This is a little bit weird today. I know enough to get myself into trouble, whilst at the same time fearing so much that I'm going to make a mistake that I don't have the courage of my convictions and end up asking Chef the most continually stupid little questions. Like, Is that enough Gruyère on this Brandade de Morue? Where are the salad bowls? Does it matter where I put the mashed potatoes in the cold room?
Frank is cleverer and wiser than me. "Peel enough potatoes to fill this bowl with purée," he says, and I work out for myself that the potatoes are in the same place they were last week. I even think to ask where they keep the vegetable peeler - "Economiseur" - and Frank seems pleased I've thought this one out for myself. Then again I could be over-thinking all this stuff.
It's tempting to concentrate on the kit and forget the work, but then a decent potato peeler does make the job easier. But then again a decent chef, as Frank told me the other week, could make a meal out of a candle, a bottle of olive oil and some twigs (marinade the candle and twigs in the olive oil while you send out for pizza would be my guess). But then again...
Anyway. Eric, Frank's brother-in-law and family are down for the week following Sarah's christening. Eric's a posh chef in a posh restaurant, but this morning is devoted to picking out the winning horses at Longchamp in the afternoon's races, a very skilled procedure which needs several people even to understand the rules, let alone which ones will win. And, in the end, none do so obviously there's more culinary skill in the room than gambling ability.
Lunchtime service is quiet, a dozen or so covers and the last of the brandade goes out. Sniff, all my own work.
I'm getting used to being surprised at the disconnection between the kitchen and the salle - somehow, I don't know why, I'd expected there to be more interraction than just the waitresses coming through. If we happen to be standing in the plonge we see plates coming back in, almost all wiped clean (one rejected my marmalade on the grounds that it was too sweet, but what do they know?) and the comments universally complimentary; but speaking as a professional chef-to-be, and Frank agrees, comments good and bad are very welcome. Don't go home complaining about soggy pastry or undercooked fish - send it back, moan, complain. Get it put right and next time it'll be fantastic. Of course, if everything's bad then there may be no hope, but this isn't that kind of restaurant. Nor will mine be, constructive critiques are always welcome.
We lunch en famille on pork in pepper sauce with potato galettes; I even get tempted away from my diet by these and the bread.
Then home for a nap before back to the kitchen for the evening shift. There are 35 reservations, and in the end we do 46 covers - my busiest shift so far. At the height of it all, about 9pm, things just hum along nicely and I spend my time scouring the kitchen for things to take to the plonge before Grég finds them.
I still find it hard to keep track of the orders coming in and going out in my head. Impossible, even. Technology will be my helper here.
And then dinner en famille again and home at 1 am. Which is fine for me, I get a lie-in tomorrow but everyone else will be up a sparrow fart to do it all over again. And again. And again.
Wish I was with them.