Last time I gave you a recipe, this time I’m going to give you a couple recipes…for disaster. All kinds of funny stuff happens in the kitchen, especially during brunch service when everyone working is tired and everyone sitting in the dining room is too damn chipper…or hung over or drunk or high…for their own good. Or maybe it’s not so much that funny stuff happens, but that you’re so miserable you just have to laugh. Originally, I was going to give you a bunch of brunch stories, but I realize brunch is just too long/funny/sad to throw at you all at once. Instead, here are the first few shots across the bow, for I hope will be a series of procrastination inducing stories. As always, the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
When I was working at the East Village gastropub with Dopp (my boy Dopp, that I’ve told you about? My “white doppelganger”? Okay, whatever, I’ll tell you about him later), we had this bus boy who knew it all. When he wasn’t slouching against the coffee station, texting; he was hovering around telling us how to plate dishes, complaining about running simple errands (such as: “I’m trying to pick up five tables here and you’re standing around eyeing a half-eaten piece of chocolate bread pudding, can you please get me a quart of heavy cream?”), marking tables or running plates to the wrong tables because he wouldn’t wait for us to tell him where things were supposed to go. Anyway, one of our brunch menu items was French Toast which we served with maple syrup in a shot glass. So a couple weekends in a row Dopp & I noticed he was running plates of French Toast to tables with the shot glass balanced precariously at the edge of the plate. Dopp and I told him numerous times to carry the shot glass separately so it didn’t wobble off the plate and onto the floor; but he knew better and continued to do it. So one Sunday he scooped up a plate and ran it to a table. A few moments later, there was some commotion in the dining room and Mr. Know-It-All came running back into the kitchen looking for napkins and a wet towel. In his infinite wisdom, he had ran plates to a table and held the plate with the French Toast in his hand while he set down some Polenta & Eggs…moving his hand slightly, the shot glass fell (I imagine in slow motion) onto the table, spilling its contents all over the white-Miu Miu-pantalooned lap of a young lady who was there expressly to break up with her boyfriend. You ask how I know she was there to dump her boyfriend…? Because she wrote about it on Citysearch or Yelp or somewhere the very next day. Just goes to show you, you should listen to the guys in the clogs and white coats…we know what we’re talking about.
When I was working in the West Village (not with “the Swedish guy”), I worked brunch on a super small line; cranking out frittatas and sausage and broccoli rabe. It was what you would call a hotspot and as a result we used to get all kinds of people in there: Dr. Evil, the Green Goblin, Sally Heap, Liz Lemon’s boyfriend, Darla Marks, and others.
So one day a certain Lady Editor of a certain famous magazine came in with the Green Goblin and some friends and orders brunch for six: frittata, sausage, salad, broccoli rabe, pancakes and polenta. The waitress also asked that we make a separate frittata with very little salt, withhold sausage and make a separate rabe with no chili flakes for the Lady Editor, as she was apparently not in the mood for eating meat, didn’t like spicy food or salt. If you’re keeping score at home: “picking up, frittata for five; frittata for one, no salt; sausage for five; salad for six; polenta for six; rabe for five, straight up; rabe for one, no chilies; pancakes for six; heard.” Now, my chef and I were friendly, but not friends and while we got along well, we did not see eye on eye on one major kitchen issue: the use of salt. Now, anyone who knows me knows I love me some salt, but this guy worshiped at the Church of Salt! Nothing was ever seasoned well enough to his liking. Any time he tasted part of a dish I was plating, the problem (in any) was invariably lack of salt.
So I started picking up the order and Chef Salty came upstairs and after some back and forth about why I was making two different frittatas for a table of six; I started plating. Guess what happened? “More salt.” Same thing with the rabe…more salt. I noticed Greeny looking over wondering what was going on and where his frittata was. Long story short, the solo frittata came back for being too salty and I had to pick up the rabe three times before it was “right,” all of this to the seeming amusement of the Lady Editor. When it was all said and done, with Chef Salty back downstairs and Greeny and the Lady Editor on their way out, she leaned across the bar and said, “thanks for trying.”
Next Time: The Biggest Compliment I Ever Got
Somewhere Down the Line: More brunch stories
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