Hello,
I am sorry I didn't write for some time. I have been working in a very very busy place. The place I have been working in is on the Cheshire, Shropshire border. It was only a pub in a newly renovated grade 1 listed building. This particular building had been featured on Britain's most haunted buildings. It was only open as a pub 4 weeks ago or 4 weeks before I started their. Everything in that building is brand-new including a state of the art kitchen. There is about 10 chefs working in that kitchen, who are very professional. It was a great team to work with. Even so we did anything between 100 and 250 lunches and between 150 and 250 dinners a day. So you can see it is a very busy place. With me been an agency chef, I was working split shift with 2 to 3 hours off in the afternoon. The regular chefs were working all day everyday sometimes from eight o'clock in the morning till midnight.
Even so it was hard work it was of a happy team very supportive to the head chef who was a very hard worker himself. I was very impressed by how the head chef and his team handled the workload. As you can imagine catering for such high numbers in the relative small place is not easy to organise. The amount of food that use to arrive for preparation every morning was over warming. It used to take two people 1 to 2 hours to pack it away. The chefs including myself used to start immediately prepping meets, fish and what ever necessary. We only use to have until 12 o'clock to get ready, after that service would be starting and that without delay. From then on we would be busy until about three o'clock, then business would ease off a little and we would have time to do a bit more preparation. At about 5:30 the evening service use to start until about 10 o'clock.
Unfortunately there's not much to report about this place because it was probably the most normal place I've worked in for some time. Therefore there is not much funny business to report except that I enjoyed working there very much.
I am now working in a village called Bray where Heston Blumenthal has is restaurant called the fat duck which used to be the best restaurant in the word, also the roux brothers have their restaurant in this village, so a very exciting place for chef to be.
Unfortunately I am not working in one of these places, I am working in a nearby hotel which is in a brilliant spot, right on the Thames, at this moment in time we have the Russian Olympic team as guest in the Hotel. Fortunate for them they don't know what the back of house is like……
I will carry on writing maybe tonight after work if not then I promise I will write more tomorrow.
Thursday 1 September 2011
Sunday 21 August 2011
This is unbelievable……
If I wouldn't know this is true, I wouldn't believe it myself. But today, we had yet another coach disaster.
This time we knew the coach party was coming. We prepared a special three choice three course menu. When the party arrived, keeping in mind that it was a coach party of 59 people we just finalised a preparation. The chicken went in the oven approximately 20 min before the party was supposed to sit down for dinner. Shortly after that we found out that the operators have booked a standard no choice three course dinner. Now that wasn't what we were prepared for, therefore didn't have 59 dishes of one choice ready and that by now after lengthy discussions who’s fault it was, 10 min before sit down. As chefs always have to turned into mediations we managed to quickly prepare and cook more chicken. Of course because of that we had to cope with all the leftovers from the other two choices, speak 35 fanned Mellon left over approximately 20 chicken liver parfaits left over, approximately 20 portions of fish leftover and approximately 15 portions of vegetarian. That means our kitchen profit is now sitting in the fridge of course.
This is the second day running that these disasters have happened it shouldn't happen once, but twice? Heads should roll, somebody is not doing their job properly. But nobody seems to care. I can't help but feel a little sorry for the owners of this hotel, but at the end of the day the overall responsibility lies with them, they obviously haven't employed the right people to run the hotel on their behalf.
Since I am now busy, trying to sell leftovers, I will try and write more tomorrow,
see you then Dirk
This time we knew the coach party was coming. We prepared a special three choice three course menu. When the party arrived, keeping in mind that it was a coach party of 59 people we just finalised a preparation. The chicken went in the oven approximately 20 min before the party was supposed to sit down for dinner. Shortly after that we found out that the operators have booked a standard no choice three course dinner. Now that wasn't what we were prepared for, therefore didn't have 59 dishes of one choice ready and that by now after lengthy discussions who’s fault it was, 10 min before sit down. As chefs always have to turned into mediations we managed to quickly prepare and cook more chicken. Of course because of that we had to cope with all the leftovers from the other two choices, speak 35 fanned Mellon left over approximately 20 chicken liver parfaits left over, approximately 20 portions of fish leftover and approximately 15 portions of vegetarian. That means our kitchen profit is now sitting in the fridge of course.
This is the second day running that these disasters have happened it shouldn't happen once, but twice? Heads should roll, somebody is not doing their job properly. But nobody seems to care. I can't help but feel a little sorry for the owners of this hotel, but at the end of the day the overall responsibility lies with them, they obviously haven't employed the right people to run the hotel on their behalf.
Since I am now busy, trying to sell leftovers, I will try and write more tomorrow,
see you then Dirk
Saturday 20 August 2011
The surprise coach…
Hello,
as I told you yesterday, this place is not very busy, but today we had a surprise party, which should not have been a surprise if management would have let us know.
