98 covers last night for our ‘Soirée champagne’ – six courses starting with carpaccio de St Jacques and finishing with moelleux de chocolat. We’ve been doing the prep for this for two or three days and it all went well, but I didn’t get out of the joint until gone half-past one this morning; the waitrons were still there when I turned out the light in the plonge, poor things.
I often wonder what waiters think, in the same way you wonder what your dog is thinking. I reckon it goes something like this: “Hmm, where’s my arse gone? I’ll have a quick look with my left hand….nope, nothing. I know, I’ll try my right hand…nope. Ah, I know! (light bulb pops up over head) – I’ll search for my arse with BOTH hands…nope, still nothing.”
Not that I’m trying to disparage waiters, you understand. They do a good enough job themselves. Like, “Scrape the plates into the bin before you give them to me.” Last night I kept a 2.5 litre ice cream carton handy to dredge the bits of food and salad leaves and slices of bread out of my sink – just the ‘morceaux’ they’d left on the plates. How can you think you’ve scraped and stacked a plate when there’s a half-inch gap in the middle where it’s still covered with cheese, bread and mâche?
Luckily for me I had a stagaire assigned to plate removal duty; washing 600 plates is hard enough, but carrying them all back out into the kitchen as well would be impossible. And, for once, after a few kickings and repeated explanations (that’s right, dry them AFTER they’ve been through the dishwasher…) he did OK.
And luckily for me the Seconde de Cuisine and the Chef de Partie (entrées) came and helped dry the cutlery; 1,200 knives, forks and spoons take a LONG time to wash and even longer to dry.