So new years has come and gone and as usual that night in the restaurant industry is total madness. My restaurant for example did four times the business that we normaly do in a given night. The chef then wisly decided to make sure that it was him, me, and the other most experienced line cook working that night.

To say that this requires you all to work well together is putting things mildly. You have to be able to communicate well enough so that dishes backed up one after the other all have their parts coming out at the right time, the team needs to be able to anticipate each others moves so that some one doesnt get burned by a pan swinging across a station, or when the various glitches and gremlins that come up through out a night come up you are able to get past them with out issue.

I realized that after two years of working closly with these two individuals that I was with that night that there were some things that just flowed effortlesly. Shiloh (our drunkard line cook) passed various items across the line to my side with ease (by passing I mean that he would hurl them my dirrection) I would then catch them mid air as they slid of the stainless plate window and move them to where ever they needed to be.

Plates would stack up in the pass with me yelling for a server to come run food as the next dishes were coming out right behind it and I didnt have room for them to wait.

Six and a half hours later it was done and over, we stood out side the kitchen with the wait staff sweatting still and toasting our good fortune and a good next year with champagne.