oh no you didn't...

So one of the most interesting and often amusing things about working in a restaurant is that you come into contact with a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life who are all extremely unique specimens of humanity.  One such group of people is the folks you work with on a day to day basis.  There's always an eclectic mix of personalities in a restaurant and learning to work with everyone can make for a trying and frequently rewarding experience.  From your fellow cooks to servers, food runners, hosts, and managers, it takes a while to get a read on everyone and know how to handle them.

Even working at a small restaurant like Granville's where there are not that many people on staff, it still has taken me a while to figure it all out and some people I'm still figuring out.  Some things are a surprise, like the bartender and server you think don't like you at first but that later turn out to be two of your best friends from work.  Some things are a constant struggle, like the always negative server that finds something wrong with everything and complains about every single co-worker.  There are some days when it takes everything you have not to lose your cool at this person and just say something like, "If you spent half as much time with your tables and doing your job as you do bitching about things then people would like you and you might not screw up so many tickets."  Or even something more simple like, "Shut the hell up!"

But in the end, it's worth it to put in the effort to learn how to deal with these people and you'll get some friends out of it and the ones you aren't friends with, well, at least you won't be surprised by the crazy things they say and do anymore.  But the other thing about a restaurant is that, beyond having to learn how to deal with your colleagues, you have another completely random element to figure out how to deal with: your customers.  Especially if you spend any amount of time out of the kitchen and in the front of house.  I work two front of house shifts a week, one as a server and one as a host (although that will be ending).  Even if you don't work in the front of house, you'll get to hear the goings on from the servers, bartenders, and food runners you work with so there are some events that become legendary.  Working in a restaurant you have to deal with customer's bizarre quirks, off the wall requests, and often really bad behavior.  And when they aren't directing all of this at you, you get the opportunity to overhear things they say to their dining/drinking companions and, while some of it is pretty unbelievable, some of it as also pretty hilarious.

So with all that said, I'd like to introduce a new feature to the blog: oh no you didn't..., a feature dedicated to the crazy things people say and do in the restaurant.  Some of these will be customer comments, some will be about staff, and some may even feature staff from neighboring restaurants on the block who are essentially part of our family.  Sometimes I may have an entire post dedicated to this feature, but more often it will probably be a separate section of a larger post.  So at the end of this post I'll kick it off with the inaugural oh no you didn't... featuring a selection of random and hilarious things from last night.

Before I get on to that though, this was a big week in terms of non-restaurant related cooking.  My boy Tahir and I decided a while ago that we wanted to cook dinner for some friends of ours who are really serious foodies.  The guests were Tahir's boss and his boss's wife and two amazing chefs that are friends to us both, Tom and Christy, who own one of my favorite spots to eat and drink at and are all around awesome.  Because we were cooking for some seriously sophisticated palates, we knew we'd need to step the food up to a new level beyond what even our normal dinner parties involve.  So we planned a menu and this past Saturday night it all came to fruition.  I know Tahir took some pictures of things so should he get those up on his blog I'll link to them here.  Until then, here's the list of what was served:

— amuse bouche of torched escolar with cilantro oil, orange bell pepper, lemon zest

— chilled corn soup with tarragon oil

— basil infused tuna with napa cabbage slaw and meyer lemon, honey, and sriracha vinaigrette

— "shrimp and grits" - chili and garlic shrimp, fried polenta cakes, red bell pepper and tomato sauce

— chicken consomme with scallions, oyster mushrooms, and toasted rosemary

— chili maple glazed pork tenderloin stuffed with red pear and blue cheese butter, sauteed dandelion greens

— 15 spice ribeye with chevreuil sauce, crispy potatoes with smoked seasalt

— cinnamon caramel ice cream with apple fritters

All in all I thought the dinner went well although there were a few things that didn't work out perfectly.  However, at the end of the night, there was good food, great wine, and even better company so I'll call that a success.

And now, to wrap it all up:

oh no you didn't...

This first one is an excerpt I overheard from a conversation at one of our tables.

blonde 20-something girl to her 3 friends: I would love to live in like the prohibition era when I could go out and wear flapper dresses and drink and smoke.  But I wouldn't want to keep living through the depression because that would be, like, really hard.  And I'd love to see, not live in, but just see the 50's and 60's.  You know cause there was so much stuff going on then with the blacks uprising and everything.

This next one is related to the first in that one of the blonde girl's friends is involved but this happened later, at the bar.

nikki (bartender): what can I get you to drink

blonde girl's friend (bgf): I'll have a white wine spritzer with tonic and without the wine

nikki: (confused stare) what?

bgf: well, like no wine, just tonic and spritzer

nikki: what exactly is spritzer?

This next one involves a server from a neighboring restaurant who walked up to a group of our staff while we were outside - he's an eccentric dresser to say the least and this night he was rocking a pair of red canvas keds.

russell (server from neighboring restuarant): my footsies hurt

me: is that because you stole some little girl's shoesies?

getting back into the swing of things

So I feel like life has been pretty crazy lately.  Once the move was all completed, my computer, of course, died on me.  The logic board went bad and so the computer was dead.  So on my second attempt at a new computer, I finally have a new (old) computer.  So with that set, I feel happy to be back and connected to the internet daily again.  It's weird how dependent on the internet we (or at least I) have become.  The week and a half that I was having computer issues were really stressful.  I felt extremely disconnected from the outside world and it was unsettling. 

