rocked
• work/trade setup was awesome. we got to hang out with friends and not work so hard. also we had really fantastic, skilled workers! ben and ana did the fish. jim exuded calm. sarah problem-solved everything and kept us on track.
•bao zi! chocolate meringue! seaweed salad!
• glad we had leftovers for worktraders
• fantastic to have a greeter & amuse supervisor. everyone paid!
• new ritual (pasta)
• ben and ana, again! loved ana fixing the menu at the last minute!
• better gantt with service, oven, and stovetop lines
• tags on light controls less stressful, but still a lot of wild light variations.
rattled
• oven backup again (must calculate 2x normal cook time)
• amuse wasn’t ready on time. could have been a problem for $.
• not taking time to salt before serving
• first work trade shift much more fun (and educational) than second one (mostly cleaning). not sure what to do about this.
• we jumped the salami dish into the amuse spot. this was ok as a finger food, but what it meant is that a major and expensive dish got lost because we didn’t walk it, explaining to everybody what it is and what’s special about it. that dish had a lot of provenance and educational value, and people probably missed that. so while we often jump dishes due to kitchen backups, it’s particularly problematic to jump into the amuse spot, because we lose the presentation.
suggestions for next time
• lots of little maldon salts all over the room.
• make sure to put phone number in confirmation email. someone got lost and never made it.
• put a cover over the light switches near dining room so people can’t lean on them.
• reduce cheese quantities. we bought 3.7 lbs, twice what we needed. for 40 people, get 2 lbs of cheese total weight. (but it looked beautiful!)
• assign someone to keep the wine table tidy.
