It looks great but I have PTSD whenever I see these. I was a young chef working for a “celebrity” chef trying to make his mark in the world. He arranged a 7 course dinner for the top 20 food critics/ writers in the country for which he did all the planning, all the prep and all the organising himself. At the last minute, he pulled me off another job to give him a hand at the exclusive lodge at which this dinner was held. I hadn’t even seen the menu! Anyway, I’m there, helping and 5 of the 7 courses were a disaster culminating in a dessert which featured the “Swans with their beautiful long necks”. The humidity was so high that the swan all had droopy broken necks that just lay down on the plate.
AT the end of the meal he had arranged to go out to the table and discuss the courses that had been presented but it was so bad, he did a runner and left me to clean up. The food critics lingered in the lounge for an hour or so on ports, whiskeys and cigars before walking out, back past the kitchen where I was still working. They all pointedly ignored me except one gentleman who stopped, paused and said patronisingly … “good effort”. This is still, 30 years on, the most embarrassed I have ever felt in my culinary career.
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It looks great but I have PTSD whenever I see these. I was a young chef working for a “celebrity” chef trying to make his mark in the world. He arranged a 7 course dinner for the top 20 food critics/ writers in the country for which he did all the planning, all the prep and all the organising himself. At the last minute, he pulled me off another job to give him a hand at the exclusive lodge at which this dinner was held. I hadn’t even seen the menu! Anyway, I’m there, helping and 5 of the 7 courses were a disaster culminating in a dessert which featured the “Swans with their beautiful long necks”. The humidity was so high that the swan all had droopy broken necks that just lay down on the plate.
AT the end of the meal he had arranged to go out to the table and discuss the courses that had been presented but it was so bad, he did a runner and left me to clean up. The food critics lingered in the lounge for an hour or so on ports, whiskeys and cigars before walking out, back past the kitchen where I was still working. They all pointedly ignored me except one gentleman who stopped, paused and said patronisingly … “good effort”. This is still, 30 years on, the most embarrassed I have ever felt in my culinary career.