Miles Collins

How a function made me give it all up…well, nearly

Whilst writing the previous post regarding function catering I remembered a function I cooked in those early years training under Chef Barker. What struck me the most was the impact it had on my young and impressionable mind.

Back to the late eighties, although my weight hasn’t gone up my tolerance for beer certainly has. I have taken the world of vegetable cooking by storm and am renowned for my cauliflower cheese (in a very small circle of friends and family-mother)

Chef Barker was on holiday and the sous chef spent two weeks telling everyone he was in charge. We were told of a VIP function on a Friday luncheon for a local oil refinary, all of the ‘big wigs’ would be there and everything had to be perfect. Looking back it was probably as much for the sous chef to show his worth than anything else.

I was young and terrified, my vegetables, I was told had to be perfect. They would be silver served but each type of vegetable had to be served within a border of neatly piped and baked mashed potato. Every vegetable had to be turned including the mange tout! I spent hours turning carrots, potatoes and courgettes into perfect barrel shapes so that each one was an equal size and thus all be cooked at the same time.

The sous chef told us we must bring a change of pressed, clean chef’s whites as we would have to parade in front of the guests at the end of the lunch. I feared for my hat, it had a habit of letting me down at crucial moments and I feared for myself having to face anyone outside of the four kitchen walls I seemed to live in. Cooking does nothing if not make you socially inept.

Come the day and I started two hours early, I barely slept the night before such were my nerves. I lived on my nerves back then but I still loved it. Everyone was nervous, the General Manager gave a pre-service briefing stressing the importance of the occasion and those on the top table.

By two thirty the cheese course had been served and we were all shattered. I was anxious to know how my vegetables had been received and a senior waitress told me to carefully peek behind a curtain so that I could see for myself.

Picture the scene if you will, young commis chef who missed eating breakfast and lunch, hat and jacket tattoed to his body with sweat desperate to know the oil refinary bosses have enjoyed their lunch after spending the last forty eight hours preparing the vegetables and soup course peering around the heavy dining room curtain.

The guest of honour has taken his shirt and tie off, his hands are tied behind his back. Two pint glasses have been strapped to his ears with two straws going from the glass into his mouth. Either side of him are two ‘executives’ randomly pouring beer and spirits into the glasses which he drinks with gusto to whoops and cheers from the inebriated guests.

I am shell shocked, I am angry. We all worked so hard to make sure that lunch was perfect. I walk out of the kitchen hurt and angry, I want to chuck it all in but I don’t.

That incident gave me a layer of thick skin which I never shook off, it taught me to ignore those who do not appreciate what you do and sacrifice for their enjoyment and concentrate on and take strength from those who do.