Behind Restaurant Lines

Today is my first day off since....before easter really. After working about 60 hours a week for the past few weeks, I was quite happy to stay in bed until noon and not have a single obligation for the rest of the day.

The restaurant has been busy since I started 3 weekends ago. My first weekend was UW graduation, so we did 2-3 times the covers as usual. Last weekend and this weekend seemed to be more the norm, serving about 250 people in three days. Last night's service got pretty crazy for a little bit. Moods were....elevated. But at the end of the night, guests were happy (I assume) and after the floors were scrubbed, we all toasted a happy drink to (one of) our sous chefs last day.

Right now, I am working garde manger station, which is a catch all station for salads, cold apps, or other random mid-course dishes that need a place to be made. This weekend I had:
a tossed salad (mixed greens, french breakfast radish, SerVecchio cheese, sungold cherry tomatoes, toasted hazelnuts and dijon vinaigrette)

Bottarga salad (celery, parsley leaves, red onion, sorrel, bulgur, lemon zest and juice with bottarga over top)

Grilled Octopus salad (grilled marinaded octo leg with heirloom cherry tomatoes, baby cucumbers, pickled red onion, kalamata olives, red radish and dill cream dressing)



Carpaccio (beef tenderloin wrapped in herbs and baaaarely seared, sliced thin and served with a salad of pea shoots, watercress, pickled mushrooms, crispy shallots, brioche croutons and dunbarton blue cheese)

Snails&Tails (ramp bulbs, green garlic, morels, asparagus, snails and crawfish tails sauted in a butter-wine-cream sauce served on a toasted slice of croissant and arugula puree)

I tried snail for the first time this weekend and it wasn't as bad at all. Granted, anything covered with butter-wine-cream sauce and served with morels is bound to be amazing, but the texture was actually quite nice. Sort of like a mussel. It was one of those things, I would never had ordered, but would gladly eat the whole bowl of someone who had!

Here are some more pics from the restaurant...

The Line
Fish station in the front, meat in the center and on the far end, pastry.

Front of the line
expo and dish

My hot mess of a station
unfortunately, there is no better way to do this with the space provided.


(part of) the produce cooler
Ha! It's crazy in here. It's like one of those mind trap puzzles, that you have to move 6 other piece just to get to the piece you want to move. There is one other walk in and a freezer that look pretty much like this too.


Found this on the bulletin board in the kitchen, when I asked chef why my resume was posted, he said they all voted to determine whether I was qualified...I'm hoping he was kidding. Then I noticed that my article about nettles was also posted, to which chef wrote 'i wrote this! OMG!'. Thank you chef.