Oldie but a goody!

OK,

I am going to retell a story that happened two weeks ago at work. It sucks that I didn't write it down sooner, as I fear that I might have forgotten some minor details about the evening.
Now that I am officially the only Sous Chef at Globe, my hours and responsibilities are on the rise. It has been hard just to maintain my routine of getting a run in or getting to the gym before a 10-12 hour work day. So forgive me, but in between scheduling for a staff of 12 with 8 stations to cover, creating more efficients systems for ordering, prepping, and inventory, meeting with suppliers, hiring & firing staff, well you get it; I have been busy.

Two weeks ago, we had a busy Saturday night, our reservation book was sprinkled with a bunch of VIP tables. I wasn't working on line that night. It was the old sous chef's last night, and he wanted to work the sauce station one last time. I let the new guy work the fish station, and I played chef. The chef had the weekend off. It was going to be his last chance to take time off before I was comfortable in my new position as sous chef covering his days off.

It was a fun night. The new fish guy is European with Michelin star training. I got a chance to view all his plates before they went out to the dining room. His plates looked awesome. So awesome in fact that Al suggested,
" You've had penis in your mouth before haven't you? "
"Gay" plates are OK with me. I see his plating more as European, with attention to detail and cleanliness. A good thing.

Anyway, the night was going well. When one cook sets the standard on a busy night, other tend to follow suit. Every one's food looked great! Good thing too, as we were cooking for a long list of VIPs.

One of the people that we were cooking for was Rocco Dispirito. You may not remember, but he was the chef of a reality show called THE RESTAURANT. I was a show about a day in the life of a restaurant in all its dramatic, duboterious glamomr.
Rocco was the guest of our owners for that weekend. The owner and the somellier had spent that day touring Montreal with him. They took him to old Montreal, the mountain, china town, and the Jean talon Market. To finish off the day they came and had dinner at the restaurant.

They came to dinner with some of the waitresses. There were about 9 of them at the table. We sent them out tons of food, including a four foot, four tiered seafood platter. They loved it. After they had eaten dinner, I was asked if I wanted to meet Rocco. I denied the introduction at first because I remembered the "chef" from T.V as a self involved knob who in my opinion, obviously didn't know how to cook his was out of a Kraft dinner box. They thought that I was just shy, so the insisted that I meet him. When I went out the the dinning room to meet him, I braced myself and coached myself to try and hold a friendly smile (I hate "foodie posers"). Well wasn't I pleasantly surprised to find him very attractive. That made the smiling easier! Then he proceeded to go beyond my expectations by telling me that he knew it was really me (the sous chef) who ran the show, while the chef got all the credit. Wow, this guys all right. Maybe I was wrong to think that he was just a self involved "celebrity" who took all the credit for someone fantastic in PR.
We small talked about his time here in Montreal before he showed his true colours.
"you should come and join our table after, we don't have enough ladies yet. You have red hair don't you? Red is my favorite colour"
HOLD UP.
Did he seriously just say that? Red is my favorite colour, what a sleaze!

At the end of a busy Saturday night, a drink offer is a drink offer, no matter who it is from. Sarah (an entrimentier cook) and I got changed and joined the festivities in the dining room with Rocco and crew. We talked our way into a couple of glasses of Moet and Chandon (trading food for drinks with the front staff pays off on Saturdays, when glasses of champagne by the glass are available). We tunneled our way past the drunk partiers (the restaurant turns into a club scene after 12:00) and found the "Rocco table". They had a magnum of gray goose vodka at the table and we were told to help our selves. When Rocco noticed that we had arrived, he got down on his knees and kissed my hand, telling us again how great the food was. He was trashed.
When the boys (from the kitchen) found out that we were out in the dining room drinking champagne, they came to find us and join in the party. We were having a great time snickering at the "celebrity chef" dirty dancing with our amazon waitresses( it's not by chance that all our waitresses look like they just stepped out of a photo shoot). He was all sweaty, and kept trying to dance up on Sarah and I.

Dude!, there is a difference between cooks and waitresses. They get paid to make you feel "special", we get paid to cook. We are only here to drink your booze!

Me being the optimist that I am, always try to find the funny story in a strange situation. If I was going to retell this story, it was going to have to be a little more action packed with some sort of a bragging right.hum... What is a bigger bragging right that being able to say:
" I grabbed Rocco Dispirito's ass" ?
Oh yes I did.
And I convinced one of my straight?-male co workers to do the same. Rocco was too trashed to notice the cheek squeeze, no harm done. It was hilarious. You should have seen the guys face who grabbed his ass. He had a grin from ear to ear!

The night ended up with me snapping out of party mode, and into coaching Sarah up and out of the chair that she was "resting" in while she hung her spinning head over a cardboard box. "Catch up" drinking after a 12 hour shift can end in disaster. The next day was a very very slow Sunday, good thing too because we were getting headaches after laughing too hard over stories from the previous night.