this crap always happens

so, last night we had a party scheduled...supposed to be 20-25 people, and it's actually pretty rare when all of them show up, and it's even rarer for them to show up on time.  if we have a group scheduled for twenty people at six thirty, chances are that we'll get sixteen or seventeen of them around seven, seven fifteen.  and i love how nobody thinks its a big deal.  it's not like we set up half of our restaurant for them, and brought in extra help....oh.....wait....

anyway, the group last night turned out to be 31 people, which was awesome, and they all ate dinner and drank some beers or wine each, so the ticket was huge.  peggy took part of the table and jeana took the other part, and even though peggy's part was 19 people and jeana's was only 12, jeana ended up with more tips.  and peggy threw a hissy fit, and it became this whole big thing, and jeana was crying at one point, and it turned out that i finished before any of the servers.  ANY of them.  only one is supposed to close!  and peggy and jeana were still there, mostly cause peggy was whining and calling the boss and jeana was trying to not bash peggy's head in and get her sidework done, which had gone unattended due to the drama. 

so, from the kitchen perspective, the table went fine.  the boss was hanging around wanting to help but i've told him a million times, as long as i have one other person in the kitchen everything will be ok.  and i had tina and even though she's a little slower than i'd like, she did just fine.  boss is kinda cute, though, when he stands there asking if we want help...he looks like a kid asking for cookies.  we let this group order off the menu, and a lot of times with groups that big, we'll give them a limited menu just to make it easier on the girls and on the kitchen.  lemme see if i can remember what they had..

five matadors (one split)
four tuesday spag specials
one half rack ribs, mashies brown gravy
two chicken fried steaks, mashie chicken gravy
salmon and caper sauce, rice
almond salmon, rice
hamburger steak, mashie brown
meatloaf, mashie brown
two chicken strip baskets
cheeseburger, fries
single lumberjack cheeseburger, fries
country harvest salad
blt wheat toast
french dip, fries

that's all i remember off the top of my head but that's like 23 out of 31 meals.  and i have no reason whatsoever for remembering that.  i'm not gonna need to know that today when i go to work, but...there it is.  anyway. 

back to the salt mines...

sorry grandma

jeez, i haven't posted in forever.  my computer has been having some major problems, and i'm too lazy to walk my laptop upstairs and plug it in.  i need a wireless router.  anyway.  what's going on, dear readers?  have ya missed me and my angry line cook rants?  not much happened this week...except that on thursday we had a big table (16 top) of regulars that came in and ate, and everything was fine except one there was confusion on one lady's fried chicken.  ok.  so we get this fried chicken pre breaded and pre portioned.  they come in bags of four pieces.  occasionally they only have three pieces, and sometimes they have two of the same pieces in there (supposed to have one each of breast, thigh, leg, and wing).  so this lady ended up only getting three pieces, and as soon as we found out, we dropped the other piece she was missing.  now, astute readers will realize that that means we opened up another bag of chicken and took a piece out.  ok, so we sent that out, and she thought it was overcooked, so we ended up making a whole new order of fried chicken.  then tara gave her a free piece of pie.  so, to recap, this lady got two whole chicken dinners (without being charged for either) and a free dessert, and when all was said and done, and everybody was done and leaving (this group comes in a lot and they're good customers and they tip well), this fucking lady comes back in like she forgot something, gets the credit card slip from tara, and TAKES THE FUCKING TIP OFF OF IT.

what the fuck is wrong with people?  first of all, that was kitchen error, which i don't think the server should be punished for.  second, we did EVERYTHING we could to make it right.  she got two dinners and a dessert for free.  and the other fifteen people at the table enjoyed their meal and tipped accordingly, and this skunky bitch takes the entire tip off the ticket.  and we were slow other than that, so the one table tara had all night that she could have made money off of, she got stiffed on, because of one stupid rich lady.  (oh yeah, all those folks are rich, and live on a golf course.  rich people tip like shit because they don't know what it's like to be broke and really need that four dollars.  fuck them).  also, it wasn't even tara's fault!  well, to be fair, it wasn't really our fault in the kitchen either, it was the fault of shitty product.  sorry folks...i don't do the ordering nor do i decide what products we'll use.  what i wish i did, however, is rush out and 86 this bitch, but i was long gone by the time all the drama went down.  *sigh*  sometimes i really hate people.

