presidents day weekend has come and gone. i worked. i worked a lot. about 36 hours in three days. we did 878 covers plus about 200 room service orders. as expected my station got crushed. two new pastas on the menu and i'm doing about 25-30 of one of them a night. saturday night was especially brutal. 313 in the restaurant and the bulk of IRD, including 10 omlettes that put my entire station in a standstill, it slowed everything down but we recovered. the owner was there shaking hands that night and although i've cooked for him many times he's never seen me really go. he was chatting with chef at watching me cook. i could hear him making comments about things i was doing. he hadn't seen the new plates and loved the way they looked. he saw me holding my garnishing drawer open with my hip so both my hands would be free to work. he really liked that one. he called my name and said "you're doing a great job". when you're getting crushed the owner commenting on you're hard work is a nice encouragement.
i missed pretty much all the fun of John's visit from chicago. chuck, john, drew, maggie, their babies, john's girlfriend jess, and chuck's sort of long distance girlfriend hilary all had a condo in keystone while i was working my stones off. i was exhausted sunday night and dreading driving to denver to meet up with all them before they flew back to chicago this morning. i strongly considered to puss out but sacked up and made the drive. they were all wiped from a weekend of drinking, which was fine because i was wiped too.
we shot the shit, drank some patio 2 for 1 beers in 50 degree denver sunshine. went out for dinner and the place that was picked was terrible. i knew it was going to be a disaster when the menu was all over the place. the different dressed up fries were an interesting menu feature and we ordered "mac and cheese" which was just cheese fries with not enough bacon, and truffle. my fears were confirmed when the fries came out and they were just poorly dressed up frozen bag fries. it was disappointing because the place is small. a small trying to be hip spot in a city should be making their own fries. we do and we're three times the size. John and Jess had a terrible pork chop. Drew had shrimp po'boy sliders with chipotle which makes zero sense. they were so spice he could barely eat it. i had an okay meatloaf. i think what really made it bad is we were going to go to steuban's and ended up going there. i was so excited for steuban's.
everyone was pretty much passed out by 11pm and out they door by 9am. i drove back up and had my gear so i went to Arapahoe Basin. i took Loveland Pass and picked up some dudes riding backcountry that were hictchhiking back to the top. Got to the Basin and it was skiied out. rode for like 2 hours and then headed back to Vail. been relaxing ever since. back to work tomorrow.
i missed pretty much all the fun of John's visit from chicago. chuck, john, drew, maggie, their babies, john's girlfriend jess, and chuck's sort of long distance girlfriend hilary all had a condo in keystone while i was working my stones off. i was exhausted sunday night and dreading driving to denver to meet up with all them before they flew back to chicago this morning. i strongly considered to puss out but sacked up and made the drive. they were all wiped from a weekend of drinking, which was fine because i was wiped too.
we shot the shit, drank some patio 2 for 1 beers in 50 degree denver sunshine. went out for dinner and the place that was picked was terrible. i knew it was going to be a disaster when the menu was all over the place. the different dressed up fries were an interesting menu feature and we ordered "mac and cheese" which was just cheese fries with not enough bacon, and truffle. my fears were confirmed when the fries came out and they were just poorly dressed up frozen bag fries. it was disappointing because the place is small. a small trying to be hip spot in a city should be making their own fries. we do and we're three times the size. John and Jess had a terrible pork chop. Drew had shrimp po'boy sliders with chipotle which makes zero sense. they were so spice he could barely eat it. i had an okay meatloaf. i think what really made it bad is we were going to go to steuban's and ended up going there. i was so excited for steuban's.
everyone was pretty much passed out by 11pm and out they door by 9am. i drove back up and had my gear so i went to Arapahoe Basin. i took Loveland Pass and picked up some dudes riding backcountry that were hictchhiking back to the top. Got to the Basin and it was skiied out. rode for like 2 hours and then headed back to Vail. been relaxing ever since. back to work tomorrow.