No Chit (file under The Gong Show)

The kitchen is always an exciting place to work. There is a cacophony of sounds and the ever present ballet that I have spoken about many many times. Sometimes the kitchen can be more exciting as the controlled chaos has a curveball thrown at it. Yesterday was one of those days.

The day started off good enough. Got in and started making sure that everything was ready to go for what was sure to be a busy dinner service. Gorgeous afternoon and the lake was calm as could be. The members were out in droves and we clearly were going to get rocked. Though none of us could have known how badly.

Service started rolling at around 4:45. Everything was smooth. The patio was full; BBQ and kitchen were in full swing. We were running a well oiled machine for about an hour before the controlled chaos hit a wall. The computer system which is responsible for the printing of chits decided that it was such a nice day that it would take the day off. As such we went from out regular printed chits to hand written chits.

Hand written chits propose a number of issues. Handwriting is typically atrocious and to make matters worse it is not the servers that write out the chits but instead the Members themselves. Another is that there is no time on the hand written chit which means that we need to mark the time and find a way to keep track of orders with appetizers. As I have mentioned numerous times before, timing is critical and with handwritten chits it becomes difficult though not impossible to get through.

The first couple of chits this way were a nightmare. Appetizers and kids meals served at same time. Some orders had to be made in the kitchen while others were being prepared out at the BBQ. The delicate balance of the kitchen being thrown astray by trying to manage the delivery of food from two locations and very different time structures.

We found our rhythm after the first few chits with me calling out the orders to the grill and the pans as well as the Garde Manger. At first I was not getting any response from any of the brigade and had to make sure that they knew to acknowledge the call so that I could move on to the next call knowing that we were underway on the last chit. Calmly I only had to remind the brigade once to acknowledge the call. To overcome this adversity we started talking about the gong show. This lightened our mood and made it quite manageable.

Naturally the servers were running around like crazy trying to accommodate everything that was going on. At one point I had to ask one of the servers to leave the kitchen as he was trying to have a conversation with the Garde at the height of a service which had numerous challenges. At first he thought I was kidding at which point the Garde said; “Actually, in a nice way, he is trying to let you know, that you need to get the FUCK OUT OF THE KITCHEN.” He understood that to be sure. To which I replied; “Thanks guys.”

It would have been easy for everything to place us in the weeds. Instead, like the professionals we are we managed the situation as best we could. The beautiful controlled chaos returned after a few minutes of trying to figure out how best to organize.

Throughout the entire dinner rush we had to work with the handwritten chits. Ironically, when we put out the last chit the printer started spitting out chits. We all laughed. But then we had another issue because the servers started to enter their chits into the computer and as we do, when the chit comes up, we started preparing. When the first one came up I asked for confirmation that this was a real order. The answer came back no. Another chit. Another confirmation. No. Another chit, so on, for about five or six minutes. Another wrinkle worked out and then we had about three or four orders before we successfully managed a very tough dinner service, through adversity, without complaints and got all the food out in a timely fashion. IT FELT AWESOME. It was difficult but very rewarding and telling.

All during service we were also having to run things out to the BBQ. So there I am, calling chits, running prep out to the BBQ and sweating my balls off. A true case of Chef Ass. But I wouldn’t have changed anything. We rocked it. And it made me very proud.

I then got to go to the event described in my last post. In my next post I am relating a conversation had with Executive Chef about this experience and some advice that he gave me.

Horace once said; “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.”

Are you dreaming big and inspired?

A la prochaine

SDM