New Orleans Wedding Carver

Po-boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
The Wedding Carver
Or
Have Knives, Will Travel
Being retired from gainful employment has it’s advantages and it’s drawbacks. The main drawback is that, my fixed income (yes, I’m on one of them) is trying to extinguish my cavalier flame of living large and tipping big, and I hate that. It has a lot to do with the amount of money that I don’t have for extended periods bellied up to a bar or letting someone else cook for me at a fine dining establishment. And, it has to do with my inability to leave my hard living, freewheeling, ‘there’s plenty more where that came from’ personality behind with my hairline, waistline and twenty-twenty vision.
So, I’ve taken random employment; one of my gigs is cutting up dead animals at special event gatherings such as rehearsal, wedding and company awards functions.
Tonite, it’s a wedding with all the stops pulled out at one of my favorite French Quarter restaurants. I won’t mention names, but it’s a place that, I tell folks, can furnish anything you want and can afford. From an intimate private dinner for two, to twelve hundred of your closest friends, you can get anything that you’re willing to pay for. From piped in music to sixteen pieces of guitar slamming, horn playing rock your sockers. Ice sculptures that dispense martinis, flame throwing dessert stations, low, medium and high grades of alcohol. Do you want fire works? Second lines? Mystics and mind readers? Clowns? Would you like the friggin’ circus?
Do you want passed hors d’oeuvres, sit down dinners, buffets, oyster shuckers or a person or two to slice meat thinly, smile broadly and be ready to cut the cake when the time comes?
Tonite is a wedding with all of that. The band commands such a draw on the electrical output of the place that the air conditioning (after running at full capacity all day) is cut off. I’ve come to naming functions; this one is the ‘women in tight clothing and men with powerful credit cards’ types. But it will only be a more sophisticated version of the ‘ women with braided armpits and men with little dental work’ functions that I’ve worked elsewhere.
First to arrive, by a good forty-five minutes, is the parents of the bride. Madame explains that the groom is ‘allergic’ to alcohol and will be drinking ice tea, Red Bull and ginger ale. I wonder if that is a new concoction or his actual menu of choices. Then Mama checks out seating places for the elderly, is assuaged by the marketing manager and witnesses the arrival of the flowers, which to me look like they’ve just come from a funeral parlor.
Now the chandeliers are being lit, candles line the entranceway and the ‘thirty minutes before’ icing down of the liquids that require it. The party starts at six after the ceremony; passed appetizers until eight, food (including two carvers) in two rooms from six to nine, band starts at seven and stops at ten. There are two meetings with management and staff to co-ordinate the function. Extra furniture has been stored in rented trucks and, of course, nobody shows up until six twenty-five.
I am in the second room with a sixty pound haunch of beef, five-hundred volts of heat lamps and knives honed to deadly edges, my co-carver is in the next room with access to a half a dozen deep fried turkeys.
Here they come; a random husband (Jack) hits the bar for drinks for him-n-her, drops off hers (Jill) and heads back to the bar for another for himself…there’s gonna be a heartache tonite. Terminally thin women start with Cosmopolitans, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Maury want to know if there’s any coffee, the groom’s friends that never learned to dance or dress and the bride’s friends that did. Lawyers and Dentists in seersucker (Dentists have suede shoes). Doctors in white linen, older women in two piece suits, younger women in strapless whose breasts don’t quite fill up the cups and the requisite ‘Parachute Woman”. And me cutting dead cow.
A buddy of the groom has brought his own thirty two ounce cup that he wants filled with Jack and Diet, uh oh, and young Jack is on his sixth beer this hour. He’s telling a group of peers jokes that only he finds amusing, his peers are more amused by him and his condition. His wife has given up on him and has joined a coterie of the thin ones that won’t be having any dinner.
You can tell that the newlyweds have had a long relationship; she starts drinking and he fills his plate to capacity.
The door to the courtyard is on a spring strong enough to stop the charge of a water buffalo and some of my amusement will come from the imprisonment, between door and jamb, of young children, the frail and inevitably…the bride’s train.
The photographer hits the buffet about an hour and a half in; the band will hit us at break time. You can tell the band because they are either dressed better (or worse) than the guests and they’re not fooled by fillers like potatoes, jambalaya or fish. They hit the raw bar and the protein (not the pate though) and of course the alcohol. I just keep cutting.
The band takes a break for the toasts. Uncle Maury, who’s been yelling his conversation, winds up with “and the man hasn’t held a decent job in thirty YEARS!!!
Then, the testimonies: Teary eyed pair of young women: “Trish and us have been best friends since third grade and like we’ve never seen her looking soooo HAPPY!” The kid brother; “I brought them together…” The Father: I’m sure that they’ll be as happy as her Mother and I have been”---(right). The Buddy “I remember the night Keith came home and told me ‘I’ve met the woman that I’m going to marry”, The older brother “At least now he’ll have someone else to fight with!” And on and on.
Then the cake, throw the bouquet, that weighs twelve pounds, and every one second lines out except the six or eight that want to close down the bar. Too late, things are wrapped, stacked, put away, closed and already the crew is moving tables for tomorrow night’s functions. One room is having a sit down ‘Divorce Dinner’: 48 people, the other room has a wake with a replica of the deceased in  potato saladpotato salad, no carving necessary. Say goodnight Gracie.
plamancusa@aol.com

