Thursday, July 22, 2010

The monster we call "catering"!

Since I began this great new job as Chef for a crazy busy restaurant/ catering company , my HEAD'S been spinning with the numbers of people we've been feeding out of this little catering kitchen! With a tiny staff, we're knocking out numbers upwards of 500 people and boy are people talking!

I've never thought that I would be sitting here telling you, my loyal reader, about my crazy life in catering I've had these past two months. The owners tell me this is their "slow month" lol. Wow.

If there could be one word to describe the catering business as a whole, unpredictable would be that word. You prepare for 500 people and only 350 come so you're left with oodles of food left over. Or, worse case, you prep for 25 people and they eat like 50 and you run OUT of food, pissing everyone off in the process. Sucks. One thing I've learned in the short time I've been working for this company is that it's better to lean towards making too much food than not enough (at the same time, trying to keep food cost to a minimum, either way, its tough to please everyone).

Believe it or not, throughout all this crazy circus, I am working on a new restaurant menu to be used in both the main restaurant and the ever crazy comedy club. The new plate samples arrived, experiments have been done and its a great work in progress. In order to take full advantage of some great feedback, my target date for the tentative menu completion is August 8th. I will then spend the following 3 weeks tweaking and costing for a new-menu-roll out date of the week after labor day in September. Its pretty exciting and I'm blessed to have this fantastic job.

Sad thing is, though, I'm finding out how terribly out of shape I am physically. I hurt all over, especially my hips, back and arms (specifically my right arm where I do most of my knife work). Goody's Powder is getting me though this, lol.

Keep in touch for more fun and excitement here in my world.

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