our last ticket was an hour and a half before we closed on saturday night, and we spent all night friday talking about nintendo games.  kind of a boring week.

stuff i think is totally stupid part six million

so, all the servers are dressing up for halloween, which i think is stupid.  i feel if you're an adult there's only two reasons to dress up in a costume...

1.  if you're going to a costume party.  that one makes sense.  costume parties can be kick ass.  i'm down for this.

2.  if you have kids and they want you to dress up and take them trick or treating.  i would totally dress up if i had kids.  no sweat.  i actually look forward to it.

however, if you work at a restaurant, especially in the kitchen, then dressing up makes no fucking sense.  first off, it's hot in my kitchen, and most costumes are a burden, unless you're a sexy blankety-blank, in which case you'll probably just get hot grease spilled on your naughty bits.  also i'm sloppy as all hell when i'm busy, so i would probably ruin a costume by spilling spaghetti sauce or gravy all over it.  also, i'm 32 goddamn years old.  i'm not gonna show up at work in a giant foam spongebob rig.  i'd end up lighting myself on fire.  one spit of grease and that thing would melt and collapse around me like a goddamn dying star.  also, it's stupid.  you think i'm gonna rock an eight hour plus shift in a goddamn spider man suit?  fuck off.  it's dumb.  and another thing, all the servers are dressing up as "hardcore griz fans" which is pretty much how they dress every saturday anyway.  i hear there's gonna be some face paint or something.  anyway, it's dumb.  tammy is going as prince, which will probably look maybe a little cool at first but after three or four hours of spilling ranch and taco soup all over herself, plus maybe crying a little, she's gonna look like hell.  people will probably think she has a zombie costume on.

listen, if you're twenty something, hot, and into the bar scene, fucking go for it.  play dress up.  i used to.  it's all good at that age, but man, you hit that thirty mark, and things like that start to seem childish.  i'd rather just go home and put my sweats on and sit on my couch and watch tv.  am i lame?  sure.  do i think coming to work dressed up as the joker or a sexy blankety-blank is considerably lamer?  fuck yes i do.

at least the other cook on saturday feels the same way i do and i'm sure we'll have a good time pointing and snickering and judging and telling everyone they look dumb and i hate their stupid faces.

anyway, it's only friday and it's been slow as hell all week.  i got a wee talking to about my on the clock cell phone usage, but so did literally everybody else that works there except the old ladies who can't figure out how to text.  anyway, i've been trying to be good, i keep my phone in my jacket in the back instead of in my pocket, but i still sneak back there and check my shit every once in a while.  i had been just standing in the kitchen for hours texting my boy mikey about tv shows.  the boss doesn't like paying me for that, and i can understand, but sometimes honestly, i got shit else to do.  i try to look busy but i'm not very good at it.

also, i'd like to make a request for everybody reading this to send happy thoughts to the greatest server ever and my good buddy tiffani, as the cancer she thought she had beat has come back agressively.  she beat it once and she can do it again, but she needs all the support she can get.  kick it's ass, tiff...we love ya!

umm, whoops

so here i was, all excited to run our now legendary halibut and pub chips, and i made awesome beer batter and the best chips ever, and around seven we had been sort of steady (not busy) and we hadn't sold a single order, and i asked crystal and jessie "why the hell isn't the halibut selling?  people usually love it!" and they both looked at me sort of blankly and jessie said "i had no idea we were even running halibut!"

