Very. Rough.
The beginning of the slide was when Jay filled the pavlova that Cherelle had made for the menu dessert, and when he went to roll it up discovered it was way too soft to handle in a "pretty" way. It looked rough. (hmm, was this a sign I missed?) Kevin called me in for a consultation and we discussed our options. Pile it in a bowl and spoon it into a parfait glass for service? Crisp it up with a blow torch? Toss it out? Then Jay suggests "put it in the freezer?" Yes. That works. So he cut it in half and put it in the ice cream freezer to "firm up", while we hoped for the best.
Service started out okay. We didn't start drowning until about an hour into it.
We had a couple tables of 6 reserved, and they were thankfully well spread out, but that meant a lot of tables set aside. The wait-list started at 6:30. A wait-list. On Wednesday night. What, you say, are you complaining about? a busy Wednesday is a good thing, is it not? Well, yeah, if you are prepared for it. If you are staffed for it. But a Wednesday like a Friday is not a good thing with your regular Wednesday crew.
The ironic thing is, for the past three Wednesdays I've been scheduling a tray runner (the person whose job is exclusively to ferry food out to the tables) for the expected busy August nights. Last night, being the start of the school week, I didn't expect to be busy, and so, you guessed it, no tray runner on the schedule. And Tuesday night proved my theory correct - we were very slow. Not so last night. We really, really needed a tray runner. People kept saying to me "is it always this busy on a Wednesday night?" and I kept replying, no, thank goodness.
Anyway, it was a mess and I'm glad it's over. Everyone in the dining room was in the weeds and it showed. We did our best but it was pretty much impossible to do the job the way you really wanted to. The final straw was when Rayvon slipped on his slippery dish room floor, while carrying out a rack of glasses. Luckily he wasn't hurt, although Jay says he saw his pride fly out the window. The glasses, however, did not fare so well. Out of a rack of 25 glasses, four made it safely. I almost lost it when this happened. Mallory said she would have cried if that had happened to her, and I was on the verge.
Well. Thanks for listening. And let's hope tonight - with a tray runner on! - goes a lot better. We haven't had a night mare night like that in a long time and I would be happy to never see one again.
On with the food.
First course was a little tart, filled with goat cheese and roasted tomato, with stewed fig on top. Very cute. Hopefully good.
Next up was a plate I coveted - Black Bottom Farm pork chop served chicken-fried-steak style, but without the gravy. It looked so delicious. Kevin said we could have one for breakfast this morning, and I might take him up on it!
For obvious reasons I did not take a picture of the dessert. Reports from the field suggested that it was enjoyed, but it was not an overly attractive plate of pavlova, so we'll let it slide. We substituted lemon pound cake when we (yay) ran out of the pavlova, which also did not get photographed. (Nor did the substitution get mentioned to every table...)
The night finally ended. It took an extra glass of wine to calm me down, but otherwise no ill effects.
Kevin has been making porchetta with his recent Black Bottom Farm pigs, and it really looks like something you could eat, doesn't it? It has been our meat special lately, and all I can say is "lucky diners".
Haddock last week was also enjoyed by some lucky diners. The sauce under the fish was some lightly sauteed tomatoes and a little lemon butter. That had to be good.
My last picture this morning is a selfie that Jenn and Nicole took. I wonder if they figured where it would end up?
Off to make breakfast.
Peace out!
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