CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sarah dropped her sequined jacket on her bed and hurried to get RahRah settled before she fought the traffic to Birmingham. Even with rushing, she barely arrived in time for the server orientation Emily held an hour before guests arrived.
Although tonight’s meal was a buffet, Emily explained it was important for servers to understand the makeup of each dish. They had to be ready for any questions that arose in the dining room because Grace and she would be busy with preparation and expediting refills from the kitchen. Sarah marveled at how cool and calm her sister was while educating the servers and dealing with the details of the kitchen.
After describing the contents of each dish, Emily put samples of them on the bar for the servers to taste. Sarah slipped the three-by-five index card she’d made cheat-sheet notes on into her pocket before sampling everything. There were three main dishes. One was a succulent chicken breast in a simple sauce, the second a breaded tilapia, and the third, which was the vegetarian choice, a deconstructed eggplant lasagna. The side dishes included two salad choices, two vegetables, two starches, orange or yeast rolls, and an assortment of mini-desserts. Water, tea, coffee, and a special Howellian Catnip drink were the only beverages for the evening.
From the little bit Emily and Marcus had taught Sarah when she’d helped serve or poked around behind the scenes at the original Southwind and during their discussions about having a pub concept versus a fine-dining establishment, she knew tonight’s buffet, while plentiful, had significant profit built into it. The chicken and tilapia options were two of the cheapest items a restaurant could put on their menu. Still, like Marcus’s food at YipYeow Day, everything was delicious.
Marcus planned to serve buffet style at the Southwind Pub tonight. She wondered if his menu would be similar to Emily’s to contrast with the pickup type food he offered this afternoon. Nice as everything would be at the Howellian tonight, Sarah wished Emily and she were at Southwind Pub.
When Emily finished their formal group orientation, she sent everyone except Sarah back to double-check their individually assigned stations one last time. Guests would bring plates back to their tables from the buffet lines, but clean water glasses and table settings had to be waiting for them. Extra napkins, silverware, and trays on which to place dirty dishes for the busboys were in easy reach but out of the sight line of the guests as much as possible.
“Sarah, you’re going to be my floater tonight.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ll work your way around the dining room helping out where needed. In the beginning, you’ll serve appetizers and pre-poured drinks, but as the night goes on, you’ll restock the prep stations as needed and make sure the busboys remove any stacked dirty dishes they miss. Most importantly, your job is to communicate the status of the buffet line table to Grace and me. For example, if everyone attacks one of the salads, we need to know to bring out a replacement. The same holds true with the hot dishes because, especially early in the evening, one of us will expedite refills while the other one will be popping things in and out of the ovens and microwaves. When the crowd wanes, that’s important for you to tell us, too. We don’t want to heat and waste food. If we keep our service on target, our bottom line will be more profitable.”
“It sounds like you could end up with extra pans of different things.”
“That’s the idea. I want tonight to look plentiful, but anything we don’t serve, we’ll refrigerate until we incorporate it into tomorrow’s menu.”
Sarah shuddered at the thought of pans of leftovers being recycled. She hated leftovers. “Is that a common restaurant practice?”
“Definitely. No restaurant can afford not to work this way. The same principle holds true with effectively using every part of an animal.”
“I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective.”
“Thankfully, most people don’t. Next time you’re in a restaurant, listen closely to that day’s specials. We may have served fresh shrimp and grits on Monday, but on Tuesday, we blend the shrimp with a tomato base and spices and serve a completely different dish. By the same token, if I buy whole chickens, I’ll make dishes incorporating half a chicken broiled or baked, but I’ll also make other menu offerings using the breasts, thighs, wings, livers, and even the bones.”
“I think you’re turning me off to restaurant dining.”
“Nonsense. Believe me, what I can do with the fat I skim off a chicken will make, and has made, your head spin with delight. Besides, you’re not exactly the one to go all righteous on me. You’ll do anything to avoid being in the kitchen. Think how much prepared frozen stuff you’ve scarfed down at fast-food restaurants.”
