saturday night, and weekend to play

what a waste of my time and my boss's money.  it sucked last night.  sucked donkeys for nickles.  there was nothing resembling a dinner rush...i don't remember having more than four or five tickets hanging at any given time....oh, wait...from about 2:30-4 it was kinda crazy, and that was amplified because there was just one server (tara, handled it like a champ with the exception of hurling a tray at my iced tea) and only me in the kitchen, and on saturday afternoons i have to flip the cold station (change the containers for all the cheese, diced onions and tomatoes, that sort of thing), i have to change the oil in the fryer, which i like to do before dinner, and i have to change the kitchen over from breakfast stuff to dinner stuff while doing lunch in the mean time.  i have to make sure the prime rib is cooking right and going to be ready at five, i gotta have all my bakers done, make sure all my gravies and sauces are topped up and all that.  and it was busy during all that.  we did 250 dollars in sales in about forty five minutes.  and in eight dollar sandwiches and three dollar cups of soup that's a ton of actual volume.  it was busy then.  but as soon as that was over and i had everything ready for a good ol saturday night dinner rush....nothing.  it sucked.  but hey, it's my weekend now, and i have a lazy sunday with my wife.  i wanna bitch about late table etiquette but that's for later, we're heading out to breakfast now.  i need yumyums!

friday after the fact

so, yeah...it was effing hot last night.  like, hot hot.  the thermometers in the kitchen usually read about 80 degrees (they're on the opposite side of the line from all the hot equipment) and last night they were pushing 95.  it was god awful.  and it was slow, which made the heat much more noticable.  it was slow right up until i was about ready to skate out of there, then we got a couple tickets, then a couple more, and wouldn't ya know it i was there for another half hour.  oh well.  i got all my stocking done while it was slow so i didn't have to bust ass just to get out of there.   i think it was slow cause it's one of the last couple weekends before all the kids go back to school (college and otherwise), and in montana, that means a lot of folks will be camping and trying to squeeze a few extra fun things into the last bit of summer.  tonight is my friday (even though it's saturday), and hopefully it will be busy.  i need tips!

quick shoutout

if you like the television, and i know you do, check out my boy mike's tv blog.  love me some mike

http://www.mikewatchestoomuchtv.blogspot.com/

aah, friday...

another friday, another day closer to the weekend (my weekend actually starts on sunday).  i hope it's busy.  when it's busy you notice and complain about the heat but have to concentrate on banging out tickets.  when it's slow you just notice the heat and complain.  it's usually around 80 degrees in the kitchen, but if you have to stand over a broiler all night, with a heat lamp to one side and a leaky steamer to the other it gets over 100 degrees pretty quick.  and i do.  and it does.  believe me.  but luckily all the weight i lose every shift through sweating i gain back through beer and pork fat.  so i got that going for me.

i'm gonna try to really get into this

seriously, i've been wanting to write about my experience in restaurants for a long time, and i've always had deliusions of grandeur, thinking i could knock out a book, but i'm far too lazy for that, so i'm just gonna try to get my thoughts on here occasionally so as to blow off steam and let everybody know what it's like.  i'll try to give you an insight into the world of a professional line cook, not a chef.  i used to want to be a chef but i think there's more honor and dignity in being a grunt, it maybe isn't as glamorous, but there's something darkly satisfying that keeps me pushing day in day out.  and i don't want anybody to think i work at a fancy restaurant with a chef, or that i have anything against chefs.  i've barely been in the presence of chefs.  i've worked at a series of local family restaurants, never in what you would call fine dining, although i think you can dine just fine at my joint.  i'm one of thousands in this country that cooks because i love it, i love the intensity of a weekend dinner rush, i love the downtime filled with dick and poo jokes, i love the people that end up working in restaurants; we're usually a hard partying unruly bunch.  my servers may be sweet and normal when they're getting your coffee, but in the back of the house they're just as foul mouthed and wicked as i am.  i love the option of showing up hungover and miserable, with stubble on my face and dirty jeans and a slayer t-shirt.  it's all good, as long as i can still get cheeseburgers and reubens to the hungry masses.  i could go on for days...and hopefully i will.