Facing the challenge in New York – part 8

From July Roland Oláh, formerly the chef of Café Erté, tries his luck in the USA. He regularly reports to our magazine: ‘I am happy – my family is here and nothing else matters. On 3 January, we moved to a bigger house and I had to pay USD 3,000 in advance. Luckily, my wife brought some money from Hungary. It is a two-storey building and we had to pay a fortune for heating; plus we needed to buy some furniture because we promised a princess’ room to my daughter! The job is the same every day – I go there in the morning and try to do my best. Sometimes it does not seem a big challenge, but I know that I have to start somewhere if I want to achieve my goals.

After the New Year’s Eve madness the next big thing was Restaurant Week, which in our restaurant was actually two weeks of offering a 3-course lunch at a ridiculously low price, from Monday to Friday. We had 200 daily reservations and every day I had to make 70-100 scallop ceviches with blood orange, ‘micro-coriander’, lime and fleur de sel. The chef lets me do more things now and I get a chance to try my hand in making one of our specialities: modern burger – the hamburger meat is 6-7 cm wide and 10 cm tall, outside it is minced beef, with beef chops and goose liver inside and all this is served in a roll with Parmesan. It is served with stewed tomato and French fries and costs USD 32, but the truffle version is USD 75. I also get to do breakfasts and waking up at 4.10 starts to wear me out. Meanwhile my daughter started kindergarten and it costs a lot of money. One day the chef called me to his office and said that he saw potential in me. I told him that I had 18 years of experience and he decided to try me in the Cuison section in the afternoons. I prepare the meats and fishes. It is something like a labour camp, nothing is good enough that I make and they always say that I am too slow. The first two weeks was a nightmare, I could hardly cope with the task (which was gargantuan: dinners for 270-300 guests from Thursday to Saturday) but everyone helped me.

I have been working for Dinex, Boulud’s restaurants for seven months now, time is really flying. Next time you can read more about my adventures in the Cuison section and the big changes in our life.’