What's my problem? Keeping hydrated.
It's been an exciting few days here on Nantucket. The temperature outside has been right around seventy five degrees with around eighty percent humidity for the past four days. With the burners on and ten plates on each of my pickups, it feels like it's at least a hundred and thirty degrees in the kitchen. It's so hot that I have used my little wrist bands every single day for the past week. I don't have enough to cover me until I'm ready to do laundry, so I'll have to go without soon.
On one of the first of the sticky, nasty days, we got a little service-time visit from the health inspector. Now, for those of you who don't know, it's extremely rare for you to get a visit from the health inspector DURING service. They usually come in the morning or during prep time, at least as far as my experience goes and as far as I have heard from other people. So, he was there and the tickets where ticking in. We were running service as usual and the only thing that the health inspector could call us on was that one guy wasn't wearing his hat (he had taken it off to eat staff meal and forgot to put it back on), and we were handling the food a little too much. He didn't like that we used our fingers to place the food on the plate. So he told us that we had to wear latex gloves on the line.
Do you know what it feels like to wear latex gloves when it's like a hundred and thirty degrees in the kitchen? It feels like you have a swamp in the palm of your hand. For a while, I would wear two pairs of gloves at a time so that when I wanted to change gloves, it was easier to slip a new glove over the glove that was directly on my hand. When you only wear one glove and you take it off, your hand is so drenched with sweat that it's impossible to slip another glove on. You can try to dry your hands with towels, paper towels, or even in front of a fan, and it will never be dry enough to get another glove on. Trust me, I've tried.
So along with the heat, I've been wearing latex gloves during service. I hate it so much, but I kind of have to do it. What really ends up happening is that we wear gloves to start service and then once eight o'clock rolls around, the gloves come off. We're really just wearing them until the health inspector comes around again. Once he does and sees us wearing the gloves and marks us as being compliant, the gloves come off permanently. What he doesn't understand is that we're making artisanal food. We are not making institutional food. We are hand crafting each and every one of the dishes that leaves the kitchen. We need to be hands on. When I have the gloves on, I can't feel my food. I don't know how micro greens are going to fall off of my finger tips. I can't feel if I have any residue on my gloves. I can't feel a damn thing. Things that normally stick to my fingers a little bit don't stick, and things that normally don't do. It's totally messed up.
So, back to the heat in the kitchen. It's been crazy hot. Almost as hot as it is on the hot line at Chez Henri. It could even be right on par. It's a tough call though. Pies on the middle station and Mikey on the saute station are both dripping with sweat. I'm dripping with sweat on hot apps. Two nights ago, I'm getting rocked. Things aren't going well for me. I can barely keep my head above water. At about half past eight, Mikey turns to me and asks if I can cover him for a minute. He looks awful. So, I jump on saute and he heads outside. I have no clue where he's at in the tickets. His fish looks like shit, I have no clue what he has that's ready. Jo-jo slides over to cover hot apps, and I eventually dig myself out on saute. Meanwhile, Mikey is having a panic attack outside. Apparently he has an inner ear condition which occasionally gives him vertigo. This happened to him as a result of the extreme heat and lack of hydration. The vertigo caused him to panic, and he had to be taken to the hospital.
It was pretty intense at the time. I've never had anyone have to leave the line for anything like that. To be honest, we were all pretty concerned when it went down. Luckily, Mikey was okay, but it was quite a scare. What was good was that after the jarring event of Mikey leaving the line, I was able to dig out on a station that I was relatively new at. I was putting up almost all of my orders on the fly, but at the same time, I put up some nice fish too. I was working fast and efficiently. I know I only work a day or two on saute, but I really do enjoy it much more than hot apps.
Speaking of hot apps, I put a special on the menu for the very first time. Two days ago, during prep, I was next to Chef as he butchered tuna. I asked him if he did anything with the chain meat (the meat of the tuna not on the loin that contains a lot of touch connective tissue). He said that sometimes he saves it, and other times, he pitches it. That day it was pretty nice, so I asked him if I could do a special. We brainstormed all day and looked at what we had in the walk in that was extra, and I came up with a dish. It was a curry vinaigrette tuna tartare in tomato water with pickled ginger and tempura fried eel. It was sexy as shit. My only regret is that I wasn't able to take a picture of the dish. I forgot to bring down my camera for service. I totally planned on it, but it just didn't happen. Anyhow, I was really proud of myself.
It was my day off today. I had a lot to do. I wanted to get some paperwork done and a haircut. I also wanted to make it to the beach. However, the fates conspired against me and not everything happened. I did get a haircut. The downside is that I couldn't get all of my paperwork done because I was missing some information, and it was a bit overcast all day, so going to the beach would have been a waste. So, one out of three ain't bad. To be honest, it might qualify as being one and a half out of three. At around five in the evening, the weather got really nice, so I headed down to the beach for an hour or so.
Well, it's getting late so I'll leave you with some more photos.
The beach at five o'clock.
My feet in the sand.
My new kicks.
Houses on the docks at dusk.
1 comment:
re: latex gloves... my only thing is that i strongly suggest that you switch it up to nitrile. it actually won't stick to your skin as much anyhow, but aside from that, i strongly *strongly* encourage you guys to switch up to nitrile because you WILL become allergic to them! I used latex for a couple of months in the lab and then i started getting a mild rash, so i switched to nitrile. And you know why it's especially important for you guys?
You still wanna use condoms? last time i checked nitrile nor non-latex ones seemed hard to get by...
just my 2 cents :D
luv ya bud!
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