*sigh*

k, here's the thing...we have this clipboard, and it has what i call the special sheet on it.  this piece of paper has who's working what shifts, what section they're in (for servers), the soup of the day, the specials for the day, and whatever might be 86'd (anything we ran out of).  it's right inbetween the computer where we all clock in and the soup pots, sitting on top of the server microwave.  so, it's pretty much right there where all the servers are all the time and i always look at it when i clock in...it's pretty important for me to know what specials there are, although we run a pretty predictable schedule.  friday and saturday night and sunday morning are different, and occasionally wednesday we do something.  and since i always look at the special sheet, i just assumed all the girls did too.  now, granted, they all work the same shifts every week, and i'm pretty sure they're all in the same sections week in and week out, but still.  it's right there.  look at the special sheet! 

of course after i told them we had the halibut jessie went out and sold one on her next table.  the boss walks by and i go "haha!  none of the girls knew we had a special, and it didn't even get written up on the board.  we just sold our first one."  and he looks at me and just shakes his head and goes back in the office.  classic.  then about a half hour after i get home he calls me and says "lets run the halibut again tomorrow.  make sure the girls know about it.  ok.  thanks."  and pretty much hangs up.  it was like a seventeen second phone call.  and he could have just left me a note on the special sheet for today and i would have seen it.  so i dunno, maybe he thinks it's my fault for not telling everybody that we had the halibut and pub chips.  but, you see, i didn't tell anybody because THERE'S A GODDAMNED SHEET WITH ALL THE INFORMATION ON IT RIGHT SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SERVER STATION!!!

so, yeah.  we're running the halibut again.  also it's boss's birthday and there will be cake involved.  it's my friday and there's a new snl, plus the saints (my team) host the giants (wife's team) on tv tomorrow morning, so it's gonna be a good day off.  but one more day in the trenches, and it's a game day, so hopefully we'll be busy, but the last couple weeks we've slowed down considerably.  by all rights we should be busy on a game day, but last week was homecoming and there was the whole not-having-a-single-ticket-for-an-hour-and-a-half thing going on.  so who knows.  all i know is it's my fave crew to work with, and laughs and good times will be had.

that went surprisingly well

so, before he left in the afternoon yesterday, the boss told me to run some sort of a rib eye steak special, cause we haven't been selling them much lately and we had a few in the walk-in that we needed to turn.  i actually threw four rib eyes out last week cause they were sour, but these ones were fine.  anyway, he told me to do whatever i wanted and just adjust the price accordingly.  it's awesome and very rare when he says "run a special...do whatever you want" and i was stoked cause we usually don't have a dinner special on wednesday.  so i initally thought about just doing some nice garlic mushrooms to serve on top of the steak, cooked in butter and white wine, but i like to have button mushrooms to do that and all we had is pre sliced shrooms and they didn't even look all that great, so i scrapped that idea.  then out of the blue i was like "bleu cheese balsamic!" and i (for the first time ever, actually) made a great balsamic reduction sauce.  just cooked the steaks and crumbled some bleu cheese on them, not too much, and then put my sauce in a squeezie bottle and drizzled it over the top.  some of you may be thinking, "dude, you've never reduced balsamic before?  and bleu cheese and balsamic isn't even very forward thinking and/or challenging!"  well, i'm not a chef, i've explained that before, and the place i work is far from fine dining, and none of our customers expect anything but good, home cooked, normal food to fill their bellies.  i actually thought the bleu cheese would turn most of our customers off.  anyway, we ended up selling like ten of them before i left, which is pretty awesome considering that it was a $16.99 special on a fucking wednesday, in a place that on tuesday runs $6.99 all you can eat spag and on thursday does $9.99 prime rib sammies all day.  i couldn't believe that old folks and truckers were shelling out seventeen bucks to eat a steak covered in skunky cheese and vinegar.  i was proud as hell of how it looked, too.  oh, and before dinner rush started, boss came back to get food to bring home to his wife and originally he just wanted two porkies (breaded pork chop burger type sammies), and he seemed interested and vaguely grossed out when i told him what i decided to do as a special, and he was like "just gimmie the porkies" and i put a bit of my balsamic drizzle on a spoon and made him try it and he kinda snapped it around his mouth for a second and said "ok, gimmie one of those specials too."  it was great.  tammy asked me at one point why boss doesn't let me do this (make up specials) all the time.  it's funny, he was just trying to get rid of some steaks, and i got to play around a bit and turned it into a pretty nice special, and we made a couple hundred bucks.  everybody's happy.

