Eat, Play, Laugh Part I

    Rather than opening with the usual "your king has returned/sorry for the long hiatus" speech I always tend to give after some time away from my blog post, I thought it would be more appropriate to skip all that hoopla and jump right into it. For those of you who don't know, (which is most of you I presume) I have been working/doing my externship at Sperry's Restaurant in town for a while now, and I find that friends and family alike all want to know what it is exactly that I do there. Well, a lot of the time its difficult to describe what I do to those who don't live the restaurant life so let me just show you instead...

I took this picture one day while Greg, our pastry chef was making raspberry tarts. The tarts were cooling on a rack on his giant wooden prep table just begging for me to snag a photo. (I spent my night after work alone in my room, and in the dark coloring in the raspberries with a neat photo editing app I have on my phone). I donno what else to say here other than that if this picture isn't enough to draw you in then I should just give up now. But I am confident that it did so I'll keep going.

gorgeous heirloom tomatoes

     Your eyes have duped you. Believe it or not your not looking at pineapple here. No, what your looking at here is actually yellow watermelon. At the time I took this photo I had never seen yellow watermelon before let alone even heard of it. Here at Sperry's we cube the watermelon and confit it for our summer salad. Its a customer favorite but a hassle to make since it involves more steps than the other salads.
    During service you start to view the things you make as merely a system of steps. When there is a sea of tickets in your window its best to scan all the tickets and group everything together. For example, lets say there are ten tickets in the window, and there are summer salads on five of them. It would behoove you to make all five at once rather than making the one on a ticket and then another when you reach the next ticket and so on and so forth. That way you can systematically eliminate one item from all your tickets before moving to the next items. Its just faster that way...

the salad station setup

Shaved filet of beef, parmigiano reggiano, horseradish aioli, balsamic vinegar, truffle oil, arugula, fried capers

    I have a soft spot for our beef carpaccio because I still remember ordering it when my family and I first dined at Sperry's a few Easters back. It was right around the time I learned of my acceptance into the CIA so I will always associate this dish with my humble beginnings. Back then I was eating this and anticipating my next step in life. Now I am at that step, making this same dish for customers on a nightly basis. Its funny sometimes how things work out, ya know?

    Its 3:30 in the morning and I can feel my brain shutting off while I write this so look for the next few segments in the near future. Peace.