I mentioned in the post I deleted that one of the things that keeps me sane this time of year is food. Preparation of great food. The downside to that is this time of year many of the additional customers that we are serving are "special occasion" customers. Also the crowd around here in general is a less discriminating customer. I don't mean that to sound critical it's just a fact of life. When I want to let my hair down I have to be careful I don't loose money doing it. If the crowd wants the Rolling Stones I shouldn't give them Mozart. I love the Rolling Stones but playing Mozart is my passion, if ya know what I mean.
So this week I went from one end of the spectrum to the other. I flew in some gorgeous seafood from Hawaii and smoked some equally gorgeous (well, not really) beef brisket. Our seafood is always fresh and excellent but the stuff I get from Hawaii is especially beautiful. It's brought to the piers a couple hours before I order it and shipped shortly after that. It's overnighted to me and I get it about 24hours out of the ocean. This week it was Big Eye tuna, Blue Snapper and Kampachi. I did some sushi, sashimi and tar tar with the Big Eye, ceviche with the Kampachi and the snapper wrapped in cedar and grilled. It all was "world class. This was a big hors d'oeuvres week so I was also smoking beef brisket "low and slow" with cherry wood and a dry rub for mini brisket sandwiches. I also cut alot of tenders this time of year and grind up the trimmings for micro burgers. Both the brisket and burgers are served on little buns that I baked fresh just hours before. The fish sold ok but the little sandwiches were pounced upon. As I said, it's a Rolling Stones crowd and I didn't mind doing some "covers".
I'm taking some video around the restaurants this weekend and hope to put together a little video I can post here.
Hopefully I can direct all my attention to #1 today. Two big parties at #2 yesterday so I was there all day. When I got to #1 last night the boys were in the weeds. I walked in the kitchen and the servers were hovering in front of the line like a bunch of vultures waiting not-so-patiently for their food. I'll be there tonight to expedite, back up any one who needs help and to keep the vultures at bay. Their impatience pisses me off. They are spoiled rotten. It's not often the boys get in the weeds. The servers aren't aware of just how good those guys are. The cooks are also very nice guys and let them slide on the snide remarks. Me, I'm not so nice. they'll be getting snapped on tonight and the cooks are going to love every minute of it. It's been a long week, I'm going to make sure we have fun tonight.