But I'm back and happy to be so.  Aside from computer issues things have been pretty crazy all around.  Despite the doom and gloom of economic news these days, the restaurant is busy.  Really busy.  Pretty much all the time.  Which, given some of the slow times we had last August and September and this January, is really nice.  It's great to work a line shift and look up the first time the board clears and realize that it's already 8:15 p.m. instead of standing around bored as the minutes tick slowly by and you think the night will never end.  As we get ready to launch a new menu and with a lot of other exciting things coming up (some of which I can't quite mention yet but will hopefully be able to divulge in a few weeks) it's extremely comforting and pleasing to know that we're still considered one of the "hot spots" in D.C. and that people are willing to spend their time and money on us.

I'm extremely excited about the new spring menu.  I love spring foods because if I had to pick the one adjective that I most appreciate in a dish it would be "fresh".  I love foods that are light, fresh, bright, and bursting with flavor.  Spring and summer are two of my favorite food times because of the sheer abundance of food and the fact that so much of it has that fresh bursting quality.  There are spring berries, fresh corn on the cob, perfectly ripe tomatoes, pea shoots, green garlic, and so many other foods that in color, taste, and texture just ooze freshness and lightness.  So it's a no-brainer that I'm looking forward to a menu focused on these tastes and textures.

specials of the week

— lamb leg steak with blueberry and apple cider reduction - the flavor of cider, blueberries, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon, and black peppercorns over the slightly gamey flavor of lamb leg is just a delightful combination. I love fruit and sweetness with lamb and so this was my favorite thing of the recent specials

— duroc pork chop with sauteed apples and ginger - I love pork chops.  Especially when it's a thick and juicy bone-in pork chop combined with the deliciousness of butter, apples, and fresh ginger.

favorite things

— new computers

— the past Thursday's episodes of 30 Rock and The Office.  I love Tina Fey more and more with each passing day.

— Flight of the Conchords.  I am late in getting into this show but after my roommates forced me to watch it the other night, I am on board.  It's hysterical and this song pretty much got me hooked.

— menu planning.  T and I are having another ridiculous dinner party. Only this time the guest list includes people who've cooked us amazing food before (and one of whom is T's boss and my boss might possibly be in attendance as well) so it's a bit intimidating.  But the menu looks promising and I am pretty happy about it.

if you can't beat 'em...

So as mentioned previously, I was a little annoyed that we were left off Washingtonian's list of the 100 Best Restaurants in the D.C. area.  I mean, I'm not saying we're better than Komi and need to be #1, I just think that we're better than some of the things that happened to make it on the list.  I also noticed that there were only two places east of the Capitol on the entire list, so that says something as well.

However, after some soul-searching, I decided to be less ticked and channel my energy into something more productive — like making sure we get on that list next year.  I think there are a number of ways we can accomplish this.  One of them is making sure that we step up our game with the entree portion of the menu.  Everyone knows our mussels and fries are good and are, in the eyes of many, the best in DC.  But we can't make it on to the list with just mussels and fries.  I want to step up the game with our sandwiches although they are consistently really delicious.  But the biggest difference I noted, just from reading about the places that did make the list, was that our appetizers and entrees need to be taken up a notch or two.

Accomplishing that goal is going to come from a lot of things: menu changes, making sure we keep on track with the weekly chef meetings to plan out our orders of proteins and kick around ideas for specials, encouraging creativity and innovation among the other cooks, and making it clear that it's not okay to just send out a good dish but that it has to happen on a consistent basis with an emphasis on great presentation.

But one other part of my multi-faceted strategy for stepping up our game and making that list is to eat at as many of the spots that made it as I can to get a sense of what they do, how we compare, what lessons can be learned, and maybe even pick up a few ideas to bring back into our kitchen.  So far in the last two days, I've gone to two.

#100: Marvin

So I was really looking forward to this spot for a two reasons: 1) it was #100 meaning it was the last place to make the cut and 2) one of their signatures is offering several preparations of moules frites.  I went Sunday night before heading to a show at the 9:30 Club and we were seated within 5 minutes of arriving.  The decor is really hip with kind of a sleek urban vibe.  The noise level was actually a lot better than many other hip spots but maybe that's just because this was a Sunday and the snow outside was keeping the crowds away.

I decided to forego having a drink since I was on my way to the show and there would be plenty of booze there.  Neither I nor my dinner companion were super hungry and so we didn't mess around with appetizers and got right down to entrees.  He got the mussels with white wine, shallots, and fennel and I got the famous chicken and waffles.

The food came out relatively quickly and I was eagerly awaiting the verdict on the mussels.  My friend is a diehard fan of Granville's and our mussels and since I really can't eat a full order of mussels anymore (you try eating a bowl of them when most of your days are spent cleaning them, cooking them, and generally consumed with all things moules), I figured I'd let him order the moules frite and tell me how our fries and mussels compare.  His verdict: their actual mussels taste more like mussels whereas our broth takes on a lot more flavor and our mussels also have a lot more of the flavor of what's in the broth.  Basically their mussels and their broth are like two separate dishes whereas ours are a bit more connected.  

I suspect this is because of a difference in cooking methods.  Ninety-percent of places will cook mussels by steaming them in a pan with a lid.  This traps all of the water that would otherwise evaporate as the wine, beer, or whatever cooking liquid is being used comes to a boil.  So the mussels are steamed open and then the whole dish is plated by basically dumping everything in a bowl.  Our mussels are different.  We cook ours in an open sautée pan and toss the mussels around frequently to coat them with the hot broth.  This helps them open but I think it's also why the flavor of the sauce tends to infuse our mussels really well.

As for the frites...well, few things make me as sad as having frites that are less than spectacular. These, sadly, fell into that category.  The color was good, they were pillowy on the inside, but they lacked that crisp outside that I love and they could have been hotter too.  The fries at Marvin come with three dipping sauces: a horseradish mayo that I loved, a curry mayo that was way too eggy and sticky, and catsup.  

