disappointing

Late for service. We got slammed tonight even though it was deep and shallow poach fish (which are commonly unpopular). My menu was: one fillet of shallow poach trout stuffed with salmon mousse, one fillet of pan friend trout, vin blanc sauce, spaghetti squash, thyme roasted tomatoes, and broccoli.

Each day we come into the kitchens, set up our stations, check in our food order (meat, produce, dairy, etc. all the food needed for the day's menu), and start cooking for dinner. When service comes around, we have most items cooked. During service students and faculty come to the kitchen, tell Chef what they want, he calls it out, we plate the food to order, and then we send the plate to the front of the kitchen where Chef hands the plate to our customer.

Tonight, there was a misunderstanding about who was going to be doing what stations during service. We break down the different components of the plate into different jobs, so for instance someone will be in charge of heating the broccoli and getting it on the plate. The broccoli is cooked earlier in class, cooled, held in the "lowboy" (refrigerator below our station), dropped in hot water, drained, tossed in butter, and put on the plate. Somehow, I ended up plating everything and taking care of all the vegetables. It was awesome because I got a system going and I was in the groove, hammering out beautiful plates. The only problem was I should have been working with more people (my team mates) and we should have been even faster. When I started to get backed up, my team mates realized and wanted to help but I didn't know what to tell them to do because it was easier to just keep plugging ahead than stop and reorganize to incorporate more people. If you ever find yourself in this situation as the person who wants to help, come up with a solution to be more efficient and then approach the person who needs help because they don't have time to stop and think of a solution themselves. Overall, it was a frustrating day because while I am here to be my best, I am also part of a team and the team struggled tonight.