[Sca-cooks] serving schedule

Sat Jan 26 12:17:48 PST 2002

. What I would do, to stretch the feast out a bit, is to serve the
>food by dish and not by course. For example, serve the appetizers with bread
>on a tray... wait 20 minutes, serve the eggplant dish.... wait 15 minutes...
>serve the chicken... wait 15 minutes... serve the fish dish.... and keep
>going like that. That way the people don't get bored.

I guess if done right, this gives the impression of food continually arriving at table.  A generous and welcome thought.

Practically speaking, in all but the largest kitchen, with enough space to hold dishes at the proper temperature and enough time and crew to do massive amounts of prep work (I've never been blessed with even one of these), you aren't allowing yourself and your crew enough time.

At dish C on a schedule of dishes ABCDEF, the stove/workspace must be cleared of dish B, the items for dish C brought out and prepped and plated, the servers should go round the hall once with the dish, once with a water pitcher and again to pick up the empty dish and the scullery must have time to wash prep and serving items from dish A that are needed for dish C.  You are also dealing with portions of dish D, E, and F so they will be at the right point when their time comes.

One way to deal with this is for a third of the dishes to be entirely prepped in advance and not intended to go out piping hot.  Salads, tarts, cakes, bread, compost all fit these requirements.  Another third of the dishes can be prepped in advance and held warm.  Soups, sauces, and most vegetables are in this category (timing the vegetable so that they aren't overdone when going out).  Meats also can be out of the oven and plattered, covered with lids or foil for 20 or 30 minutes before actually going out. Lastly, there are the dishes that must go from stove to table.  Fried things, things with fussy details and garnish.  With planning and holding space, you can send the servers out a dish at a time every 10 minutes.  But I suspect this must have been the intent at many feasts that have a single dish wandering out every 15 to 20 minutes.  Sauces cooling in the hall before the meat comes out, vegetables that might have benefitted from the sauce also coming out after the meat and after the hungry diners have sopped the sauce with bread leftover from their own lunches.  Special needs diners wondering when something they can eat will show up (let's assume they are not troublesome, have called in advance and know they should be able to eat, sooner or later). The servers are running in circles to get food out, water re-filled and empty dishes back with nary a pause. One server entirely misses some dish, another server then thinks it is extra and proudly presents it to his table of hungry diners--who bless him with tokens.

IMO, better to send dishes out in pairs and trios(plus bread) every 20 to 25 minutes. Relatively speaking, you have the same amount of time to get three dishes out, though the workflow for kitchen staff, hall staff and the diners themselves is less hectic. Just enough serving dishes to fit on a tray a single server can carry.  Two or 3 serving dishes plus bread basket won't overwhelm what little extra space is on the standard banquet tables after 8 people arrange their feast gear.  Just enough food variety that no special needs diner is left watching their neighbors eat.  Enough time for the scullery, the servers, the cooks and you to catch a breath between assignments and maintain a calm attitude.  Also, more time built in to deal with the omigoshes that inevitably come up.

My 2 cents.

Bonne
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