New Years Eve, a recap

Posted by chefalaska

Posted: January 8, 2009 - 12:22 am

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So, as a whole New Years Eve is always busy for restaurants. As I mentioned earlier depending on the establishment it can be the busiest day of the year. Restaurants can have a special menu, or specials to ring in the celebrating.
ORSO in the summertime on a busy night going full tilt will do 375 to 400 dinners.
For NYE we opened at 4pm, and stayed open until people stopped showing up... with bursting balloons and festivities at the bar. For specials this year:
*Cinnamon and juniper dusted quail, grilled over green lentils, root vegetables and pernod crema
*Rustic country pate with a juniper apple butter and crostini
*Half duck, oven roasted with parsnip thyme bread pudding, braised red cabbage and berry vinaigrette
*Petite filet, potato celeriac gratin with an alaskan steak sauce and green beans.

My week started on the 29th, monday, after getting inventory done, I made 3- 2 inch hotel pans of potato celeriac gratins, cleaned and brined the ducks(removed and buttermilk soaked the duck livers for the pate)
Tuesday the 30th- Day crew roasted the ducks(24 of them) deboned and portioned them for execution, cleaned and portioned 125# of beef tenderloin, made braised red cabbage and prepped the Alaskan steak sauce(a homemade worsteshire sauce with birch syrup)
I, and another line cook prepared the pate'(three terrines) apple butter, blueberry vinaigrette, parsnip bread pudding. We also made a chicken gumbo with reindeer sausage and hoppin' John with greens (brings good luck in the New Year) .
On the 31st all the last minute details werre finalized, menu revisions, computer key set up, and a front of the house staff tasting at 3:30 to taste and learn about the specials. We served our regular menu in addition to the four specials.
Lunch was extremely busy and carried over into the "dead" hour which is usually reserved for a shift change... oh well, adapt overcome, kill, kill, kill.
The kitchen crew arrived an hour early(2 to 2:30) and was ready by 4pm, there was an extra dishwasher and two extra cooks, resulting in a 9 man line. They cooked until 11:45, and had the kitchen cleaned at around 1am.
I got to eat dinner with my wife and some friends in the bar, at around 8pm, there were no curve balls in the kitchen, all seemed well.
From the 29th to the 31st I averaged about 12 hours a day, (got to sleep in on the 1st)

It is funny to me when I talk about food preparation in a restaurant. I remember a friend amazed at the idea of making 25# of potatoes for a night of service, or 10 gallon batches of soup... The sheer mass of food that a restaurant has to prepare and coordinate for execution of service. That is good, the guests job is to come in and be relaxed and enjoy themselves. Through coordination of lists and logistics, good crew members, delegation of tasks and duties, we can produce food for 450 people in a night, and be back the next day to do it again. Even with the subzero weather out, we broke a new record on covers. Hope to see you in 2009!

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