We had a lot to get done. It may have taken Odysseus ten years to get home and we surely had enough to do but we only had thirty six hours to pull of a miracle. Could it be done? Surely, one must understand that what separates cooks from other professions is that failure is not an option no matter the circumstances. Things have to get done. And this truly is the story of overcoming adversity with grace and showing the true spirit of cooks.
I arrived at work at 7:30 am on Friday morning. I decided to finish the chapter of Ruhlman’s “The Making of a Chef” before I started my day. With a coffee and a cigarette I quickly finished the chapter and then changed into my whites. I knew what was before us and knew that we all had to show up with our A, B and C games all at the same time in order to pull off what was nothing less than the culinary equivalent off Hammurabi’s climbing of the Alps with Elephants.
The first thing that I started working on was Sunday’s brunch. L and I knew that we were behind the eight ball and as such made sure to get as much done as humanly possible to off set the loss of some of our cooks and to make sure that Saturday went as smoothly as possible.
So starting at eight I figured that between L and I we should be able to knock off brunch by around eleven. By the time E, D and L arrived I had knocked off a couple of the salads. Executive Chef came in and I gave him a brief update as to where we were and how we were progressing. By around 12:30 we did in fact knock off most of brunch and we all started preparing the Mise en Place for Saturday’s event.
Conceive for a moment if you will what 23,000 canapés looks like. The event was going to take over the whole site. We were charged with making recipes taste good that none of us had ever seen before let alone done. We all were laughing and carrying on trying to make the best of the situation.
It was at this point that tragedy struck. Head Chef got a call saying that his grandmother, the woman who effectively raised him, had passed. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my condolences to him and his entire family not just for myself but for all of us that work with him. As such Head Chef was going to have to go. This left Pastry Chef J to take care of one of the most difficult canapés of the event.
The day kept moving and time seemed to be at warp speed. Slowly but surely we all were knocking off everything that we could. When Chef J arrived we were all well on our way. All of us had been assigned our own things to do. But in the absence of our “jail birds” we started looking at what needed to be accomplished and just started doing whatever we could. To my mind it was incredible. We simply put our heads down and worked. No complaint. No arguing. Just working beautifully. I kept on saying throughout the day and the night before; “That’s why we’re the Yankees.” And I truly believed it.
Chef J had scheduled his vacation some three months before. And of course no one could have anticipated the events of the previous couple of days. After finding out about Head Chef’s loss I approached Executive Chef and let him know that I was in for the long haul. That I was going nowhere. We had work to get done and I could not justify something as silly as sleep when we had so much to do.
Friday went smoothly. We had some volunteers come in to help. Later in the day most of our missing cooks had been sprung without the aid of L’s cake bomb or Pastry Chef J’s cake with a file in it. We then went from full speed to warp speed. At around midnight Chef J was getting ready to go. Executive Chef came into the kitchen and gave us a pep talk. Looking around the room I was thrilled to see the faces that I did. Executive Chef gave all of us in the room the option to go home. He said you can stay or you can go. Three people made the decision to leave. The rest of us looked at each other and basically without words; “Soldier on.” And we did.
The next post is going to cover what I know term as; “The Miracle of August 16, 2008.”
Frederick Douglass once said; “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” To my mind, the struggles of this past weekend revealed true progress for our kitchen.
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
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