What Do You Want From Life, Dance Mix

I can see why some people get into the adrenaline of back-of-the-house kitchen work. It's full of near misses, thinking on the fly, drama, and noise. Chef Glenn has his "Five P's" (different than the Marketing P's): "Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance." We were doing fine up until he totally changed the plan on us. Then, we needed to call in some favors.

Sara didn't show today, which was a problem because we needed to make more spaetzle, and she made it on Monday, and we needed to make more Red Bell Pepper Salsa, and she made it last week. Chef Glenn doesn't like to repeat himself. And Cho showed up today, after a four day absence. He was a pariah in our group, and nobody was particularly glad to see him today, including the Chef. So he was assigned his menu competency, which essentially kept him out of our hair but not out of our way, as he took up half the stove and one of our two counters with all his preparation. I don't know what he was thinking, but he put maraschino cherries (with stems!) on top of his amuse-bouche. And he was at least 20 minutes late with his final plate. Once he was finished, we had him transport dishes and clean shrimp. Anything else was just too risky.

But as I said, we were all set as we came to family meal time at 10, with only two beurre blanc sauces and mashed potatoes left to make before service, along with getting our station in order. Naturally, Chef Glenn dropped two small incendiary devices on us. First, we had to prepare an amuse bouche before service (with 45 reservations, that meant at least 60 individual appetizers). Then, he said he wanted onion rings to garnish our tenderloin. "Have Cho do it," he said. "He ruined them last week, Chef," I said. "I want onion rings," he said.

So I baked off some puff pastry circles, and Andrea came to the rescue with some herbed goat cheese. Nick and Andy got to work on the onion rings, which was handy as they're at the fryer station this week. But Andy severely oversalted the first batch of seasoning flour, which wasn't discovered until Chef Joe ate one and complained. So that bowl of rings was dumped, and they began again.

The saving grace of my team is Fitz, who has a mellow attitude and strongly positive energy, in kind of a cosmic Jamaican way. He (like many of my classmates) looked a little under the weather this morning, but about 11 he said, "I'm feelin' it!" It's all good.

Right before the doors opened, I finished piping the puff pastries and topped them with little heirloom cherry tomato halves. Chef Glenn watched over my shoulder. "Those aren't maraschino cherries on there?" he asked, and he winked.