But, while Marvin gets acclaim for it's moules frites, the dish I was really looking forward to was the fried chicken and waffles.  This is the dish that gets rave reviews and, well, let's be honest, it's fried chicken.  How can you really go wrong with that?  And this dish had a lot of my favorite things on one plate: country fried chicken breast, Belgian waffle, white gravy, collard greens, and even a ramekin of maple syrup should you want a little sweetness.  After cleaning the plate completely, I have to say that I loved a lot about this dish and found only one thing that I would have changed.  The chicken was perfectly cooked.  Really crunchy outside and super moist inside.  It was resting on top of a soft, slightly sweet, golden brown waffle.  The white gravy underneath was great and I only wish there was more of it.  Midway through I poured the syrup all over the whole thing and I really loved the flavor of the salty chicken, the rich gravy and the sweet syrup and waffle.  The only thing I would have changed with this dish was the collard greens.  

Being from the South I have pretty specific ideas of what I want in collard greens.  The ideal serving of greens should be tender and slightly bitter (Marvin gets both of these right).  Where they missed was the acid and the smoked meat flavor.  I usually make my greens with either a smoked ham hock or some slab bacon.  If neither of those are available, then a smoked turkey leg works well.  But to me, collard greens thrive when their earthy bitterness goes up against that rich, smokey flavor.  And what balances it all out is acid.  I usually add in some apple cider vinegar before the greens have completely wilted so that much of the vinegar cooks down but still leaves behind a bright acidic finish.  However, other than that, I would say the chicken and waffles were pretty amazing.  On the whole, Marvin gets a decent rating from me.  The mussels (the two I tried) were tasty but I like more of the flavors from the broth to infuse the mussels, the fries were disappointing as was the curry mayo, the chicken was perfection as was the waffle and the gravy, and the collards were certainly decent although not perfect.

#6: Restaurant Eve

So within a twenty four hour span I went from sitting at the #100 restaurant to sitting at the #6.  I think it was a really neat experience because one of the things I noticed is that so much of what makes a truly great restaurant great is little details.  Restaurant Eve rarely misses on the details from the stellar drinks, each placed on the appropriate side (right hand side) of the guest, to making sure silverware was replaced between courses to the tiny garnishes like the fried capers on a salad that don't seem like much but if they weren't there the whole dish would be different.

I went with a good friend of mine who is a fellow foodie and who had just returned from a trip to NYC where she had the 9 course tasting menu at Le Bernardin so I figured she'd have a really great standard of comparison.  Especially since both courses she ordered included seafood.  But let's start at the beginning.

I definitely was not going to forego drinks here.  In addition to a great wine list, Restaurant Eve is home to Todd Thrasher, one of the best mixologists (aka fancy bartenders) in the country.  So a cocktail was definitely on the agenda.  I ordered "The Cure All" which is a palate-pleasing blend of Hendricks gin, Blanco tequila, tumeric, and basil coconut water.  The first taste of the drink is sweet with the tequila and coconut being the dominant flavors.  The second sip is a more developed taste that starts sweet, has an earthy middle from the tumeric, and finishes with a crispness from the cucumber in the Hendricks and the hint of basil.  My friend had the Molly Delicious, a smooth concoction of house-made apple cider, Calvados, and Makers Mark.  Bourbon and apple were made for each other and this drink proves why.  There's something about that combination that is just so refreshing and earthy at the same time.

For our first course, we both had the evening's salad special: bibb lettuce, fried fresh sardines from Maine, hard-boiled quail egg, fried capers, and a creamy dressing of some sort (I wish I had remembered to ask).  The salad was delicious.  The sardines were perfectly crisp and with a light ocean flavor that was not fishy at all.  The bibb lettuce was delicate enough to let all the other flavors shine and the fried capers made this dish.  That little bit of crunchy, briny flavor was the perfect garnish.  Like I said, it's all in the details.

On to the main course.  My friend had the rockfish over creamy polenta and swiss chard with a lobster butter.  The fish was expertly seared with a beautiful brown crust on the outside and a supremely moist interior.  The bitterness of the chard paired well with the meaty rockfish and creamy polenta.  I opted to go with the pan friend veal sweetbreads served on a bed of parsnip, bacon, roasted cipollini onions, wilted greens, and a whole grain mustard sauce.  This dish was heaven.  I would eat this every day if I could.  The sweetbreads were so crisp but so buttery inside and the tangy mustard sauce along with the sweetness from the parsnips and cipollinis was just amazing.  This was probably one of the best dishes I've had and I was really glad I went with the sweetbreads.  Given Cathal Armstrong's reputation for amazing preparations of offal I figured the sweetbreads would be great but they were still just so sublime.

After that main course, it would be hard for any dessert to compare since I'm not much of a sweet tooth but we decided to at least try something.  So we went with the banana creme tart with cocoa nib ice cream and caramel.  It was a really nice, light dessert and a good end to the meal.  

All in all I'd say that Restaurant Eve more than deserves it's #6 ranking.  The details here are never overlooked and it means that the entire experience is one of great pleasure.  

So that concludes part one of what I'm sure will be many posts as I continue to try out the best the DC dining scene has to offer.

it's getting better all the time...

In the timeless words of The Beatles, "I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time."

So yeah, having to move (for the second time in 9 months) sucks and breaking up sucks even more. But things don't stay terrible for long.  The move is over.  Mostly.  There are a few things that I've got to retrieve from the old house but I'm in the new house.  Slept in the new room last night and I'm really feeling good about it.  The roommates are nice and normal and not musicians (not that I have anything against musicians, I just prefer to enjoy their work at a show and not while I'm trying to watch Top Chef or sleep).  There is a sweet kitchen, I'm 1.9 miles from work, and I have off-street parking - anyone who lives in the District and has dealt with the parking situation and the ridiculousness of tickets, booting, and towing will get why that makes me so happy.

