September 18th 2010 (What is Restaurant Week?)
After two weeks of looking for a job and many.. many days of searching on craigslist I scored an interview for busser/ food runner at a restaurant in center city. Now me being new to the city had no knowledge of the restaurant I was about to walk in to. Le Bec-Fin is Chef George Perrier's love child, or rather beaten abused redheaded stepchild, it is the authority on french cuisine in Philadelphia and all around the country. Now I must admit I had absolutely no restaurant experience, however I have the uncanny ability to talk my way through and interview and get people to have faith in me which is still beyond me.
Walking in to Le Bec-Fin was like walking finding the culinary light for the first time. When you first walk in to the restaurant you are greeted by a cute young hostess and when you take a look around you see beautiful wood stains and marble host stand. Downstairs is Bar Lyonnais a beautiful wood bar with a fully stocked bar catering to the happy-hour seeking business types. Upstairs is the main dinning room with anywhere from 16 to 22 tables, depending on the reservations for that night.
The menu had three different selections: A La Carte with ranged from $16 for a soup to $89 for a table side white truffled shaved risotto, or a 7 or 15 course tasting menu complete with cheese and desert cart.
My first night there was a bit of a reality shock and my bitter introduction to Restaurant Week. Arriving to the restaurant with several other new employees at noon we quickly jumped into orientation. Mid way through filling out paper work the man himself George Perrier walks in and makes his introduction. From the second he walked in our new general manager David would not stop kissing his ass. Chef did his rounds of handshakes, introductions and such. After filling out all the paperwork and touring around the new restaurant that I would soon spend countless hours and many nights and early mornings. The restaurant it's self is broken down into 4 different levels. The basement, also know as Bar Lyonnis also housed the prep kitchen and all the walk-ins. The ground floor or main dinning room shared space with the main kitchen which was about half the size of the prep kitchen. On the second floor was the mezzanine which sat private parties and added 3 deuces and 3 four tops. Finally the top floor otherwise known has heaven, because chef never dared to venture up there, was the pastry kitchen and chocolate lab.
I started working at Le Bec-Fin the first day of restaurant week, this was a bad life decision. I had no idea what restaurant week was nor had I ever worked one before. To anyone in the industry, Restaurant Week is the equliviant to taking every standard of service and throwing it out the window. It's all about "turn and burn". For the next two weeks I was a Le Bec-Bitch... every single day I would go to work at 9am and set the dinning room, ice the wine bin, vacuum the floor and set all the Mise en place that we would need for that night.
For awhile things were going great, I loved the quality of the food that Chef Nick would put out to the guests that would form his following. The days that Chef Perrier would come in though turned out to be some of the worst. One night he kicked everyone out of his kitchen so he could have the floor mopped for 10 minutes, in the middle of a busy dinner service. Chef also had a master scheme to fake his own restaurant closing in order to boost his business. Which ended up working perfectly for him, people were so concerned that he was really closing that they fought over reservations for about 2 months.
Stress from Chef ended up being too much for me so I decided to give in my 2 weeks notice after about 3 months of working there. I had some good times and meet some good people there but one thing I will never forget is that on my last day after our last table left and we finished up cleaning everything it was about 1:30 in the morning right as I was about to leave and say my goodbyes, i pushed open the doors to the kitchen to see all the dishwashers and other bussers and servers too were in a impromptu too firing line leading all the way to the door. As the door swung shut behind me David another busser dumped a large bucket of ice water right on top of me. Followed by handshakes and hugs from everyone. Probably the best ending to a stage in my life.