balsamic reduction
3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup honey
2 cloves garlic

i actually ran the garlic over my microplane and made paste so there wouldn't be any chunks stopping up my squeeze bottle.  bring everything to a boil and let reduce for fifteen, twenty minutes.  you'd think it would be too sweet with the honey but the garlic cuts it just right and you end up with a nice sweet/savory sticky sauce that works just as good on steak as it would on ice cream.

well that was worthless

so, i'm sure i have worked a saturday night slower than last night, but i can't remember one.  it was bad.  the griz game was on tv at 4 so i know a lot of our customers were at home watching, and i just figured it would get busy afterwards.  nuh-uh.  it was funny, when i came in at two the boss, who was already working for somebody in the am, told me he called off jenney again and that he was coming back for dinner.  i told him he didn't have to, that i could handle it by myself.  then all night when it was slow i keep looking at him going "see?  i told you i could have done this!".  it seems like when i get super prepared for a rush i never get one, and last night was no exception.  i worked furiously to get things done for dinner rush and then there was no freaking dinner rush.

here's a timeline of my day

1:40 pm - leave house, stop and get gas and smokes, head to work
2:00 pm - arrive at work, excited it's my friday and hopeful of a slammin dinner
2:20 pm - finally get everybody else out of kitchen and get it somewhat clean.  cooked a six top.
2:25 pm - flipped the sammich bar--22 containers, washed said containers
2:30 pm - got a few open minutes to change the oil in the fryer--this is important, as we're running fish n chips for special, and it's better when the oil is new.
2:45 pm - got bakers washed and in the oven, got more mashed potatoes and chicken gravy hot, made sure garlic butter was topped off, filled water and oil squeeze bottles, cooked a couple more tables
3:00 pm - smoked.
3:10 pm - made a double batch of beer batter, complete with six bottles of bayern amber.  wanted to take a bath in it.  we had 17 orders of the halibut prepped up so i needed a ton of batter.
3:15 pm - washed and thinly sliced 8 or 9 russet potatoes for the pub chips, got them blanching in cold water with a splash of lemon juice.  the way i slice them, half a potato will yield about 20-25 slices, and that's plenty enough, it's a nice pile in the basket.

now i'm kind of losing it...i remember cooking a few orders, consoling jessie (as much as anyone can console jessie) about getting screwed on like three tables in a row (two bucks on a forty five dollar ticket, four bucks on a seventy dollar ticket, and one other i can't remember), and i probably smoked a bunch more times. 

4:00 pm - had the prime rib on the board to let it rest for an hour, had the bakers on the line, mashies full, reach in cooler stocked (cheeses, diced/sliced veg, sammich meats), stand up cooler stocked (burgers, chicken breasts, salmon filets, racks of ribs, lasagna, meatloaf, pesto, heavy whip, sirloins, ribeyes, pork chops), line freezers stocked (fries, sweet tater fries, chicken strips, chicken fried steaks, breaded mushrooms, cheese sticks, fantail shrimp, pastys, kid burgers, p & d shrimpies), all breads and buns stocked to the gills....pretty much just fucking ready for anything.

4-6 pm - was sort of busy...not busy, i guess, but occupied the whole time.  still convinced a good dinner rush would happen.  by myself since two (usually the second cook comes in at 5, i told boss he could come in whenever or not come in at all) bossman gets there a little after six, and i had just rocked what would turn out to be the only significant rush of the night.

