Pop-Up Problem

What a fuckin day...

The lunch speed hump threw a real wrench in my day today. Soon as I walk thru the doors I learn of a pop-up party that scheduled itself after I had left yesterday. Thanks for the heads up guys!!! My chef is off again, conveniently. Can't complain about that though because I get off on Saturday!!!

The party is only for 25 people but it must have gotten busy last night, because as I arrived I also signed for about 150 lbs of assorted fish to fabricate. Special to be done, party to prep for, and don't forget about making that menu by 3pm...and of course it got busy during lunch so I spent most of the shift dancing between our raw bar, out front and the hot line here in the kitchen.

So at around 2pm when things began to calm down, the party finished, etc., it was time to cut all of this fish and begin thinking about my special. At least my chef got me some Carolina Black Grouper to play with today. This fish sells really well for some reason, even though it tastes like every other grouper, so maybe it's the name???

Anyway, with all that said and done and my special for the evening done in a flash, literally, I need to take a moment to speak about the cook-off meet & greet last evening. First of all, let me begin by saying that I can no longer be upset with the "cook captain." Don't ask me why...maybe I'm a sucker for blondes?? (Yes, I am.)

She answered most of my questions in a meeting with the other cooks before I could even begin to ask such things. I also learned that I cannot submit a salsa and a chili, so I may only do a chili since that is what I did a test run for over the weekend. Looks like a bunch of the cooks who signed up in my group have been doing this for years and years, so it's gonna be a bit of a challenge. That said, I can tell it's going to be a good time no matter what when the first question asked is "when will you guys start selling beer???"


Having all of my questions answered and even letting me get additional tickets (after they have sold out) made the evening worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. I also learned that 10 gallons of chili usually sells out before 4pm. My batch size was going to be 6 gallons. Shit, now I have math to do.