A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Kitchen.

[layjo]

This one Chef told of a time when one of his apprentices, who was just starting out, was asked to "ice down" the French onion soup in order quickly bring the tempuature down for refrigeration. Well the begining cook came back with two 5 gallon buckets full of ice and dumped both the buckets of ice into the soup! The soup sure was "iced down", but not the way the Chef would have like it. Then the chef explained what he ment by "ice down".

To add to this...I had one incident of my own; I had to do chocolate dipped strawberries on a regular basis for amenities. Well this one day, I found some chocolate to melt, but it was not labled specifally, just wraped tightly in plastic with that said chocolate. I was in a hurry to get my duties done so i took the chocolate. Melted it and it was fine in texture, I thought it was ok so went ahead without tasting it. Well they looked fine on the plate that they were served. Well when the night was over they brought the plate of strawberries back because the guest was arriving the next day instead. So those strawberries looked good at the end of the night; the Chef de Partie started to eat the strawberries and imediately spit it out. I said what wrong? He said "you used the unsweetened bitter chocolate, good thing the guest won't arrive till tomarrow. So now I taste everthing before I send it!

[This message has been edited by layjo (edited August 12, 2000).]

[cookM]

We had this intern at the restaurant,and my chef decided to let her do the saute station. I was doing grill. I was 2 minutes away from coming up, so I say, "Two minutes!" I start putting the finishing touches on my plates when I look over at the intern. She was looking at, and concentrating on something on the wall. I say, "Hey! Almost up!" She says, "I know...I was watching the second hand on the clock counting down the two minutes."

[Chef Chris23]

Hello people, We had something like this earlier last year, where everyone told there funny Kitchen story's. So I figured what the heck, It's was funny last time, so let's get a good laugh this time I wish I had some funny stories to start off but I dont.........Hmmmm ok, ok since your pulling my leg here I'll go first. One day I was working at a catering place, and I gave a young cook (My Biggest Mistake) the job of making lemmon-poppy seed muffins. (How hard is that) , well what I didnt know is that the guy didnt know the diffrence from Poppy seed's and Black Pepper, and Guess what......Thats right he put the black pepper into the muffin mix, and we had or self's "The First Every Lemmon-Black Pepper Muffins", Im glad I had enough time to get the right one's out for the job. But I did save the other odd muffins, just to see what they tase like, and I got to say "Not Bad" ...and hey they go great with fish. LOL , Now it's your turn

Have Fun
Chris

[Nick.Shu]

One of the things that i remember quite well was when i worked with a chef who was a inveterate practical joker.

We had an apprentice who didnt have much life experience. so chef to apprentice:"oh i need you to get me something from the shop" apprentice:"yeah ok, what do you want?" Chef:" I need some hair gel can you get me some?
apprentice:"sure, what is it called?"
Chef:"K.Y. Gel, here is some money".
apprentice:"not a problem, i wont be long".

you can guess the rest.

[layjo]

Well I remember one time in the kitchen some cooks were making some tulip-shaped chocolate cups with ballons for a dessert needed the next day. Well the chocolate hadn't cooled down to right tempuature and they were in a hurry to make them. So they blew up some baloons with a helium tank before hand. and they started diping and forming the tulip shape and then all of a sudden POW! POP! POW! POP! POW! POP! POP! What do find when i go around the corner- Three cooks with chocolate splated all over their clothes and faces! I coudn't stop laughing for a while at what had happen?

[chefjohnpaul]

I remember a cook a few years back who was trying to clarify a stock by putting raw eggs whites right into the boiling stock. I thought it was funny in that someone said you use egg whites to clarify a consumme' and I guess he said, "great!" and didn't find out the procedures. Egg drop soup,anyone?

[Nicko]

One time I was working at this place and a guy had a huge pot of boiling water on the grill (big grill we used to heat water on it for pasta all the time) and he had a huge bag of mostacolli. Well the guy lifted it up and was pouring in the mostacolli and the heat melted the bag and mostacolli went everywhere. It was pretty funny.

There was this prep cook who didn't know much about cooking (this was his 1st rest. job) and was asked to bring some julienne some raw chicken breasts. Now we had a front of the house manager whose name was Jillian. This cook who didn't know what juliiene was, proceeded to take raw chicken to Jillian out on the floor.

[augiewren]

I was working in the kitchen of a large seafood restaurant. A customer ordered "soup du jour" which happened to be cream of crab that day. The waitress took it out and came back with it two minutes later and said to me, "The lady says this isn't soup du jour. She says she's had soup du jour before and it's tomato based with vegetables in it." I told the waitress to take her a cup of Maryland crab soup, a regular menu item. A few seconds later the waitress came back and reported that the customer said "the soup du jour is perfect"!

[cookM]

My chef was hilarious. We would laugh when someone would talk about cooking with stars in their eyes. We wanted to make up some "Cooking is glamourous" t-shirts, and make a Cooking is Glamourous video. We would have people cleaning 20# of squid, cutting the faces off soft shell crab, deboning 80 quails, shucking a case of fava beans, etc. And then we wanted to do a showcase of our various cuts and burns...I mean, has anyone seen Martha Stewart cleaning squid?????????

[shroomgirl]

LOL what a hoot! Battle scars of the ovens.

[chefjohnpaul]

I mean, has anyone seen Martha Stewart cleaning squid????????? [/b][/quote]

First she needs to learn how to properly use a knife, if she tried to do anything in volume she would lop off her fingers!