6-8 pm - nothing.  just me and boss bullshitting in the kitchen, cooking the occasional table.  messed about with the girls and danny boy.  oh, actually i told a story that made my boss hustle out of the kitchen toward the office with his fingers plugging his ears.  it was hilarious.  he's super easily grossed out.    i smoked a lot in this time frame.  at 8 i told boss to "get his shit done and get out of here" like i would with any other cook.  "sweep this fucking floor i'm gonna go smoke"

8-10 pm - also nothing.  just a busted ass saturday.  we would have saved money by being closed.  there was me, three servers, a dishwasher, and a hostess, and i bet there wasn't 800 in sales all night.  on a good saturday all three servers can do 800.  out of the seventeen fish n chips we had prepped up, we sold a whopping TWO. 

yeah, two. 

and i think i only sold like four or five cuts of prime.  we did a lot of standing in what i refer to as kitchen pose, one hand steadying you against a counter or cutting board or freezer or whatever, and the other hand on the hip.  we all do it.  it's not terribly comfortable or manly looking but i've noticed i slip into kitchen pose a lot and so does everybody else.  if we lean back against anything that anything just starts scooting backwards and pretty soon the steam table in in the dish pit.  so kitchen pose it is.

anyway, what a long post about absolutely nothing happening.  till next week y'all, i gots some sunday morninging to do...

uno mas

so, friday went pretty well.  the halibut and pub chips started off slow but then went on a little run and we sold quite a few...at least ten orders, and i think we only had 12 prepped up.  we ran out of the chips three times, though...two times coming within a minute and a half of another.  plus boss took two orders home and crystal and jessie each had one.  and my usual friday night kitchen compatriot was out with the flu and tina came in and she's never worked a friday at this restaurant, and her and i only work together one day a week (spag day!) and we don't really have a good routine.  aaron (usual fri closer) and i have been working together for seven or eight years, and can pretty much knock out a dinner rush without having to talk about food or tickets...we each kind of have a side of the kitchen that we're responsible for, but we also swap back and forth if need be.  i call it the kitchen dance.  we're so used to scooting past eachother with knives and plates of hot things in our hands that it flows like a little dance.  i sometimes feel clunky working with other people.  anyway, tina did a helluva job.  i dunno how busy she gets on sunday or monday, but i know how busy we get on tuesdays (not much) and we got hella busy for a little while yesterday.  not super good friday night dinner rush busy, but busy enough that i had to pop to her side of the kitchen and help her out a bit.  it's okay, i'm cool with that.  also boss was kind of hanging around the kitchen and i like it when he sees me kick the shit out of a dinner rush.  i've worked for him for many moons and he's seen it countless times, but it's still fun to show off to somebody who appreciates it.

anyway, we're doing the halibut again tonight, and hopefully jenney works...she's supposed to, but she also called in with the flu yesterday.  me and tina are the only not-sick night cooks, and she has to have a day off...i may end up working dinner rush with the boss.  and lemme tell ya, i've worked for a guy who would never in a million years put on an apron and rub elbows with the kitchen staff for a lunch rush, much less help out doing dishes or waiting tables.  my current boss actually works every sunday morning, knocking out hashbrowns and pancakes, is around pretty much every day with an apron on at some point, doing prep or washing dishes or letting a cook go home early and watching the kitchen.  it's great.  it's good to have a boss that knows exactly what it's like to be on the line getting your ass whooped.  anyhoo, if bossman has to work tonight that's fine, cause we get along great, he laughs at all my dirty jokes, and i can cook circles around him and i like showing off.  plus i like letting him get a little behind and then yelling "i need those fucking fries!  goddammit, keep up with me here!"

i'd like to address what has become somewhat of a question for some folks i know (mainly mikey and his gf over at http://www.mikewatchestoomuchtv.blogspot.com/).  yes.  most chefs/cooks/kitchen folk smoke cigarettes.  theres's two main reasons, for that, i think...

