San Francisco loves its brunch, and no place knows it more than NOPA. Every weekend on the regular, NOPA blasts through over 300 covers in 3.5 hours. That’s a lot of eggs.
In this 24 Hours dispatch, we follow San Francisco Cooking School alum Natalie Zises as she tackles the oven station at during a fast-paced Saturday brunch service. Yeah, you know those oven-baked eggs you love so much? They’re courtesy of this girl. Here’s a day in her life — her words, and even a few of her iphone pics she snuck in during service:
5:45 am: It’s Saturday, and like most every other day, my alarm goes off and I don’t dare snooze unless I’ve had a particularly rough Friday and my legs just need 15 more minutes to be horizontal. The first thing I do after opening my eyes is turn on some music. I find it’s hard to be in a bad morning mood when you have tunes going.
5:47 am: I use this time to do two things (a cook is always multitasking): the first is take 10 slow deep breaths which helps reset my mind, energizes me, and prepares me for the madness ahead. The second is, obviously, think about breakfast. Since there isn’t much time to eat at work, it’s important for me to get a lot of protein in the a.m. so I don’t crash or shove a bunch of random things into my mouth while running around.
Sometimes that means scrambled eggs, chia seeds and fruit, or just an apple with a ton of peanut butter and maybe some Saint Benoit yoghurt (my absolute favorite). If I’m super prepared I’ve made overnight oats the night before. That is rare.
6:35 am: I allot about 15 minutes each morning to stretch. This. Is. Key. That short amount of time can mean the difference between chronic back pain or a pain-free, agile day.
6:50 am: I leave my house and walk the four blocks to work.
6:57 am: I walk in the back door and see pastry chef Anna making something delicious. I head upstairs to the lockers to put my stuff away, grab my chef’s coat, apron, shoes, pen, and Sharpie. I go into the walk-in and immediately grab the heaviest items I’ll need or anything that needs to be tempered, like goat cheese bread pudding. I make the first of many trips back downstairs, shouting “Corner!” all the way down, and say good morning to the sous chefs who have been there since 5:00 am.
I head to the oven station, drop off my loot, then grab metals and my knife kit. I try not to be a hoarder and only grab what I’ll really need, but I grab EVERYthing I can at once. It’s all about efficiency of motion — something we learned early on in cooking school. In one deep hotel pan I’ll fit some half pans, third pans, a bunch of 1/6 pans, about ten 1/9 pans, 2 ladles, a mandolin, cheese grater, some salad bowls, tongs, a spatula, an offset, quart and pint containers and their lids. And tape.
I bring this all back to my station then get my menu. After that it’s a gathering game. For about 45 minutes I gather and organize. At home I’m a bit of a mess, at work I am the opposite. My two low boys are methodically organized, the left one holds larger items like pork and braising liquids, third pans of greens and my stack of delis and towels. The right one has all my quart-ed mise like farmer’s cheese and pickled onions for the trout plate, or crème fraiche for the biscuits. Chef Catherine would be proud!
Hopefully by now someone has put music on, and hopefully it’s good. Sometimes I’ll make a request of Janet Jackson or Beach Boys. Other times I don’t dare. It’s all about reading moods…
9:00 am: If I’ve set up quickly, I usually have time to help with regular day prep like whisking vinaigrettes, making salsa verde, or roasting vegetables. I have to be sure to keep an eye on the wood fire oven and constantly feed it so that by 9:30–10:00 there are enough coals for the grill, who takes most of them so my oven can cool off before I clean it for the day.
9:30 am: I’ve finally gathered everything from the walk-in and reach–ins, put everything into their preferred metals, and I can fill my ice baths and salt them so they don’t melt. I try and make everything as ergonomic and practical as possible. I prop up my ice bath with an extra towel so it tilts towards me, and keep my station as tight and clean as possible. Stay organized and work clean — these are habits that have been ingrained in us since day one at SFCS and echoed during every day of working in a professional kitchen.
10:00 am: I start cleaning my oven, removing most of the coals from last night’s dinner service, the ash, and wiping down as far as I can reach my hand into. I like a very bare, clean oven to start with my fire in the back left so it can form a nice arc and act like a convection.
10:20 am: I grab all the plates I need and double triple check my mise. Do I have enough of everything? Do I need another utensil or backup x y z? Do I know where everything is so I can get to it quickly or be able to tell someone who is helping me? Is it 10:30? No? Do something else helpful. Yes? Okay, make final pre-service bathroom run, vigorously wash hands, then start line up.
Today I’m picking up the:
- Trout Plate with charred spring onion farmer’s cheese, pickled onions, black radishes and frisee
- Whey and Meyer Lemon Braised Pork with spigarello, roasted carrots, toasted walnuts, salsa verde and a side of focaccia
- Oven Baked Egg with mushrooms, panna, and St. George cheese
- Gem Salad with beets, feta, cucumbers and garlic croutons
- Orange Pecan Sticky Buns
- Strawberry Walnut Scones with crème fraiche
- Ham and English Pea Quiche with pickled onions and arugula
10:40 am: We put up one of everything for the servers and sous to try. This is good because 1) you can do a test run of cooking the dish get feedback before making it for actual guests, and 2) the servers can better answer questions about dishes after tasting them. Tasting, always tasting…
I try to sneak a few tastes of dishes at lineup if I have time.
10:55 am: Five minutes ‘til service. I grab a quart container; fill it with ice and a squeeze of an already-zested orange and lemon from the bin in the reach-in (my version of Gatorade), and aim to drink at least one of them by the end of service, preferably two. While doing this I go around and wish everyone a good service with a hug or fist bump. Then it’s go time.
11:00 am: The first ticket comes in: “Fire scone, fire sticky bun, fire oven egg extra egg anytime.” The adrenaline starts up immediately.
1:00 pm: In what seems like 10 minutes it’s already 1:00, and in another blink of an eye it’s 2:15 and I’m breaking down.
We feed 300+ people in 3.5 hours. It’s intense and it can be maddening. But it’s always fun. During service the obvious part of my job is to cook and plate the food when it gets fired to me. The less obvious part is constantly keeping track of your count (i.e. how many of each dish you have left), communicating that to the expo, refilling your mise, peeling garlic if there’s any slow points, cleaning your station, keeping your fire at the right temp, grabbing more plates or plate liners, drinking water, helping other stations — most likely eggs at brunch — with plating or whatever they need, communicating if you need more of something from another station (i.e. grilled bread from grill), bringing dirty dishes to the dish washer, and…I think that’s it.
2:45 pm: We’re all in (which means all the orders for the day have come in and no more will come. Usually.) and are breaking down. At 3:00 the nighttime cooks come in so it’s important that you break down and clean as fast and as well as possible, consolidating and labeling and dating everything. I bring proteins and larger items up to the walk-in, smaller items to the kitchen reach-in. If they’re using the same greens or items at dinner, I check with the nighttime chefs and put those items on the right stations. Scrub down with soap, help other people with cleaning and putting their mise away, clock out, and go eat!
3:15 pm: After work we sit upstairs and eat, decompress, and debrief about the day. This usually means letting out some frustrations, sharing some laughs, and planning our beers for when we leave the kitchen.
It’s been a fun, tiring day, and it happens all over again tomorrow. I head home or hang at the park for the rest of the day.
7:00 pm: Throw together the semblance of some dinner.
9:00 pm: It’s off to bed for me. Maybe I’ll make some over night oats. But probably I won’t.
