Opening soon!!

My first delivery of food came yesterday, Friday afternoon, at a very timely 4pm, thanks Sysco!?!?! Oh how happy it to be working again in well stocked kitchen. I’ve made 20 things the past few weeks that where that one ingredient away from being good. Now I just have to walk down a flight of stairs and search for what I want. Sigh, relief.

Recipes are curious creations. We took time to collect a book of recipe, basically lists of ingredients with various forms of measure attributed to each. No matter how close you follow a recipe, you have to taste the end product, right. I would hope, but what I’ve found is if you leave even one ingredient vague cooks will instinctively taste things, and adjust things as needed, not only in connection with the vague ingredient. For instance, we don’t yet have a scale, and a recipe called for 4 oz of blue cheese. So the cook comes and asked me how to figure out how much cheese to add. Well, I decided that since the wheel was 5 pounds we could look at cutting it into 5, then each of those pieces in four and that should be about 4 ounces. I ended this lesson with, taste the sauce and if you think it need more cheese then add it, and sure enough, after tasting we both agreed to add more roasted garlic. I think I’m going to write all future recipe with one vague measurement in order to take advantage of this phenomenon.

It really is amazing to see things coming together at the Wonder Bar, where every detail that you never really think of is in fact dealt with. From floor to ceiling, wall to all, front to back of the house things seem to be in good order.

We have a staff tasting on Sunday, the first chance to put things on the plate, examine how long things take to cook, and how many things we can have going at once. I’m sure I’ll be devastated as my image of how things should work will be twisted and torn, and like most tastings, the plates look like crap and need a lot of cleaning up. That is another day, another goal to set, another accomplishment to notch.