1.  it's hot, hectic, and at times, frustrating and annoying working in restaurants.  especially in the kitchen.  we stand up all day, and it's at least 90 degrees at eye level in my kitchen with the potential to get much hotter, everything is kind of smoking and steaming and throwing wavy heat lines in the air, it smells of fryer and grilled meat, and smoking a cigarette is a welcome relief to all that, providing an opportunity mostly to sit down and get some fresh air.  and the front of the house has it's own frustrations, like screaming children, demanding customers, and in our case, pervy truckers.  sometimes a server just HAS TO GET THE FUCK OUT for a second so she doesn't stab somebody.  it's funny, in my experience, cooks smoke and make dick jokes and laugh a lot, and servers smoke really quickly and in a tense manner, usually texting somebody.  anyway, most of us smoke cause it's an excuse to leave for a second and we don't normally follow any regimented break pattern.  i just smoke when there's no tickets and i feel like it.

2.  i feel like this is the most important reason.  remember when you were in high school, and when you went to lunch at taco bell with your buddies, you drove past all those metal and punker kids across the street smoking?  remember those kids?  the ones with dyed hair and ramones and slayer t shirts?  yeah.  we grew up.  you went to college, and we took menial jobs right out of high school (if indeed we graduated at all).  we smoke so much cause we started early.  most of us in the restaurant biz, and in the service industry in general, are those kids.  granted, some of us went to college (like me), graduated (like me), and couldn't find a job in their field of study (like me).  i just realized i liked cooking more than i liked business management.  i don't want to wear a polo shirt with a corporate logo.  i don't want to wear khakis.  anyway, we in the restaurant business, and cooks especially, are the kids you saw out the window skateboarding while you were actually sitting in history class.  we're the ones who smelled like weed after lunch, and who carved metallica and van halen logos into the desks.  and we just got older.  but we're still the same kids.


hope that helps.  anyway, i'll give ya the lazy sunday am post and let ya know how much ass i kicked tonight. 

ok it works

alrighty...well, it's been a long week already and i still got two shifts to go.  i've been kind of bumming this week, for reasons unknown.  tuesday i had a pretty bad day at work and i came home and rattled off a ton of shit i had on my mind and that's when the website crashed and my post was lost.  it's probably better that way.  it was a fairly depressing rant that turned into an ugly tirade.  i feel better now, i guess, for having written it, even though it didn't get posted.  kind of the old "write a letter mad letter to someone but never send it".  i dunno.  i think i saw it in a movie.  anyway.  whatever.  work is work.  it sucks sometimes but it also rules occasionally.  i can't complain.  i got it a hell of a lot better than a lot of folks.  i laugh a lot at work, and i get to smoke all the time, and i cuss and make dick jokes constantly, and sometimes i wear a fake moustache, and i'm always busting people's balls, and i'm comfortable shitting there.  it doesn't sound like much, but i know a lot of people who don't feel comfortable pooping at work.  actually, i don't, really...i barely know anybody, but i would imagine lots of people hate it.  whatever, we got hardcore strength poo spray, and i pick my times wisely.  i'm by myself in the afternoon a lot.  plus i got a blackberry so i can totally surf the web when i'm in there.  it's pretty awesome, actually.

wow.  ANYway...

once again it's friday, and i'm stoked cause we're running the gnar halibut and pub chips.  we've done it a few times this summer and it's always gone over well.  i'd just like to point out that i suggested it well over a year ago as a special, because the boss used to have the best fish n chips in town at the old restaurant.  our current fish and chips are mediocre at best.  at first when i suggested it he kind of balked cause we already have fish n chips and running a different fish n chips as a special would confuse our customers.  and i kind of agree...most of our customers and old and/or truckers.  anyway, it was when i suggested doing fresh pub chips with the fish to set it apart from our menu fish n chips that he decided to do it.  the pub chips are a huge hit (boss's mom loves them, so that helps considerably) and they're SUPER easy...i just slice russet potatoes on the slicer, not too thin...then i blanch them in water and a bit of lemon juice for a couple hours, and then just chuck them in the fryer and toss them with some seasoning mix (i tend to meddle a bit and make a different one every time i do the chips).  they come out somewhere between home fries and lay's chips, and everybody seems to like them.  and the halibut, with our kick ass beer batter, is awesome, and the girls usually bug bossman until he tells me to cook one for the crew.

