Entrenched in Chaos: New Years Brunch at S.O.M

Happy New Year Everyone,

So, here we are – 20 fucking 12. The past year was a whirlwind of love lost and found and lost again, old jobs gone and new ones begun. New friends and beautiful women. Amazing new places visited and the food in those places consumed with gusto and that's the thing: In and amongst the crazy fucking world that is my life there was always the food. Goddamn did I eat some amazing food last year. Unfortunately I didn't have the where-with-all to keep a journal, write it down or blog about it. So hopefully by the end of this year I will have an up to date and detailed account of my epicurean adventures and the highs and lows of working in the food industry alongside my fantastic crazy fun life.

I'd like to thank anyone that sticks it out as this burgeoning blog grows and hopefully flourishes. It's gonna take some time to flesh out but I guarantee great stories and great food.

In that vein let's kick it off with a post on New Years and working the line on New Years Day at one of the few eateries open for brunch.

January 1^st, 2012. 9am.

I roll out of bed having crashed there round 4am. I'd started the night at my best friend Simon's home where much karaoke and merriment was had. The 6 tall cans of Old Milwaukee, 2 glasses of champagne and 3 ounces of bourbon give-or-take type of merriment.

With mouth down-turned I bid the kids farewell at around 1am stopping in at Tyrell Jared Shaw's place which is just around the corner from my place. A fellow cook, Jared will be joining me at the end of January as my new flatmate as well. Jared and I met on our first day at Save On and we hit it off immediately. We share an interesting relationship based on food, women and the general enabling of each others more base demands of a liquid and powdered variety. Living together we both hope to not be dead by June, as summer 2012 should be a good one.

Anyhow, his place was overrun by drunken youth and the macbook that was spitting out Robyn tracks featured a nice new spiderweb of cracks along the upper corner. Jared sees me and we embrace glassy eyed. I ask if he has any booze and he hands me a bottle of Wild turkey with a good 8 or 9 ounces left in it. I thank him profusely and pour 3oz into a glass. There's no ice so I sip the fowl liquor at room temperature. I hand him the bottle and he gives it back to me... Fair enough. I make my way around the house. Plenty of Save on Kids to say hello to as well as other acquaintances. Playing cards litter the main room and no one can explain the how or why of it. I play DJ on the broken yet functional laptop and we dance the night away.

I had locked into my head that I had to work at 10am and was being relatively responsible given my usual proclivities when it come to New Years Eve. So when 3:30am came on I took towards home. The night had passed quickly and although many people had left others were just arriving as I left. By this time Jared had been intercepted by Megan, his server-at-work-fuck-buddy/girlfriend-he-won't-admit-to, and I hadn't seen him in an hour or so.

Home equalled lying on the couch and eating 3 slices of cold Megabite Pizza left over from the past day of recovering from the 40 hour party that was my birthday which is always more epic than both Christmas and New Years (But I suppose that might be another post...) I through some sort of media on and gorged on cold congealed carbohydrates... (another post to follow!) I risked passing out on the couch but made it to my bed and set my alarm which dutifully woke me from a dreamless sleep at 9am.

The pizza and straight bourbon had come back to haunt me like the ghosts of New Years Past. My guts were rotting and felt flooded with acid, I managed to brush the night off my teeth and drank 2 glasses of water. The sun was up and thank fuck there was no rain. As I headed to work, I popped in my headphones, Radiohead making the grey morning much more manageable.

9:40am

I'm walking down the alley behind S.O.M to get in through the back entrance. 3 doors down in the massive newly renovated space I can hear the bass pulsing as techno still drives some chemically driven youth to dance into the new year. A few haggard people mill about looking sweaty and nearly vibrating as the drugs continue their hold, their pupils dilated and eclipsing retinas wild and crazed they have welcomed the Year of the Degenerate with arms, mouths and nostrils wide open.

The door is locked.

Given the neighbourhood and the neighbours I'm not surprised. I pound on the door. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I text Jason, the head Chef. Nothing. Josh, the front of house manager. nothing. I end up googling our number. Why I don't have it in my phone is just from never needing to call - remedied. I call Josh and he has Caylen let me in, not a single word out of her sarcastic mouth. I'm happy.

Binh, my older, Vietnamese compatriot in the battle against the demands of the hungry masses has the line nearly set as I get downstairs in my whites. This is good as I have no idea what to expect. Doors open at ten and I will be running the pass from 10 till 6. All brunch all day baby!!! In my position I will be cooking all the eggs, running the fryer and be in charge of all food going out across the pass which means plating, checking consistency and quality and timing. No biggie right?

First bill of the day comes in at 10:02; 2 burgers, poutines on both, fried egg on one burger, avocado on the other. Someone needs hangover food – this is a trend I hope will not continue to excess. A few more bills and all is quiet... “Maybe,” I think, “It will be dead all day.. Everyone sitting at home recovering... Then the phone begins to ring. And ring. And ring.

“Yup, we're open...” Is always the answer and then it happens.

11:20ish.

Bills begin to roll in. Working a line in a busy diner is a feat of multi-tasking unappreciated by many people who haven't worked in kitchens and some who have depending on the kitchen and the amount of people working in it. A chit pops up and I have to look at every dish, determine what is specifically needed and how long each element will take and how it's is broken up between the three of us working the line. I call out the requisite parts of the order to those making them and I then have to time all the disparate parts to make sure they come together in a cohesive and timely fashion. One fuck up can kill a whole bill as we struggle to hold food hot and fix the error. I have a new found respect for anyone who cooks me and my friends brunch at any high volume restaurant. We can seat around 60 people in the restaurant and when we are full it is a constant blur of motion as work to make sure every dish is sent out hot, quickly and with the others at it's table. This is difficult when every table is constantly being replaced by another. I had at a variety of times more than 8 eggs Benny sets being cooked at differing doneness levels as well as being able to only cook around three sets of eggs in a pan - yet a white out of egg orders across my chit board. Our flat top is dominated by pancakes and steaks and bacon and sausage and hamburgers keep coming in which at least I don't have to cook and decisions are made to bump orders that will take longer and screw ups bump bills along the bar and I'm fucking hungover. Fuck.

The coffee, oh thank fuck for the coffee. And litres and litres of water.

The chaos continued from 11:30 until 5pm when we closed the doors. It was only 5 hours but it was 5 hours of pure barely controlled chaos and I only stepped off the line twice. Once to piss and once when Shay relieved me for a five minute break to get my head straight. It was probably the craziest 8 hours I have ever spent in a kitchen or at a job.

Then we did it all over again today.

Today sucked worse. It wasn't as busy and I wasn't at all hungover but I was in a shitty mood and you know, a shitty mood made it all the more unbearable. Every server error or request was a personal attack on my person. I ran the shit out of the pass today though and I don't think any food went out over 15 minutes with most food beating the bar. (Food made it out to a table before drinks). The unfortunate lesson I subconsciously learned is it may be better to be hungover and Happy than not hungover and unhappy... Uh-oh.

As sucky as it was at times, this is what I do. I cook, and it seems I'm pretty good at it and getting better. The feeling at the end of 8 or 9 or 10 hours of this insanity is masochistic at best but I keep going back to it and it must be because I love it. I love the people: the fucked up chemical dependent social misfits of a kitchen are some of the most in your face honest people I have ever met and I will take that over office politics any day. We aren't a perfect Utopian family and there is much anger, hatred, frustration, bitching and people talking about each other behind their backs, under-cutting each other as we work to rise up the food chain but it's always honest and when it comes down to a day like new years brunch at one of the only places in the neighbourhood open everyone comes together like and we just get it done. Anyway we can.