Facing the challenge in New York – part 2

From July Roland Oláh, formerly the chef of Café Erte, tries his luck in the USA. He regularly reports to our magazine: “I have started my interim career in the ”chocolate factory”. For the first time in my life, I feel out of place a bit. I work part-time from Friday to Sunday with a bunch of South American guys. I showed photos of my dishes to the Danish pastry chef on Facebook and he congratulated me. I can hardly wait for my social security number, because without it even cashing a cheque costs a fortune. At the moment, I am learning to make pralines manually (they are delicious, even newspaper articles praised them). I still do not see the effects of recession, restaurants are full in this small town in Connecticut. A good restaurant opens at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, completely full, and closes at 11. What would it be like in New York? I can hardly wait to get there! The cooks at Café Boulud are much younger than I am and have really good equipment. The other day I worked with a 21-year old girl who worked at Eleven Madison Park Restaurant for two years (that place just got 4 stars from Frank Bruni!). At Café Boulud, there are two teams working: one from 7 am till 5 pm, and the other starts at 1 pm. On my three trial days, I was in the second team, twice worked with the garnish chef and once prepared cold starters. It seemed to me that the place was always full because of reservations made, the kitchen got a list in advance which table would be occupied and when, and the chef was watching the tables on monitors. One person was dealing with orders and drinks only. I got a leaflet with rules and kitchen regulations for cooks. I hope my next report will be sent from Café Boulud’s kitchen.”