"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This is how I would describe my first week as a stagiaire, well more like my first 2 days. Due to my work schedule, I can only work Saturday and Sunday. For any aspiring chef out there, I must reiterate what every other chef will tell you.
This job is HARD! It's not as glamorous as it seems on TV. I have been in the restaurant business before, but that cannot compare to the caliber of the restaurant I am staging at. Be aware my fellow home cooks!
SATURDAY
When I first arrived at the restaurant one of the cooks gave me an extremely quick tour of the restaurant. We were moving so fast that it was impossible for me to memorize where everything was. After our tour he left me in the back area. For the first hour of my shift, no one really spoke to me or gave me instructions on what to do. I kind of just stood around looking like an idiot, hands in my pocket, watching everyone else prep. Finally a cook (code name:
Babyface), probably feeling sorry for me, came and helped me get set up. He gave me a few tasks to work on and left to go back to prepping his own stuff. A few cooks for the dinner shift started showing up, but no one tried to introduce themselves, and being a newbie, I was afraid to talk to them. After a while 2 cooks (
Stars &
Pirate) came in and noticed that I was new. They introduced themselves and we talked a little bit. Then a pastry chef (
Ms. Ornitier) came in and she also stopped to introduce herself to me. I realize the kitchen atmosphere can be brutal and somewhat hostile, but I deeply appreciate the 4 cooks that knew I was nervous and opened up to me. If I ever make it big before they do, I will hire them and pay them handsomely!
6 hours into my shift we stopped to have the 'family meal,' the whole kitchen and wait staff came together for dinner. Even though the 2 groups remained segregated after receiving their food, it was still a nice experience. Each cooking station was responsible for making a dish which was served buffet style. It was delicious. After our meal, everyone returned to their stations to get ready for the dinner rush. The cooks for the morning shift began to weed out one by one. I was left alone in the back while all the dinner cooks went out on the line. There I was, standing in solitude for a good 20-30 minutes wondering what I was supposed to do now. A cook eventually came back and told me I was to go help the pastry chef (
Ms. KP/ZD). For lack of a better term, I was "shitting bricks." My first day on the job and I had to go on the line, and to make matters worse, I was at the pastry station, a cook's weakness! Luckily all I did was just plate the complimentary after dinner treats. I was also right next to
Pirate on the line, and he let me taste a few things which was pretty cool. At the end of the night I was disappointed with my plating, but
Ms. KP/ZD thanked me for my help anyways. I felt bad.
SUNDAY
After a 14 hour shift the night before, I came into work with my feet sore as hell, my lower back in pain. Instead of standing around, I began going up to the other cooks and asking if I could help them do anything. I think they respected my efforts, because they all started opening up to me more. I was no longer an outcast! I had been upgraded to the household rodent!!! *high five* I helped one of the sous chefs (
Samurai) prep some things. Samurai seems fairly young, but I know he's been in the game for a long time.
(I recall Anthony Bourdain writing about his early culinary experiences in Kitchen Confidential. He wrote about how he admired one cook's hand, which was littered with the scars of experience in the kitchen. He even mentioned that he aspired to have hands like that. Samurai's arms can be best described as a warzone. I don't want to have scars like him, but he does have my utmost respect).
Ms. Ornitier was around and being her playful self (actually I don't know whether or not she's playful or flirtatious. She needs to stop though. . .before I ask her to marry me!). She was part of the morning shift and was getting ready to leave, so she gave me the task of prepping 'something' to be added to a complimentary dish. I didn't know where the ingredients were so I kept on running back to her and asking. Eventually she took her personal time to help me find/combine all the components together. That was really nice of her. Once dinner service started I was told to go back on the pastry line with
Ms. KP/ZD. I started prepping some things for her, and
Stars came up to me and told me that she needed me to prep a root vegetable for her to use during service. I pulled the vegetable out of the oven and started peeling them, but I couldn't get the skin off. I must have spent 30 minutes peeling and I only managed to peel 2 of the vegetables. At this point I was afraid that
Stars would run out of her ingredient, and I did not have anything to restock her with. I began to mentally break down, so I ran out onto the line and whispered to her that I was having a lot of trouble. She gave me some tips, but I was still struggling. Eventually she came back and showed me another way of peeling the skins, and went back onto the line. I used her technique that she showed me, but it didn't work for me. Now I was furious and scared to death that
Stars would be back any second, expecting me to have her vegetables ready. I was preparing myself to be yelled at by the chef and to get fired for ruining dinner service. I got lucky, no one really ordered that one dish that
Stars needed the vegetable for. Once the dinner rush slowed down, she came back and helped me finish all the vegetables. I felt really bad about letting her down, but she said it was ok and blamed the vegetables for being lousy quality. I knew this wasn't the case. I helped her break down her station at the end of the night. She let me eat her left overs and taste some ingredients in her mise-en-place. I feel like she took me under her wing that evening, showing me how to do things, what to do, how to break down stations, etc. We're going to get along just fine.
