Never Trust A Skinny Chef

Slow Motion

Today at the restaurant was great! Except that we are all exhausted, and on the slow motion setting. My position for the rest of this week and next week is the expediter. My production sheet called for chili that was made yesterday, minced parsley, 2 gallons of clam chowder and 2 gallons of mushroom bacon gravy. The first thing I did was the parsley. Then I mis en placed for the chowder and gravy. Mis en place (MEP) is French for "everything in it's place," basically gathering and prepping all ingredients for a recipe before the actual cooking part.

Anyway, I was so slow today, I almost finished the MEP for the recipes. Tomorrow is soft opening, and I'll be able to cook the chowder and gravy before service starts which is definitely a good thing.

Soft opening tomorrow should definitely bring challenges along with nerves. But despite not having everything prepared yet, my expectations of how things will go tomorrow are high. I think we are going to do a great job. I'm confident in that something will go wrong tomorrow, but I know I can think on my feet so we'll be ok.

Day 4

Today we cooked the second half of the menu! I should have been at school around 7:30 this morning though instead of 8 in order to have extra prep time. I made chili today, and the recipe called for 17.5 pounds of diced tomatoes. That's a lot of tomatoes. I'm not really slow when it comes to chopping things up, but it took me about 2 hours to complete the chopping of the tomatoes! Then there were onions, and then garlic, and the chili itself took an hour and a half to cook! Needless to say, my hand is blistered, I cut myself three times, and my arm hurts! But the good thing is that everything turned out delicious!

Can't wait for tomorrow!

Woo Hoo!

Well today was day three of the quarter! We have been so busy trying to get organized and learn all sorts of information about the restaurant. We have crammed everything from table numbers and waste reports, to learning how to use all of the kitchen equipment into our brains over the past couple of days. Today we cooked the first half of the menu, and it went well, but it took us forever because we are still learning where things are in the kitchen which is a struggle.

One of our menu items is a lobster salad, and Chef Scott (our chef instructor) showed us how to boil them. No, they didn't scream when he put them in the water. A lot of people think they do, but they don't. Chef told us that their brains are the size of a grain of sand, and that they go to sleep and then die when you put them in, but I'm not sure if I believe him or not. I have trouble believing that the lobsters don't feel pain, but I would really like to believe it.

I made vegetable lasagna today! I have never made lasagna before, and have never cooked anything in a # 2 hotel pan (stainless steel pan that's 20" long by 12" wide and 2" deep). It was just like cooking in a regular 11" by 13" baking dish, only much larger, and way easier than I thought. Im beginning to think that cooking in large quantities isn't much harder than cooking for four people. I guess where it makes the difference is when you have a lot of chopping to do. And equipment for cooking in larger batches always helps too!

Tomorrow is day four, we are cooking the second half of the menu. We'll see how that goes. I'm looking forward to it!

HRT 383

I couldn't sleep last night! I woke up every hour or so, and it was one of those nights when you feel like you were awake the whole night. I was so excited for school to start! I really am so very excited for HRT 383. It was so great seeing all of my classmates again! I have three best friends, M, A and D. M recently got a job as a pastry chef, and absolutely loves it, but works such crazy hours in a city 40ish miles away so we didn't get to see each other at all over the summer! I didn't get to see A over the summer either, since she works full time as an assistant manager for a large restaurant chain, in the same city 40ish miles away. D I got to see twice, we went to a TV taping for a new Food Network show that will air in January, and then we went to the LA County Fair with our other friend P and had a lot of fun.
Anyway, it was so wonderful to see my management group again, we worked so hard together last quarter and were so burned out, but we're so ready to move forward and to do a great job as managers for our week. Tomorrow all of the line managers and production managers have to be in chef whites for class, because we're cleaning and putting the kitchen back together for the rest of the year. The cost control managers, reservation/banquet managers, and the service managers are meeting and touring the restaurant again tomorrow, which reminds me I have to bring a lunch because my management group is meeting during lunch tomorrow.

Peanut butter and jelly, here I come!

Nice to Meet You

I'm new to this whole blogging thing, but I have a great plan for my blog in the future, so I thought I'd start one now, and develop it more as I go.

I'm currently a senior at California Polytechnic University, Pomona (I'll call it Cal Poly from this point forward) and am majoring in Hospitality Management at the Collins School. It's essentially a specialized business degree. We take an assortment of classes including finance, law, marketing, management, wine, cooking and more. There is even a restaurant that is student run. That's the class I will be taking this next quarter. HRT 383. It's pretty much the equivalent of a thesis. One class, seven management teams, 12 units, 6+ hours a day, five days a week, (well, the lunch class is five days at least; the dinner class is three).

HRT 383 is the third part of a series of classes. The first is Professional Cooking I, where we learn the basic knife skills and cooking techniques. Then the next quarter, the same classmates enroll in Food and Beverage Operations I, a class in which we are broken into groups and we create a management plan for managing the on-campus restaurant for a week. My group's management plan was 80-something pages. Then there's Food and Beverage Operations II, otherwise known as HRT 383. In HRT 383, you're on stage, actually managing the restaurant. Essentially, we open a brand-new restaurant each week.

My class has seven management teams, all with different menus and themes. My management team goes live week two, October 8-12, our theme is My Big Fat Greek Affair. I love my group, we work together really well. However, I still can't help but be nervous for our management week. I've worked in restaurants before, and have done a lot of catering, and the majority of my experience lies in the front of the house, instead of the back. I chose to be the line manager last quarter because I wanted the back of the house experience, but now I'm rethinking my decision. Maybe I should have gone with where my strength lies instead. Since I signed up for that position, Ive learned that week two is the toughest, because the teachers don't hold our hands anymore, and that the line manager is the toughest management position. Great.

So, the first day of school is tomorrow. Bring it on!