Being all relaxed ready for our usual 15 reservation service, anxiously awaiting the first order at approximately 6:30 PM, a coach arrives in the car park with 53 people who have booked dinner bed and breakfast and nobody knew, except the person who took the booking. Who hasn't come forward yet.
Well this is the first time I've seen the chefs (myself included in this place I suppose) work hard and fast.They're not used to that believe me. I thought it was quite funny really seeing all my colleagues running around like ants.
In this place chefs are certainly not used to working fast and hard. But as you can see from this story the relaxation comes from the top. They didn't even know who took the booking. All I can say keep on dreaming and lucky that the Hotel was in the usual empty state. What I can't believe is that something like this can happen in a quiet place like this. There is no excuse for it to happen in a busy place. I don't know what there excuse could be or the person who took the booking. Well at least we had some excitement for a change, so who is complaining.
See you all tomorrow…… Dirk
Thursday 18 August 2011
Continuation……
Now you are at this stage, you will have no friends anymore because they are normal and you aren’t. They work 5 days a week Monday to Friday, 39 hrs per week, get bank holidays off, don’t work Christmas day, Boxing day, New years eve or new years day and they call a sicky on there birthday and the day after because they are hang over, without getting the sack.
You work 6-7 days, and a minimum of 75 hrs per week, you don’t do Bank Holidays off and you don’t do sick even if you are, because you are a Chef and you think the kitchen you work in is going under with out you and you would never let your fellow chefs down. That of course is true very often because most kitchen are very much under staffed because catering establishment owners always start saving money in the kitchen. No pot washer, chefs can do it, save on electrics, switch a few ovens off, or don’t repair them when they break down is normally the case. Need a bigger restaurant? Take away part of the kitchen is often a good solution. Witch of course makes no sense to the chefs, having more seats in the restaurant but less space to work in, but everyone ells is usually happy with that.
See uuu tomorrow….Dirk
You work 6-7 days, and a minimum of 75 hrs per week, you don’t do Bank Holidays off and you don’t do sick even if you are, because you are a Chef and you think the kitchen you work in is going under with out you and you would never let your fellow chefs down. That of course is true very often because most kitchen are very much under staffed because catering establishment owners always start saving money in the kitchen. No pot washer, chefs can do it, save on electrics, switch a few ovens off, or don’t repair them when they break down is normally the case. Need a bigger restaurant? Take away part of the kitchen is often a good solution. Witch of course makes no sense to the chefs, having more seats in the restaurant but less space to work in, but everyone ells is usually happy with that.
See uuu tomorrow….Dirk
I want to be a chef
I want to be a chef
Cheffing is amongst those professions that people dream about, imagining leading a great brigade of sous chefs (2nd Chefs) Chef de parties and commie chefs in a glamorous, state of the art equipped, shiny stainless steel kitchen and presenting fabulous meals to hundreds of people where everyone of them is very happy indeed with the culinary experience you give them.
Parts of this description may come true, and those who become a chef like this have a very high levels of satisfaction in their profession. But about 75% of chefs who survive catering collage und still want to be chefs end up in dirty pub kitchens where the stainless steel is far from shiny, where the 25 year old broken kitchen equipment is awaiting repair since month and where the pot washer is also your sous chef, chef de partie and commie chef in one person, but unlike you, hi only works 25 hours per week part time and dos not work evenings or on Sundays. Because you do. He also earns more money the you per hour. Unlike you he is on the national minimum wage per hour and you are salaried at £ 280.00 per week doing 75 hrs. “Work that one out” But in return you will get no thanks, will get a bollocking for not being at least 30min early for work and will be reprimanded for not writing down the fridge temperatures properly the night before. How could you not give that task you full attention, after all, you only had your nuts cooked during a 3 hour service preparing 80-90 dishes of food.
more to follow tomorrow
Cheffing is amongst those professions that people dream about, imagining leading a great brigade of sous chefs (2nd Chefs) Chef de parties and commie chefs in a glamorous, state of the art equipped, shiny stainless steel kitchen and presenting fabulous meals to hundreds of people where everyone of them is very happy indeed with the culinary experience you give them.
Parts of this description may come true, and those who become a chef like this have a very high levels of satisfaction in their profession. But about 75% of chefs who survive catering collage und still want to be chefs end up in dirty pub kitchens where the stainless steel is far from shiny, where the 25 year old broken kitchen equipment is awaiting repair since month and where the pot washer is also your sous chef, chef de partie and commie chef in one person, but unlike you, hi only works 25 hours per week part time and dos not work evenings or on Sundays. Because you do. He also earns more money the you per hour. Unlike you he is on the national minimum wage per hour and you are salaried at £ 280.00 per week doing 75 hrs. “Work that one out” But in return you will get no thanks, will get a bollocking for not being at least 30min early for work and will be reprimanded for not writing down the fridge temperatures properly the night before. How could you not give that task you full attention, after all, you only had your nuts cooked during a 3 hour service preparing 80-90 dishes of food.
more to follow tomorrow
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