anyway, so that's what's on tap for tonight.  i'm listening to ice cream man by van halen right now, and it's near the top of itunes when i sort by times played.  it's pretty much the best song ever. 

so, yeah...that's it.

sorry bout that, folks

whoa, it's been over a week since i've posted.  work has been ok, i guess.  i'm in a really wierd headspace about where i'm at right now.  not really burned out, cause i still love cooking, but kind of a been there done that sort of feeling.  it's not fun anymore.  at least it hasn't been lately.  we've had some busy nights; last saturday was good, there was a football game and we got tons of business both before and after.  i can't remember anything going wrong on saturday, but i can't remember enjoying myself either.  and usually i love rocking out a frantic dinner rush...it's kind of my gig.  line cooking is wierd...some people have jobs where they're occupied all day but not what you'd call busy, some people have jobs where they don't do shit, but i have a job where probably 70% of the time i have nothing going on, with intermittent bursts of frantic cooking.  last night was spaghetti night (my loyal reader will be familiar with spaghetti night) and it wasn't as busy as some, but right when tina got to work she started on some prep and i got like eight or nine tickets within about five minutes of eachother.  it wasn't anything i couldn't handle (i can handle damn near anything.  bring it on.) but for a couple minutes there i was a bit under the gun.  not in the weeds, mind you, just under the gun. 

this might need explaining.

we have cook talk in the restaurant.  anybody who's read any bourdain knows about it.  for the uninitated, here's a little glimmer:

in the weeds--busy, behind, lost, etc.  i usually only feel in the weeds if i've forgotten to do something important like cook baked potatoes, get the prime rib ready, or maybe i burnt the spag sauce.  doesn't happen often.

under the gun--not as bad as in the weeds, but more a time crunch sort of thing.  as in "it's already 4:30 and i'm under the gun to get the special ready by five".

fifo--first in, first out, in regards to tickets.  sometimes there's no avoiding one ticket dragging past another as different items have different cook times.  but generally it's fifo.

single, deucer, three top--refers to the number of customers at a single table.  self explanitory.

there's a lot more that i'm not gonna get into right now, mostly cause i don't wanna just plagurize tony bourdain and i'm brain farting a lot of it.  but around my kitchen, a frenchie is a french dip, bullet is a blt, we refer to prime rib in ounce-per-cut, as in "i need two twelves and a sixteen", d spec and l spec, or speckle refer to dinner and lunch specials.  and if i get an order for a chicken walnut quesadilla, you have to sing it like "ah-chickenannawalnut quesssa deeeia".  most of the time when i get an order for anything i just yell "aahhh cheeseburger cheeseburger!"  (it's an old snl skit reference.  nobody i work with gets it.)

anyway.

nobody reads this thing.

aah, another week in the books

not much to report on this week.  decent business, but not busy.  not what i'd call busy anyway.  i can't even remember anything interesting or funny to talk about.  oh, wait...one asshole on tuesday ordered a buffalo burger with fries and a soda (bill was $12.95) and left three dollars on the table and left.  i don't understand people.  we're good folks at river city.  if this guy forgot his wallet he should have just told peggy and im sure she would have let him run home and get it.  we do stuff like that occasionally.  but we also get these people every once in a while, that just grub and go.  it's not even teenagers trying to be funny, it's like, older people who should damn well know better.  a couple years ago this trucker had two teenage girls he picked up hitchiking and they all ate and then just snuck out the side door.  they even took the plates!  luckily it was winter, there was fresh snow, and tammy mantracked them back to the truck and called the cops.  this 50 year old loser had to call his elderly mother and wake her up to get her credit card number so he could pay for the food.  i'm sure it was embarrassing for him, and, well, fucking good.  what a jagweed.  listen, if you don't have any fucking money, you don't go in to a restaurant and order food. 

