6-1-04

Off to a hotel today to cook some larger numbers of banqueting food. Whoever designed this place should be shot. The kitchen is at one end of the building—a 60’s style concrete jungle—and the banqueting suites are at the other end. The connecting corridor runs past half of the rooms, down three steps into the lobby, across the lobby, up three steps, past the other half of the rooms, up three more steps through some double doors, past a few more rooms and into the ‘staging kitchen’. This suite can hold 360 people sitting down. The ‘staging’ kitchen is way smaller than my smaller than average bathroom and in it is a dishwasher, a sink, some shelving, a 12 foot wooden table and the only way into the suite for the service staff. The food is prepared in the kitchen; it is loaded into a huge hotbox and wheeled to the first set of three steps before you get to the lobby. There it is unloaded onto a cart at the bottom of the three steps and wheeled through the lobby to the next set of steps where you then reload it onto another cart at the top of the steps, only to repeat the operation again later—this, with a large banquet takes three people the best part of 20 minutes including time to go and get the empty hotbox schlep it down the stairs and up at the other end. It is also the easy part of the whole plating operation. Once you have the food in the ‘staging kitchen’ you have to get it onto the plates—The 12 footer is OK, the shelving is stacked with the personal belongings of the part time waiting staff, the fact that the only sink for miles around is in the corner of this closet is to say the least, a problem—water jugs being filled and thirsty servers replenishing glasses and retrieving lipstick, lighters, cell phones and all other manner of stuff. ‘Marlboro country’ is outside one of the doors for those that need a nicotine fix the other door goes into the banqueting suite. The only place to stand is between the two doors, shoulder to shoulder with whoever the other wretched bastard is that is working with you, (There is only space for two), and yes, you guessed it, both of the doors open inwards into the closet, so every 10-15 seconds you get nudged in the hip or ass by a door handle as someone else has to come through for whatever reason. You have to stand upright so that the waitresses can squeeze past behind you—now I like to be close to women, but this is ridiculous. The waitresses are way past their ‘use by’ date so there really is no incentive to return to this hellhole.