A day in the life

Hey, this might get a little disjointed. I have just finished day 11 of 11 in a row lunch/dinner services. I feel very scattered. Day One, was monthly inventory with Marty who does all the employee, budget, payroll and what not. That actually went pretty okay from what I remember. The rest of my 11 days consisted of daily sandwich specials, Nightly vegetables of the day, tapas specials, pasta specials, and specials of the night. Quite a few of the ingredients are given to me by my boss the executive chef.

As I have stated, I am a working chef so technically I am what you might call a chef de cuisine. I run one of two kitchens where I work. I am in charge of the restaurant that the members eat at on a regular basis. The Executive Chef runs the other kitchen, on top of all the executive chef things he does. His kitchen cooks special dinners and events. Well, I get all the excess food from said events. Which leaves me (one might think) with a host of options for my specials and tapas and pastas. The thing is, that these "Dinners" and "Events" I speak of usually have a theme. So I get stuck with items like five spiced duck breast, a mixture of hummus and baba ganoush, and enough calamari to choke a giant squid....pun intended.

Yes, I run fried calamari because nobody at my restaurant orders tapas. It's a country club. Don't ask, I haven't figured out why the members don't order apps. According to "Juice", my grill man, "starters" have never been a big deal. I am saving the hummus mixture for a lunch special. The duck breast didn't get ordered the first time around in the main kitchen so I tried anything I could think of to get away from the five spice asian thing but what kills that flavor..... yeah, BBQ duck quesadilla. Really, it sold okay. It tasted pretty damn good too. By he way, calamari freezes really well. It is no wonder why I like Chopped so much.?!

This is my first time working at a country club. Very different. You see, at a real restaurant you serve people the same plates over and over again. No big deal, you get fast at pumping out the same ten, twelve dishes. Sure you get a pain in the ass every once in a while with dressing on the side or no cheese or no whatever. At a country club the "custumers" are members. These people pay for everything you see. The golf course, the gates, the valets, the chairs, the lights, the houses, the drinks, the food you order and are preparing for them, the wage you get paid, all of it. So, when the members want the salad chopped as fine as parsley...... yeah, we do that. Ya see, we are rarely crammed with 100 people. It is more like 30 members right on top of each other and they all want the food they just ordered..... right now. Okay not all the members are the "right now!" kind of people. However, they are all very particular about what they want to eat and how they want it prepared. I certainly am not complaining about this. Really, after cooking the same food night in and night out for three years it is nice to have to change gears and make special order after special order. Okay, not the parsley fine chopped salad, but a lot of the other things are great.