As for work, things are going pretty well there.  I've worked a few less shifts lately but that's mostly because it was a night that we're not usually super-pressed for people and I've just had a lot going on in my personal life so taking a few Monday nights off wasn't a huge deal.  But now that I'm getting settled this week should be the last Monday night off for a while and I have to say I'm looking forward to getting back into my normal routine.  So, as I start spending less of my free time panicking about where I'm going to live, I should be able to get better at blogging.

In closing, I would just like to say though that the DC snow trucks suck.  Or at least the people who drive them do.  Because, in addition to having to cross behind the truck in the middle of the street when the driver decided to wait out a red light squarely in the middle of the crosswalk,  tonight I got the delightful sensation of being shot in the back of the leg with a bb gun multiple times.  How is this possible? The moron driver turned on the salt-sprayer as we were crossing behind his truck (which we had to do because of the aforementioned crosswalk-blocking).  So about 50 pellets of de-icing salt shot in the back of my calves while I was trying to run across the street.  This is not a pleasant sensation.  Especially not after standing on your feet for three and a half hours for a concert.

DC snow trucks...you are on my shit-list.

sometimes life is like a giant kick in the ass

So I haven't written in a while and it's not for lack of things going on.  Rather, too much has been going on.

But to update briefly:

— Inaugration was insane.  We had our best week by a lot and were packed.  All the time. For 5 days straight.  Good times but so tired afterwards.

— As a needed break after the craziness of Inauguration week, I went to visit the parents where they now live in Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is a pretty boring place but it was a nice break from the constant busy pace of life in DC.  And I got to do some serious cooking with Mom.  The parsnip soup...oh my lord, the parsnip soup.

— Life outside of the restaurant has been tough: breakup, moving, stress, stress and more stress.  But, thanks in large part to the fact that the staff at Granville's is the best surrogate family I could ever hope for, I am surviving.

— Had a chef meeting the other week that involved my new plan to really step up our game.  We were left off the Washingtonian 100 Best Restaurants list and, well, I was pissed.  Next year, Washingtonian, next year.

More to come later this week hopefully as I start to get big details like where I will live sorted out (that one's pretty crucial).

introductions

Well, due to the fact that the writer of one of my favorite blogs linked to one of my posts on his site (thanks again!), I've gotten some new readers and comments. Which is awesome. And so, it's prompted me to write a post that's a bit of an introduction. The focus of this blog has changed since I first started it and that's largely because my life has changed pretty drastically since I first started the blog.

First things first: my name is Alyse and I live in Washington, D.C. I moved here in fall of 2004 after I left college. When I first moved here, it was to figure out what I want to do with my life. And like most people who are only 20 years old when they decide to "find themselves," my visions of what I wanted to do for a living changed a few times. I got a job as an admin assistant in an office and while I knew I didn't want to do that, I was still pretty unsure of where I was going.

Summer of 2005 my parents moved to the D.C. metro area so my dad could get his second master's degree and I couldn't have been happier. I adore my parents; they are the greatest parents anyone could want. I spent at least two days a week with them and a lot of that time was spent in the kitchen. Cooking has always been Mom and I's thing. A lot of it started when my mom married my dad (who is actually my stepdad but he's always going to be Dad to me). Faced with not only a new dad but three new siblings, I began to miss out on the pleasure of having my mom all to myself. So I found ways to spend time with her and the biggest one was cooking. She's an amazing cook and I learned that if I was in the kitchen with her, it was a time to talk and enjoy her company while also picking up her love of food and cooking (and wine).

The year my parents were here and all the time I spent cooking with my mom made me think that maybe I could cook for a living. I hadn't found anything else that I loved as much as cooking or that relaxed me as much and I was a total culinary junkie. I looked into the idea of culinary school, found one in the D.C. area that was pretty good and very seriously considered going to school. And then I didn't. For a lot of reasons. At the time I wasn't sure I wanted to work in a restaurant for a living because I knew the hours were rough (I'd worked in restaurants during high school and college - serving and hosting). Culinary school is also really expensive and I wasn't sure I wanted to sink $30,000 grand into a year of education if I wasn't sure I'd be down for spending the rest of my life working in a restaurant. So I sort of shelved the idea but it always remained in my head and taunted me.

Soon enough I found myself working in the booming (at least if you live in D.C.) non-profit sector and while I enjoyed my work more, I was still never really fulfilled by what I was doing. I spent a lot of my free time cooking and shopping for food (the Dupont Circle FreshFarm market got so much of my money) and all of my extra cash went to food, kitchen items, or wine.

The summer of 2006 my parents moved to Oklahoma for my Dad's job and so I was seriously missing my cooking time with Mom. Fortunately for me, in the winter of 2007, a friend who I'd met at debate camp the summer before my senior year of high school (yes, I was a HUGE dork in high school AND college) moved to D.C. His name is Tahir — although I and the readers who've been with this blog for a while know him simply as T — and although we'd met almost 7 years before he moved to D.C., we had kept in touch on a very on-off basis through the years. So he invited me to his housewarming party where I ended up helping out in the kitchen and we discovered that we both loved to cook. We made plans to get together and cook and the rest, as they say, is history. We started cooking together on a regular basis, pushing each other to try bigger and tougher kitchen challenges and trying out our experiments on friends.