Sarah couldn’t deny what her sister said.
“I’ve got to get back to the kitchen to help Grace. Would you please clean this tasting area up before the guests start arriving?”
“Sure.”
Sarah stacked the dirty forks, serving platters, and plates she and the other servers had used and carried them into the kitchen. After asking Emily, she put them in an area near the commercial line dishwasher. She grabbed a rag and returned to the main dining room. Leaning over the bar to wipe it clean from the tasting, she felt a presence behind her. She whipped around, her rag in front of her, and almost ended up wiping Thomas clean. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. Did I miss the tasting?” He pointed to the bar area she had just finished wiping.
“Yes. And it was delicious.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from Emily. Her skills in a kitchen amaze me.”
“Me, too. I’m so easily flustered in a kitchen, but she makes everything seem easy—that is, until I try it.”
“I know what you mean.”
Sarah was surprised to hear Thomas talk about trying his hand in the kitchen. He impressed her as someone who had others prepare his meals and do anything else he needed so his manicured hands would always be protected. Perhaps he was talking about making something simple on his cook’s day off. “Are you a cook of convenience, too?”
“A cook of convenience?”
She was amused by his confused expression. “That’s what Emily’s dubbed me. I specialize in taking shortcuts and using prepared things, like premade piecrusts, instead of making everything from scratch. She thinks being a cook of convenience is sinful.”
Now it was his turn to be entertained by what she’d said. “I can’t imagine anything you could possibly do that would irk Saint Emily.”
His use of the word “saint” bothered Sarah. She stared at him, unable to ascertain if he was joking or there was a newly developed tension between Emily and him.
“Seriously, give me an example,” he pleaded.
She thought for a moment. “Do you remember the spinach pie my sister made from scratch at the food expo?”
He nodded. “It was delicious. That was one of the things that made me interested in your sister cooking at the Howellian.”
“Well, I make a spinach pie, too. The big difference is she uses real spinach while I mix Stouffer’s spinach soufflé with packaged shredded cheddar cheese and other prepared ingredients. If I do say so myself, the end result of my recipe isn’t bad.”
“I’m sure it’s not, but I admire both your sister’s cooking and her flair for food presentation. Whether she’s making one dish or one hundred dishes, her food always comes out without losing its aesthetically pleasing look. That’s not an easy task. Most chefs, like me, can prepare one perfect dish at a time. It takes a special chef to make two hundred plates with the same consistent high-quality look. No matter how hard I’ve tried, I’ve never mastered high-end mass production. With the events we’ve had this past week, Emily has given me a crash course.”
She jerked her head up with more than a quizzical look on her face before she could control herself. Perhaps Marcus’s fears about Thomas’s motivation for hiring Emily were justified. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were a chef.”
Thomas mimicked being a witness swearing on a Bible. “Guilty as charged, but not at the same level as your sister or Marcus.”
Sarah waited, hoping he would tell her more about this new wrinkle in his background.
“Uncle George wasn’t too pleased with either Cliff or me when it came to our academic prowess. We both bounced around a bit during our first year of college. The difference was Cliff hung in there until he flunked out while I withdrew three weeks into my first semester, came home, licked my wounds, and signed up for junior college classes for the next term. I took just enough of the same cooking courses Grace has been taking at the junior college to get the basics under my belt. At that point, I realized restaurant and hotel management, rather than cooking, was my calling. The next year, I was accepted at a four-year school from which I earned dual bachelor’s degrees in business and hotel/restaurant management.”
“I had no idea.”
“Most folks don’t. Instead of listing my degrees, I usually say I’m the hotel’s highest-paid janitor. I balance customer satisfaction against keeping my eye on the bottom line, but on an everyday basis, I deal with everything from the wine served to the cleanliness of the beds and silverware. The buck stops with me. Speaking of which, I better change my hat from thinking about the kitchen to making our special guests feel welcome.”