SF Cooking School alum Lindsay Koenig is a pastry cook at Mourad. In today’s 24 Hours dispatch, Lindsay shares what it’s like to work in fine dining and create beautiful works of art every night on a dessert plate.
9:00 am: Wake up.
9:30 am: Browse TasteSpotting, my favorite food blog. I’m hungry and have wanted to bake something healthy for breakfast for a while.
10:00 am: Found it! Going to make banana bread baked oatmeal with chocolate chips.
10:30 am: Batter is made, time to bake! While I wait, I make myself a sandwich on a bagel I got at the Fort Mason farmers market on Sunday with some tempeh bacon and avocado.
11:45 am: Baked oatmeal is cooled, time to taste!
12:00 pm: I take a little rest — it’s going to be a long night at work.
1:00 pm: I have to go to my new apartment in the Mission to let in the plumber and painter — so excited to move in next week! The kitchen is huge, and has a shiny new Viking stove which I plan on putting to use.
3:00 pm: Arrive at work, clock in, and start the night by spreading some cocoa nib tuile that we use on our chocolate dessert. This dessert is my personal favorite, since I love chocolate! The plate consists of a chocolate feuilletine base, piped milk chocolate Chantilly cream, ginger pastry cream and chocolate ganache. Then it gets sprinkled with a chopped up chocolate ginger cookie crumb and jasmine powder, and finished with flowers and the cocoa nib tuile.
It’s a good thing we made pastry cream so many times in school. The first time I was asked to make this, I felt very comfortable going for it without any assistance!
3:30 pm: Staff meal — being the only vegetarian can be difficult sometimes, but my amazing co-workers occasionally make me something special!
4:00 pm: Line-up time. We talk about prep for the big 50 person party tonight and any other announcements the sous chefs have for the staff. We also quickly review the previous night, and mention any problems we had and how to solve them.
4:30 pm: I start to set up the pastry line. First I wipe my whole station down, and then start pulling out all my mise en place. My position as a pastry cook includes all the line up responsibilities — setting up my line, getting everything in place for service, tasting all the products to ensure delicious quality, picking garnishes, bagging any pastry creams or mousses, and much more. For the big party tonight, we are serving 96 sugar puffs and chocolate tarts, so I begin scooping and frying off some puffs.
For the most part, I plate all of the desserts, including mignardises which every table gets. A very important part of my job is knowing when to ask for assistance. If I have a lot of orders at the same time or get a coffee order, I need to ask the other people on my pastry team to help me out. On Friday and Saturday nights, we get very busy and I definitely could not do my job without my team!
There were many times in culinary school when we had the opportunity to work with other classmates. I learned a lot about how to split up tasks and manage situations which comes in handy during busy times.
5:30 pm: Service begins! To make myself useful in the future, I go over to the garde manger station and try to learn how to plate some of their dishes. This is a good thing to do so when they get busy and there are no dessert orders, I can go over and help them out. Right now, a fellow SF Cooking School alumna is working the station!
7:00 pm: First dessert orders start coming in. My first ticket is for a Honey and Almond, which is our most popular dessert! This plate gets beeswax sabayon, honey gel, bee pollen, orange blossom anglaise, and a sprinkle of cinnamon, which then gets topped with almond granita, almond merengue and a honey tuile. This ticket says it’s a birthday, which is very common for us. Lots of our customers come in for a celebration, whether it’s a birthday, anniversary or other special occasion. When this happens, we have chocolate writing bags ready (another part of my set up responsibilities) and write happy birthday on a plate with a candle. Reminds me of all that piping practice in school-I knew it would come in handy.
8:25 pm: Just passed through our first rush. Lots of tables sit right around 5:30–6:00, and end up ordering desserts between 7:30–8:00 so we get many orders in around this time. Entrees are being prepped for the party, which includes 10 of each side dish! All the cooks and sous chefs on the savory sides work together to get all the large format items, such as roasted chicken and short ribs, out at the same time. Luckily, it happened when we had a bit of a lull on the pastry side so I got to watch and learn from the masters.
When I started my internship at Mourad, it was the week before the grand opening. I felt so lucky to get to see the process of opening a new restaurant. The first night of service, we were all very excited that it was finally time to start. Luckily I had plenty of time to watch my coworkers on the savory side plate all of their dishes. This is my first time working at a restaurant (I had previously worked exclusively at bakeries) so watching these amazing dishes being plated so beautifully was very interesting to me, and I still love to watch and see each plate being created like a work of art.
10:00 pm: Almost all of the entrees are out and things are beginning to slow down. People are starting to put their mise en place away, consolidate leftovers, and of course label everything! Every time we put things away, they must be labeled with what the contents are, the date, the initials of the person who made it, and the tape must be cut, not ripped. We all make an effort to keep our walk-in, freezer, blast chiller and low-boys clean and organized so things are easy to find, and of course it looks much better!
10:50 pm: Only 2 tables left! Time to start restocking plates and consolidating sauces and crumbs.
11:00 pm: We are all in! Now it’s time for me to break down my station, wrap everything up, put everything away, and scrub down everything. I also take inventory, which entails going through everything in the front, where the line is, and the back in the walk-in and freezer, and taking count of how much we have of each item. Oh, and every night we have some extra sugar puffs that I fry off and give to my co-workers as a post service snack!
11:30 pm: Everything is put away and cleaned. We count our tickets and then it’s time to go home. I walk the 2 blocks to my bus stop, and read my book on the ride home to relax and unwind.
12 am: Finally home! I’m exhausted after a long day. Time to shower and sleep, and do it all over again the next day!