Somewhere along the way I decided to start a blog. At first it was simple. Just a note about something I'd cooked recently, maybe a picture or two, and that's all. Soon I started using the space to talk about all sorts of food things: books I'd read, restaurants I'd eaten at, my thoughts on food in the news, wine, and — perhaps the most fun and impressive — my cooking adventures in the kitchen with T. So my life-long love of writing and my love of food and joined to become something really special to me.

Thanks to encouragement from boyfriend at the time I submitted two writing samples for a chance to get a position as a food writer for a D.C. focused blog called, DCist. The editors were crazy enough let me on board and, while it wasn't a paying job, I was super excited to get to write about food and wine and do it in a way that was fun, informative, and let me be a bit sarcastic about it (I love me the sarcasm...as all who know me can attest).

All of that was well and good but I still wasn't happy at work. I spent most of my day getting the minimum amount of work done and then reading food blogs, coming up with ideas for posts, and dreaming about getting to cook for a living. And then a number of things sort of happened that would bring me to where I am today.

First of these was that said boyfriend took me to a little gastropub called Granville Moore's for our first date in March of 2008. Located in the "emerging" (read: gentrifying) neighborhood known as the Atlas District, it's a tiny, tiny place that's known for moule frites (mussels and fries) and a kick-ass Belgian beer list. He knew I loved Belgian beers and that I had recently discovered I liked mussels after shunning them for 13 years due to a bad experience. So he, rightly, assumed that it would be the kind of place I'd be into. He was so right. The food was great, I totally dug the hole-in-the-wall vibe, and the beer list was nothing less than phenomenal. (Just a few days after we ate there, Bobby Flay and his food network crew showed up and challenged the chef at Granville's to a moules frites Throwdown.)

The next thing that happened was that things at my day job (I'd left my previous non-profit and was now working for a food industry trade association) had gone south. I had a new boss with whom I was having a hard time working and I spent most of my nights incapable of falling a sleep or sleeping well because I was so stressed and had so much mental energy from being unhappy, unchallenged, and unfulfilled at work. After realizing that things weren't going to get better, I started looking for new jobs at the end of May 2008. I was focused on finding another non-profit job but the bf brought up the idea of looking for a job in food or wine. I entertained the idea, applied for a few jobs (wine manager, wine sales, event planning) that were kind of in that area but still was mainly looking for another office job.

With some pushing from him I started looking at the possibility of applying for a cooking job. I had no professional experience, had never been to culinary school but I adored food, devoured books about it, knew a lot, and was a pretty quick learner. I would certainly be starting at the bottom and would not get a salary that even approached what I'd get from another office job. But maybe...maybe this was my chance to do something I'd always wanted to do.

The final push into my new career came from a series of events over about two weeks in July. On July 2, while I was talking to him on gchat, the bf sent me a link for a job on craiglist. Granville Moore's was looking for a line cook. And the ad was so different from all the others looking for cooks. No mention of the experience needed or desired, just a few questions: what kind of food do you like to cook, what are your favorite restaurants, and why do you want to work here.

I took a deep breath and wrote. I emailed the chef the answers to his questions and, as for that final question, I was just honest. I love food. I have no professional kitchen experience but I am a good cook, I want to do this for a living and I think I've figured out it's better to be happy doing something you love than to be miserable making a bunch of money doing a job that makes it hard for you to sleep at night.

And so I waited. That night I got an email from Teddy, the chef/owner of Granville's and he asked me a few more questions and we set up an interview for the following Wednesday, July 9. The day before my interview at Granville's I went into work as usual and spent a lot of the day really excited about the two interviews I had the next day: the one at Granville's and an interview for a job in wine sales. That afternoon my boss called from the office of our HR manager and asked me to come down. I sat in silence while I was told that I was being let go. Effective that day I was no longer employed at the trade association. The details were explained to me, I went back to pack up my desk, and then I left. And I was really unsure about what would come next.

I called my mom from my car and, despite how much I had hated that job and my boss, I started to cry on the phone with her. I had never been fired before, I didn't know what I was going to do for a living, and what was going to happen if neither of those interviews worked out? She calmed me down and we both agreed that it was better that I wasn't still working there and I'd gotten some severance money that should help with things for a few weeks while I found a new job. After I felt better, I called the bf to talk and we decided to go out to dinner at Rustico, one of our favorite restaurants, to celebrate my being done with a job I hated. That night as we waited in the bar for a table, the TVs were tuned to the Food Network because the episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay featuring Teddy from Granville's was finally airing. That's the great thing about the D.C. dining scene: everyone roots for everyone else and we're all just thrilled when we get any small amount of national recognition (and to wrap up the Throwdown story...Teddy won).

Wednesday morning I woke up and went to my interview for the wine sales job. I felt good about the interview, I know wine pretty well and if there's one thing I can do, it's talk about how great a particular wine is — which is a pretty strong skill for someone interviewing for a job selling wine. I had a bowl of pho for lunch and then went home to change and relax before my interview with Teddy at Granville's later that day.

Around 4:00 I walked into Granville Moore's and met Teddy in person for the first time. He had the sort of personality that just totally put me at ease. I relaxed and he gave me a tour of the kitchen (which lasted about 30 seconds since it's smaller than my parents' master bathroom) and the restaurant and we talked about food. He was funny, sarcastic, self-deprecating and clearly as obsessively in love with food as I was. He'd also worked in an office for 4 years after leaving college and then left it to follow his passion and cook for a living. I knew instantly that I could totally work for this guy and love it. I met some more of the staff, we chatted a bit longer about food, my restaurant experience, the Throwdown, he said he'd call me Friday and then I left.

When I talked to my mom afterwards she asked me what I'd do if I got offered both jobs. The wine sales job was more boring but it paid a ton. At Granville's I'd be making less than I'd made when I first moved to D.C. I told her, with only a little hesitation, that I would probably take the job at Granville's...because, c'mon, I'd be cooking for a living.

