Marla's Restaurant Blog

Julia Child Week, Day 4

It's 8:38 am and the ovens are heating and the coffee is brewing....Again.

I haven't worked this hard in 10 years.

I'm on my 80th lb of Beef Bourguignon and my 12th Duck Pate.  I'm having more sole sent by UPS from Foley's in Boston to arrive this afternoon.  I'm getting ready to start my last 6 Orange Almond Cakes.

I am taking motrin earlier and earlier each day.  But my biggest problem is that my hands hurt.  That, my friends, is old age.....

Julia Child Week update

I came in at 8:30 on Monday, a day when we're closed, to prep for Julia week.

I came in at 9:00 on Tuesday to finish prep and pull everything together.  Went home for a hour to shower, eat a slice of frozen pizza and go back to work the floor on the "opening night".

In 4 hours, we sold just about all of the food I worked two days prepping.

Couldn't wind down last night so found myself cleaning the bathrooms at home at 10:30pm.

It's now Wednesday, 8:22 in the morning and I'm back at it, coffee is brewing, ovens are heating.  This is going to be a very long week.

Tossing it all!

Last night for the first time in many years I tossed a whole tray of food in the trash and told my staff to start over.  I was putting a steak on the tray and checked it's temp and found it was overcooked.  We had to fire another steak which meant everything else that was ready would be dry by the time the steak was done.  I couldn't put the other entrees onto trays for other customers, though I was so freaking pissed off, I didn't look too hard.

I went to the table and explained that we had overcooked the steak, that there would be a delay.  I brought a couple of complementary small plates out to the table to keep the guests busy and bought them a round of desserts.  They were very understanding and nice.  Thank goodness.