So as I start to get the components ready in order to make the salad, Chef Ted asks me a question. He asks me, "Sean, how long should it take you to make a ceasar salad S.O.S.?", so I tell him it should take me about 2 minutes. This is stretching it a little bit, considering it usually takes me about 2.5 minutes. He then says, "Good. If its not up here in 2 minutes I'm going to suspend you for the next 4 days. Your time starts now."

It took me about five seconds for the blood to drain out of my head and for me to realize he is dead serious. If that salad wasn't at the pass in 2 minutes he was going to make me pack up, clock out and get the fuck out of his kitchen. So I instantly became a whirlwind, knocking anyone aside who dared to come near while I made this salad. I felt the pressure mounting as I dressed the salad, threw in the croutons and plated it, but before I sent it up I remembered something. The order was for sauce on the side. Meaning don't dress the salad. Which I already dressed. So, while the small amount of blood still in my head drained back down, I started over again, going twice as fast as I did before, knowing the entire time that it was no use. 2 minutes had probably come and gone, and the Chef was probably waiting for me to bring up the salad before he sent me home.

So I finished the salad and I sprinted to the pass and put it up. Chef Ted then looked at me and told me that it had been 1 minute and 40 seconds since the time started. I had plated the dish twice in less time it usually took me to do it once. All Chef Ted said was, "If you want to be a good cook, you have to have that kind of urgency all the time."

Words of wisdom; I learned a lot today.

Until next time,

Sean Martin - Aspiring Chef