Thursday the wine company called and offered me a job. I told them that I was waiting to hear on another offer and that I'd get back to them the next day. I spent another night nervous, excited, and hopeful. When I awoke Friday morning I had an email from Teddy saying that they wanted me to come in that Sunday night and hang out in the kitchen for a shift and see what I thought of it. I wasn't sure if that meant I had the job or no and I needed to get back to the wine people so I called him up and asked if he was offering me a job or if it was a second interview. He said that the job was mine if I wanted it.

And that's how it started. I started working day prep shifts with Teddy (plus a few front of house shifts to make some money since there weren't 40 hours a week available for me in the kitchen) and it was great. I spent time in the kitchen cooking with him, learning, talking about food all day, managing to teach him a thing or two in the process, catching up on D.C. food scene gossip, and having a blast. It felt wrong that they were paying me for it. Things moved up from there. I got to create dishes, they made it on the specials, then onto the menu. I started working the line, and now, six months later, I'm the opening chef three days a week in charge of managing all of our prep and have realized the ultimate satisfaction of watching my dishes go out of that kitchen and satisfy diners.

And so there you have it. The long (but still pretty abridged) story of how I got here. I'm going to skip summing up specials, reading material, and other such things because it's late, I need sleep so I can go battle D.C. DMV tomorrow. But the next post I'll do a bit more of an intro to the restaurant and what we're all about.

inauguration: it's history

So the inauguration is over.  From a political perspective, this was an extremely exciting and important event.  However, from the perspective of someone who works in a D.C. restaurant, I'm extremely happy that it's over.  It was, in a word, madness.  Starting Saturday, we were opening four hours early every day and keeping the kitchen open an hour to two hours later than usual. Friday's prep shift was insane as we worked to get everything set up not only for that night's service, but also to make the prep load lighter on Saturday since the kitchen would be opening at 1:00pm instead of the usual 5:00pm — meaning four fewer hours to get things ready for Saturday night.

I normally love prep shifts because they are the time I get to create.  Line shifts are all about execution: get tickets done, done right, and done as quickly as possible.  Prep shifts are different. The printer isn't spewing out tickets; managers aren't running in to get orders changed because servers put them in wrong; food runners aren't taking the wrong mussels to tables, dropping the tops of sandwich buns, or forgetting to stab tickets.  The kitchen is relatively silent and  it's possible to enjoy the relaxing aspects of cooking.

Prepping for inauguration is not the same.  It's a mad rush to get things done.  Friday was a whirl of making double batches, braising as much brisket as could physically fit on the stove, and trying to see into the future and predict exactly what we would sell most of that night and Saturday.  Guess what?  It's hard to be a cook AND a psychic.

But we made it through.  Saturday night was craziness.  Twenty percent over what would normally be a really good Saturday for us.  Sunday night was a bit more relaxed but still the best Sunday we'd had in a while.  Monday night was Saturday all over again.  I was on the line and we went all the way until the stroke of midnight.  At 10:00pm we were still on a two hour wait.  The sheer amount of fries we went through was...scary is the best way I can think to put it.  Fortunately, Tuesday was a bit calmer.  But Friday through Tuesday we matched what had previously been our best seven day week of sales.

I'm glad it's over and happy to be heading back towards some semblance of normalcy.  More to come later though on the rest of this week.

boys' club

So, although I know at least one reader of this blog is very familiar with the situation/environment I'm about to describe, I'll give a little bit of explanation for those who may not be.  To put it simply: the kitchen (and the food industry at large) is very much a boys' club.

Despite a lot of advances and a lot of really talented female chefs out there, the kitchen remains a pretty tough environment for a woman.  Most of the best restaurants in the world (according to rankings lists and such) have male head chefs, most of the sous chefs, line cooks, prep cooks, and even dishwashers in many kitchens are men.  There are certainly kitchens that serve as exceptions but for the industry at large, the kitchen is still a pretty masculine environment.  In a lot of ways it's like a boys' locker room — girls aren't really wanted in there and if you go in there you better prepare yourself because it's a different world and they're not going to censor themselves or take pains to make you comfortable because, after all, you're on their turf.

So needless to say it can be difficult to be a woman working in a kitchen.  There are a lot of challenges.  I've been lucky for the most part because my head chef started his culinary career in the kitchen of a fantastic female chef and he says that she created an environment that was nurturing, educational, and helped him learn how to be a chef that inspires instead of intimidates.  All of this makes him a fantastic boss and it makes me feel very lucky to work with him.  But in a kitchen you aren't just working with one person, you're working with a group and not everyone in the group picks up on those cues from the top and — should that nurturing figure at the top be gone from the kitchen for six weeks — you will inevitably faced with a lot more challenges.

These challenges come in many forms.  And if you're like me (a stubborn perfectionist who hates to be wrong) you'll look at every challenge as an opportunity to prove yourself. Sometimes this leads to amusing results.  Like when you can't pry the lid off of a tub of pickled vegetables and you tell the boys you need help and they make fun of you.  If you're the stubborn sort, once they quit laughing and say they'll come help you, you tell them that, nevermind, you've got it on your own.  So you go out to the walk-in with a meat pounder and a butter knife and try to take the hammer and chisel approach to working the lid off.  When that doesn't work you end up putting one foot on the edge of the lid closest to you, planting your other foot firmly on the floor, and pulling on the other side of the lid with both hands and all your strength.  It works, but you're wearing about a quart of pickled vegetable juice and for the next 6 hours of your shift you will have brine in your shoes.

