Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Smooth as Silk
The valentines proceedings flew off without so much as a hitch.
All of the food looked and tasted spectacular, and the money was quite nice. The good thing about days like valentines is that people aren't opposed to tossing down a little extra ching for that better bottle of wine or more expensive entree. That in turn make the overall sales higher than they normally would be. Then again you have to subtract the fact that the food we were using was more expensive, usually I don't use diver scallops or halibut on the menu. I wasn't really thinking that we would make much money on today at all, if we break even I am happy. The restaurant is doing pretty well on a daily basis so we aren't as dependent upon a massive valentines day to tide us over until the state thaws out. Even so I think we may in fact turn a nice little profit this year, so all is good in Felipe land.
This year we just did thing Ala Carte, and had a slightly bigger staff than usual (read Felipe), last year however things were a little different. Last year there was so much tension and bad feeling flowing around the kitchen that a couple of member of the staff started hitting the brandy early and literally were drunk and fighting by the second seating. On that, last year they were doing a set coursed menu, the kitchen manager was a little ambitious with the menu and had about 9 courses paired with wine that had to be sent out in a time span of two and a half hours. Things ran over, people were angry waiting, the food didn't turn out that good, people were wasted and crying, not a good scene. This year with half the staff, we probably served just as many people and everything was super smooth. Then again it would have been just the same if we would have done things as coursed service, that just would bring more hassle than it would be worth. The main reason we decided to change things was because Tracy flew to Kenya this early afternoon, she is the one in charge of the FOH operations most of the time. It isn't like Eli isn't capable of doing so, but why risk it when we could just slightly alter our regular service.
Poor Poor Tracy, while trying to get everything ready for her big trip, she was working late on the newsletter at around 2 am last night. She did something screwy and pasted something over the top of some text and suddenly the entire document was gone, GONE. Despite her best attempts she had to retype the entire thing, once again Poor Poor Tracy.
My night was spend working the saute station, and every once in a while helping Jamin do some plating. This meant the majority of my time was spend just cooking up my fresh pasta and searing off pistachio encrusted ahi. For a good 4 hours I was focused on nothing more than the tickets I had at hand, no schedule dilemmas, no HR difficulties, nothing but cooking. My time is so much weighted away from actual cooking nowadays, It is a nice treat when I actually get to do so. My job isn't so much to cook as it is to ensure that the rest of my staff is adequately prepared to do the cooking. I have this feeling like I would be well served to just take a step back and just get a job line cooking again, though there is now way I am going to abandon them where I work right now. I will not leave until I know there is someone in my place who is competent enough to take those reins and do an even better job than I did. I just like the idea of the fantasy of the simple line cook life of cooking all night, going out with waitresses until the early morning, sleeping till noon, and calling it a day. The pay cut might just hurt a little, but then again to me money has never been a good motivator.
On that note I have a party I have to get ready for, and yes I have to work at 6 am tomorrow morning, call me a rockstar if you care to.
FYI, just one spelling error, not bad for a hi shcool drop out.
All of the food looked and tasted spectacular, and the money was quite nice. The good thing about days like valentines is that people aren't opposed to tossing down a little extra ching for that better bottle of wine or more expensive entree. That in turn make the overall sales higher than they normally would be. Then again you have to subtract the fact that the food we were using was more expensive, usually I don't use diver scallops or halibut on the menu. I wasn't really thinking that we would make much money on today at all, if we break even I am happy. The restaurant is doing pretty well on a daily basis so we aren't as dependent upon a massive valentines day to tide us over until the state thaws out. Even so I think we may in fact turn a nice little profit this year, so all is good in Felipe land.
This year we just did thing Ala Carte, and had a slightly bigger staff than usual (read Felipe), last year however things were a little different. Last year there was so much tension and bad feeling flowing around the kitchen that a couple of member of the staff started hitting the brandy early and literally were drunk and fighting by the second seating. On that, last year they were doing a set coursed menu, the kitchen manager was a little ambitious with the menu and had about 9 courses paired with wine that had to be sent out in a time span of two and a half hours. Things ran over, people were angry waiting, the food didn't turn out that good, people were wasted and crying, not a good scene. This year with half the staff, we probably served just as many people and everything was super smooth. Then again it would have been just the same if we would have done things as coursed service, that just would bring more hassle than it would be worth. The main reason we decided to change things was because Tracy flew to Kenya this early afternoon, she is the one in charge of the FOH operations most of the time. It isn't like Eli isn't capable of doing so, but why risk it when we could just slightly alter our regular service.
My night was spend working the saute station, and every once in a while helping Jamin do some plating. This meant the majority of my time was spend just cooking up my fresh pasta and searing off pistachio encrusted ahi. For a good 4 hours I was focused on nothing more than the tickets I had at hand, no schedule dilemmas, no HR difficulties, nothing but cooking. My time is so much weighted away from actual cooking nowadays, It is a nice treat when I actually get to do so. My job isn't so much to cook as it is to ensure that the rest of my staff is adequately prepared to do the cooking. I have this feeling like I would be well served to just take a step back and just get a job line cooking again, though there is now way I am going to abandon them where I work right now. I will not leave until I know there is someone in my place who is competent enough to take those reins and do an even better job than I did. I just like the idea of the fantasy of the simple line cook life of cooking all night, going out with waitresses until the early morning, sleeping till noon, and calling it a day. The pay cut might just hurt a little, but then again to me money has never been a good motivator.
On that note I have a party I have to get ready for, and yes I have to work at 6 am tomorrow morning, call me a rockstar if you care to.
FYI, just one spelling error, not bad for a hi shcool drop out.
# posted by Felipe : 6:44 PM
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