oh, and another thing, general public, just so you're aware...generally in the middle of the afternoon there's only ONE server, ONE cook, and NO hostesses or dishwashers.  so do bear with us.  it's tough.  actually now that i think about it a couple of people walked out in the afternoons this week cause either peggy or jace couldn't get to them soon enough.  look around, people...if you see a lot of customers but only one server running around, then have paitence.  she wants to take your order.  she needs the tips.  but thirty customers haranging one server for refills on sodas and sides of ranch makes said server occupied and scatterbrained.  she'll get to you.  just wait.  both the guys (truckers) waited about three minutes then made disgruntled noises and left.  have paitence, guys!  and i don't understand how we get ten and twelve tops at 3:30.  who goes out to eat with that many people in the middle of the afternoon?  dinner i understand, even weekend breakfast, sometimes lunch, but just randomly in the middle of the afternoon?  i don't get it.  no matter how long i serve people food, they'll still surprise me.

spag day remix

well, another tueday in the books...and it wasn't much.  sold about half the spaghetti we have been doing on tuesdays.  a lot of times it's busy but ridiculously easy, cause it's 90% spag, and i just have to steam the noodles in the ol cleveland steamer (seriously, that's what it's called, it's got a big sign on it) for about a minute, then plate them and ladle on some sauce, which i have convienently placed on a burner right next to the steamer.  so it's a kind of bang-bang-bang thing.  i also made a huge double batch of beef stroganoff, cause we were going to run it wed night anyway and we had a busy as shit weekend and we're kinda low on burger buns, so it's better to run a lunch special that doesn't require buns.  i mean, i'm sure we'll sell our fair share of burgers today, but we don't get buns till tomorrow, so here's hoping...i think there's around thirty buns left and that is not very much.  anyway i'm happy about the stroganoff cause we have a good recipe, plus it's an easy as shit special too.  so 11:30-8 today, which on wednesdays usually isn't a problem.  it seems like the same shift takes longer on thursdays.  anyway, off to the salt mines....

saturday birthday day

so yeah, my friday (which is saturday) and it's also my birthday.  i hope to hell i have a better night tonight than i did last night.  it was busy like i wanted, and that was ok, but the prime didn't get in the oven until after i got to work at 2, which doesn't leave a hell of a lot of time for it so slow cook and be ready by five.  usually we get it in around noon, blast it at 400 for forty mins, then turn the oven to low and let it go slow and low for the next few hours.  here's the thing...a rib roast (cut of meat, prime is the grade designation.) has a lot of connective tissue in it, which is made of collagen.  when put to long, low heat cooking methods (slow roasting or barbeque) the collagen turns into gelatin, which in turn keeps the meat juicy and tender.  when you cook a rib roast fast it still may be juicy but the collagen doesn't have time to melt.  anyway, after cooking it at 350 for an hour and a half after i figured out slow cooking it was a no go i got it done.  by 5:40 i had it on the cutting board ready to go, and by 7:20 we ran out.  we haven't ran out of prime (completely out...end cuts as well) since last fall probably.  so good stuff there.  and the first u of m football game is today so we'll probably be busy after that, which in turn means dinner rush starts earlier, so i hope we keep it going for two or three hours, just banging it out. 

i was really pissed off when i left work yesterday and i had tons of shit i wanted to blog about but i just played super mario galaxy and now today i can't really even remember what i was mad about.  oh well.  it's my birthday, so i'm gonna try to be in a good mood, although when turning 32 and feeling older by the second it's kind of difficult.  but chin up, loyal reader (readers?  do i even have one?) cause i got the ultimate awesome tool for keeping it light at work...

FAKE MOUSTACHES!!!

hopefully later i"ll have a pic of me and danny boy with some porn staches.

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.