Sadly, not all of the challenges will be as amusing.  Somedays the boys' club will make you feel angry, frustrated, defeated and maybe it will even make you doubt yourself and your abilities. Without that understanding and nurturing leadership at the top, you have to fight it out with the boys who've been there longer, have been doing the job longer, and are pretty convinced that they don't need you or your input.  

So the head chef is out for a few weeks and you've gotten a promotion to a role of new responsibility and new opportunity...how do you succeed when the boys leave you isolated and out of the loop?  They talk to each other but not to you.  When you offer help or suggestions, they're brushed aside.  When you ask questions, you are ignored or, worse, snapped at and essentially told that it doesn't concern you.  They go over your head, below you, and around you to get work done but it doesn't seem that they are particularly interested in talking to you.  With the head chef out — the one person who hired you, promoted you, and seems to believe in you — how do you sort it out?

...I'll let you know when I figure out the answers.

Getting Ready for Inauguration

Inauguration is upon us.  The madness started yesterday.  We got in deliveries of enough items to last us through Tuesday since most of our vendors are going to be closed Monday and/or Tuesday and with all the road closures, we're not sure deliveries would be able to get to us if they were open.  We got in 20 gallons of mayonnaise and 8 wheels of Hook's blue cheese.  Our bison farmer came up from Madison yesterday and, in addition to getting stuck in some nasty traffic that caused him to arrive at 7:00pm instead of 5:00pm, brought us 6 cases of fresh ground bison, enough brisket and hanger steak to last us through Tuesday, and what has to be the single largest amount of bacon I've ever seen in one place.  I spent 45 minutes last night out in the freezing cold opening the boxes, organizing the walk-in to find space for it all, and then breaking down boxes.  It was not fun.

To add to that, our kitchen is freezing.  The kitchen is in a part of the building that was added on to the original structure so it has never had the best heating and cooling.  So basically cold air pours in to the bottom of the kitchen (which is above our outdoor patio) and then our commercial grade hood pulls all that cold air up through the kitchen.  It doesn't help that we're going through some of the coldest weather D.C. has seen in the last five years.  I've decided that I'm going to need to get a long-sleeved chef's jacket to wear over the many long-sleeved shirts I already wear since the short-sleeved jackets aren't working so well.  I am also going to need to wear two pairs of socks in the hopes that I can keep at least some of the feeling in my feet.  

These next four days are going to be unreal.  The kitchen will be staying open till midnight starting tonight and going through Tuesday night.  The bar will be opening at 1:00pm Saturday through Tuesday and that will include the kitchen having to turn out fries for customers in addition to getting prep done between 2:00pm and 5:00pm.  Thankfully I have tonight off and I'm off all day tomorrow.  However, Sunday the insanity begins: in for prep at 9:00am, prep until 4:00pm and then host from 5:00pm until whenever the wait subsides (hopefully around midnight at the latest).  Monday night is a line shift and Tuesday I'm serving.  Jeebus help me because I'm pretty sure tonight and tomorrow are my last chance for sleep until Wednesday.

Specials

Beef Rib-eye with Balsamic Cherry Reduction: Our "beer guy" (although he's really so much more), Pat, makes these bourbon-kriek soaked cherries for the bartenders to use in Manhattans that are unbelievably good.  So today I decided to use some of them.  Balsamic, bourbon cherries, and steak.  Yum.

Grilled Rockfish with Lemon Basil Vinaigrette:  I loved the lemon basil aioli from last week.  I decided to try it a bit differently since I thought a lighter vinaigrette might work better with grilled rockfish (I think aioli works better with the fried fish).  I liked it, but not as much.  I still need to sort out the exact lemon/basil balance I want.

Reading Materials

I'm still working my way through The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.  I am sort of reserving that one for helping me survive my Sunday night hosting shifts.  Steingarten's wit makes it easier to answer 58 phone calls about whether or not we take reservations and 15 phone calls that require me to explain that we are NOT located on the 1200 block of H Street NW and that there is a big difference between NE and NW in the District.

So since I'm reserving that for Sundays, I tend to read other books during the week.  Since today has been a long day, I've been enjoying Melanie Dunea's wonderful book My Last Supper which has 50 famous chefs talk about what the ideal meal, setting, music, guest list, and etc. would be for their last supper on Earth.  The photographs are wonderful and the book always inspires me (doesn't hurt that there are recipes in the back including Thomas Keller's perfect roast chicken).  Whenever I'm having a day where I'm tired, frustrated, and starting to question myself, I always look at this book and it reminds me of what I love about the business I'm in and how, even for the most talented chef, it's important never to stop deriving joy from good food, good friends, and, mostly, being able to do something you love every day.

pushing through

Sometimes there are those days when you're on the line and you're just firing on all cylinders and everything is working perfectly.  Those days are rare.  Sometimes you have those days when the occasional snag pops up but you roll with the punches and at the end of the night you realize that nothing was that bad and you made it through all the incorrect tickets, items needed on the fly, and small missteps. Those days are more common.  

And then there are the days like yesterday.  You're feeling good when you show up for your shift.  You knock out the prep you have to do.  You get your station set up.  You get other people's stations set up.  The service starts off slowly and so everyone wanders out of the kitchen.  You're the only person in there when the first few tickets come in and you jump on a station that's not usually yours, get the tickets done, send everything out, and you're feeling pretty good because whether or not everyone else is in the mood to work, you are and you're ready for a good night.  Once things pick up, it's business as usual and you're rolling with the punches and making sure everything is getting out on time - whether that be with the rest of the food on the ticket or on the fly because the server forgot to put it through.

