This is incredibly good. I've got Thursday and Friday off both work and school. I don't even know what I'm going to do, but it might involve the strip district around noon, parsnips, turnips, or rutabagas, and perhaps the catch of the day. I might see if they still have blood oranges. Either way I'm gonna replenish my produce supply forrealz.
In other news, linecookery at the kitchen of Soba Lounge is a rush, an experience, a gritty, painful, knee-deep-in-orders, breakneck speed, just plain badass time. I'm putting out better food, in higher quantities, at a faster rate. I get to use better product (cleaning black trumpets or chanterelles or giant oyster mushrooms with sautè dude, garnishing things with microgreens, working with duck, FRESH house-fabricated fish, pristine produce) It's an entirely different level of craftsmanship. I enjoyed the experience O&T granted me, and one must admit it's fun to lounge around and take care of a kitchen by yourself, but this is some hardcore shit. Today was my first working my station alone (I shadowed an experienced cook Monday and Tuesday), so I had to get used to the far more formal system of orders (terms like orderfirepickup, longfire, picking up, making up an elaborate system of keeping food to be fired on queue through an expeditor without having a row of tickets to stare at like an idiot) as well as completely learn the menu items I'm responsible for.
Basically, I'm responsible for the fryer, most of the small plates and appetizers, and a few grilled entreès like grilled salmon, ribs, and whole bronzini (head and all go on the plate, man. it's awesome). If the sautè guy is busy (or maybe he just didn't trust me with meat temps tonight) I handle filèts and stuff. But basically, it's really cool to still work a grill, and one that actually works at that.
Truly lovable food. Crabcakes, duck wontons, little chicken eggrolls, (all fabricated from scratch--I am going to get good at rolling eggrolls and shaping little wontons) a delicious way of preparing calamari (toasted garlic, mint, jalapeno brunoise, an uni (sea urchin roe) emulsion with lime slices!), a lovely mound of diced beancurd called Crispy Tofu, a lobster tail tempura with some sort of miso aioli and a strawberry-shiso sauce. Our own little pork potstickers. Crawfish futomaki, tempura'd by me and sent to the garde manger folks for sushi rollin'. Stuff with soul--not pretentious cuisine, just good solid ideas and interpretations with the right touch of flair. And I'm not just going to be rolling it out the window all day, sweating my ass off--we usually eat some sort of staff meal before service.
~do you dare me to dump out the cocoamotion?
No comments:
Post a Comment