sunday brunch

The first and third Sunday of every month The Culinary School of Fort Worth opens its doors as a restaurant and serves a spectacular brunch.  Chef develops the menu and leads the show, but the students do all of the prepping, cooking and serving (and clean-up too).  This gives us valuable, first-hand restaurant experience.  In return for allowing us to "practice" on them, our customers get a delicious, top-quality, freshly-made meal at a really fabulous price.  For $15.95/adults and $5.95/kids our customers get a basket of scrumptious, freshly-baked breads and handmade jam, their choice from our three seasonal entrees, a soup station, made-to-order salads, omelets and pasta at the respective stations, and a beautiful assortment of desserts.  The menu changes seasonally to showcase the products that are at their peak.  And when I say everything is made in our kitchen by the students, I mean everything (including the condiments when we offered an artisan burger...we even ground the meat).  

I was horribly nervous the first time I reported for Sunday Brunch duty at 7:00 a.m. (isn't that too early to be handling dangerous knives???).  But, I found the experience hugely valuable.  I learned so much that day.  It catapulted my learning and really connected the dots of what I was learning and practicing in class (plus, I learned where every dish is located and that comes in handy when we are frantically putting away dishes after class in hopes to get home before midnight).  And I learned that I can stand for 9 hours straight.    

I worked my second Sunday Brunch this past weekend.  I was only slightly nervous about what Chef would assign me to do during prep (you see, he likes to push us out of our comfort zones...apparently, my simply being in culinary school is not out of the zone enough).  And as for what I would be assigned during brunch, well, I kind of assumed I would be a server.  That was my job last time and I did it quite well.  I've had nightmares about the omelet station, but since we were fully staffed that day I continued to assume that a higher level student would get that job.  

Remember what I said about Chef pushing us out of our comfort zones...you guessed it, my friend, I was assigned the omelet station.  When Chef told me that I would be on omelets I kind of thought he was joking (but he doesn't joke around, so I was wrong).  I'm sure my face went whiter than usual.  Gulp.  Please understand, I wouldn't be making these omelets back in the kitchen.  Nope.  I would be making them to order right in front of the customers.  They will be watching me.  Oh, and I'm supposed to make conversation too.  Are you serious?  I'm concentrating on not swishing the egg out of the pan, not flipping it inside out ('cause that ain't pretty), not getting ANY brown on the omelet, and I'm supposed to chit-chat too.  I had a partner at the omelet station and we laughed and learned together.  She had also had nightmares about getting this assignment.  I'm thinking the universe heard these bad dreams and has a really sick sense of humor.  Together, we made at least 80 omelets...some prettier than others, but I'd like to believe they were all delicious.