Full capacity at Arco Antico = chaos. This past Saturday was Labor Day, which meant that everyone in Savona who didn’t go to San Remo for the weekend was interested in a “buffatta” aka stuffing yourself with tons of food until you feel like you’re going to fall over. Instead of participating in the holiday of Labor Day, I was the one laboring in the kitchen until 2am.
Culinary school did not prepare me to run around a tight, maze-like environment, plating an entrée on one forearm and making last-minute lace cookies with my other free hand.
The culinary school environment is ideal beyond belief. Not only do I have to multi-task on a super detail-oriented level now, I also have to swerve in and out of little passageways and work on tables that not even little girls could be able to use for tea parties. That’s how small my space is.
Imagine that you had to simultaneously fillet, bread and fry a kilo of various types of fish, defrost 2 kilos of cod, weigh fresh past that is OBVIOUSLY sticking together in clumps, get ingredients for 3 desserts, and heat up sauces…all while the head chef/owner decides to come into your space of the kitchen, compose 2 cheese plates with all the bells and whistles of jam, honey, candied fruit, and nuts, and leaves all the sugar-coated jars and sticky spoons sprawled on your only countertop. ABSOLUTE PANIC MODE!!!
At one point I honestly didn’t know what to do. I found myself feverishly pacing from my hole-of- a-space to the main kitchen because I didn’t know what to do first, what to clean up first, what to prepare first!!!!
Needless to say I screwed up…but thank goodness not seriously. I fried a tasting menu portion of the fritto misto instead of a regular size entrée portion. I had to re-do the dish. I was embarrassed and felt somewhat stupid, but only because I have high expectations for myself, not because anyone in the kitchen demeaned me. They were just disappointed and grumbly.
Pfew…. I was so glad that night was over. I want to get better and faster. I just wish the space was as big and perfect as the one I have been used to in culinary school. But then again, that’s not real life.