And then suddenly you hit that moment when, regardless of how good you're feeling, someone else isn't and they're determined to take it out on you.  It's amazing how one person's bad mood can bring an entire shift down.  They're having a bad day and so they snap at you.  You in turn get frustrated and maybe you even shut down a little bit.  By the time service is over and you've cleaned the kitchen and are walking out the door, it's obvious to everyone that you're not in the same mood you were in when the shift started.  So what happened?  To put it simply, you hit a block and you stopped.  

I grew up watching and obsessing over college football (War Eagle!) and one of the things that always defined the Southeastern Conference was tough defenses and offenses that relied on a running game.  Because of that combination, one thing that was always talked about was "yards after contact" or the number of yards a running back could gain after the first defender attempted to tackle him.  Often times you'd see a running back get hit by one defender and he would spin, fight and push to stay up.  But it wasn't just staying up that mattered — he kept pushing.  Still on his feet he'd surge ahead to gain more yards.  The really great running backs could do this despite having to break one, two, three tackles.  They simply pushed through.

It's no different when you hit an emotional or mental block in the kitchen.  Sure, the chef snaps at you and you want to shut down.  But you have to look ahead and think about all the yards you can gain after contact.  Sure, it might seem like shutting down punishes the person who yelled at you unnecessarily, but really, you're only punishing yourself and everyone else who wasn't involved.  So no matter how tempting it is to stop when you hit that first block, resist the urge and keep on pushing through because when you do, you're giving yourself the chance to recover the service and have a great shift.

Notes:

— Last night was the night of the braised brisket sandwich and the blueberry salad.

— Lately our hanger steaks look like they were butchered by, as Teddy put it, "a blind 5-year-old with a butcher's knife"; it makes breaking them down and portioning them a real pain in the ass.

— I think rapini is my favorite vegetable ever, which is huge since I'm obsessed with vegetables of almost every kind.  But red chili flake is a must with sauteed rapini; otherwise it just doesn't taste right.

— The closer we get to inauguration week the more I start to think that it's going to kick all of our asses.

a change of direction

So because my schedule is so weird it's been hard to keep this blog focused on what I cook at home.  Mostly because I don't cook at home as often and when I do it's usually pretty simple or I'm not thinking and forget to take pictures.  Based on that reality check, I've thought about refocusing the direction of this blog.

One of my favorite blogs to read is called line cook. and it's become a favorite because of its honest, thought provoking, and hilarious take on the life of a restaurant cook.  So while it's highly unlikely that I will have as many deep insights or hilarious moments to share, I do think that blogging about cooking at work and that aspect of my life will better accomplish the intended purpose of this blog: to chronicle things I discover, learn, and love about food and cooking.  I'll still have some stuff in here about non-work cooking but since work is where I do most of my cooking it makes no sense to exclude it from what I write about.

This week was a long one: 52 hours on my feet, 27 of which came in just two days (Friday and Sunday).  Weeks like this make me feel lucky that I do get one weekend day off and yet, my Saturday still involved a trip to Granville's so I suppose it doesn't entirely count as a day off since I apparently can't seem to stay away.

Despite being a long week, it's been a pretty good one at the restaurant.  This week has been the week of sauces.  Gotta make a sauce for the côte du jour and the poisson du jour each day and, as small as it is, I have to say that this is one of my favorite parts of being the opening chef.  

I've always loved sauces because I think that, while a protein can be perfectly tasty on its own, the right sauce can often add the perfect accent.  I also think that sauces can be difficult and are an important test of a cook's skill for two big reasons.  The first is that making sauce is an exercise in balancing texture and there's a very small area of perfection and a vast ocean of wrongness on either side.  A sauce that's too thin is messy, weak, disappears within the dish and, at its worst, makes everything a soggy wreck.  A sauce that is too thick, on the other hand, is goopy, ugly, unevenly distributes flavor to the food, and has an extremely unpleasant mouthfeel.  But a sauce that has found that perfect niche is heaven: velvety, rich, luxurious, and is the perfect accent to the food.

Aside from the texture issue, there's flavor to contend with.  Making a sauce that tastes good on its own is one thing but it's not necessarily the best thing.  The sauce should be flavored and balanced to suit the food it's accompanying.  Finding the right balance of fat, acid, salt, sweetness, etc. to match whatever the sauce is accenting requires constant adjustment, tasting, and refining.  It's why, in kitchens that operate on the traditional French brigade model, saucier is an extremely important job and is often where one of the strongest cooks will be stationed.

So, that said, I'm taking this new opportunity of being opening chef three days a week to perfect sauces.

Specials for the week: (this part is going to be something I'm using to chronicle the specials I came up with for that week...if nothing else to help me remember those that were really good and which ones didn't work)

Grilled Beef N.Y. Strip with Dijon Cumin Vinaigrette — did this sauce with both the beef ny strip and a bison sirloin; there's just something I love about the tangy flavor of dijon and the smokiness of cumin matched together

Fried Rainbow Trout Filet with Lemon Basil Aioli — probably my favorite sauce of the week; lemon plus fried food = classic, lemon and basil aioli = rich AND refreshing

Arugula, Goat Cheese, Macerated Strawberry Salad with Strawberry Lemon Vinaigrette — strawberries + goat cheese = heaven

Grilled Bone-In Duroc Pork Chop with Chilli Cream Sauce — roasted poblanos, rehydrated guajillos, garlic, cream, cumin, and coriander; this sauce reminded me of something and I can't figure out what it is but I loved the flavor

What I'm Reading: The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.  He's one of my favorite food writers (his columns are my favorite part of Vogue and one of the main reasons I subscribe) and easily the best judge on Iron Chef America.  A collection of various essays and pieces he's written over the years, the book is funny, smart, educational, and a beautiful tribute to fantastic food writing.