Serving in New Orleans

Po-boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Tray Jockeying
Or
The Art of Fine Dining Service
Okay, you’re back, your britches are hitched up and you’ve done your bit as a loyal employee and returned to your old job. Your boss was teary eyed and there were hugs and kisses and ‘I missed you’, and all that jazz. Six months or so later you realize that your job still sucks.
Not only does your job suck; but, you have contracted the Katrina walking whooping eye, nose, throat, lung peritogingavitis-expialidosis mystery infection, it’s hard to get your laundry done and there’s no place to park. What’s more, none of your friends or bartender/hairdressers are back, most of the fun shopping is gone and your insurance and your mortgage company stinks (don’t get me started on landlords).
Well, there’s good news on the horizon; do I have a job for you! Fine dining service!
Now before you put your popcorn down and go searching through the personals….STOP! Consider this: you can carry home, in your pocket, six hundred dollars (cash) and up per week and keep your clothes on, work when it’s busy and not work when it is slow, get fed without fuss, do not have to worry about your wardrobe, work with the most lovable lunatics and it’s you against the world!
Training is no problem. Talent is, and here’s what I mean: not everyone can be a good waiter; fewer still can be great. There are a lot of poor to mediocre waiters, but guess what? They’re a lot smarter than you are. They own houses, raise children, take vacations and enjoy cocktails on a regular basis. Waiters (bartenders and support staff) work in high stress, fast paced and physically demanding quarters akin to those professions that get to carry weapons or are able to dispense medications to unruly clients.
Being accepted into the profession has not much to do with experience, some of the worst waiters have the most experience and some of the best have little. It’s all in your attitude, and that’s what your interviewer will look for. Do you have attitude? Then forget it! You will not get far by flaunting your Laurels (or your Hardys) because the majority of interviewers have seen that all before.
Here’s the way in, the way about and the way around fine dining service. First of all: this is not about you. This is about your establishment (your house).
From the beginning you will be required to work when you are needed regardless of the day, the night, the holiday, the season or the other events that may be happening your life. You’ve got to agree to that immediately. Also, without question is to do things the way your house does them regardless of logic or reason. The way things are done are the way things are done. Rule of thumb: agree to everything and don’t talk back until you know who you’re talking to. Get the job by getting across that you don’t know, but have the ability to do, everything, can learn anything and don’t want ever to do anything but whatever you are required to do. Willingness counts! First… get the job.
Next (assuming that you’re in the door), comes your training. Usually after an indoctrination of some sort, you’ll be handed off to someone who is given the job of showing you the ropes. You’ll know them by how they roll their eyes at Heaven, inwardly asking "why me, Lord?” Listen to everything that they tell you, including the sentences that contain the disclaimer: “this is the way I do it”. Here’s why: if you try to take the reins away from your trainer, show that you think that you know it all, you will set yourself up to fail because you may get trained but you’ll never know the ropes, get the dirt or the lowdown. In short, you’ll be on the inside on your way out.
It is universal that anyone can bitch about their family’s dysfunctions, as happens on the job: but, a new person has got to earn the right to speak up/out until they’ve paid dues. Rushing that process is the fast track to exclusion. Not that anyone will do anything to hamper you; it’s just that you will miss out on all the information that can help you.
So, now you’re trained (and this is the cram course) and you’re on the floor. Now all you need to learn is how to get along with twenty other waiters, taking into consideration their various personality quirks, a dozen cooks that work hard, hot and fast with short tempers, deadly weapons and weird senses of humor, dishwashers and cleaners whose second language is discernibly not yours and management who are 95% older protective brother and 5% “shut the fuck up and do like I told you!” Remember rule #1: this is not about you.
Next the customers. Once becoming a server, you will never view yourself as a customer the same. Customers without restaurant experience (or experience in going to restaurants) may view a server as a sounding board, servant, confidant, tour guide, non entity, miracle worker, culinary expert and generally be able to answer, successfully, the question “why is my food taking so long?” The server may want to be a clairvoyant but generally is not, so the server has to be able to switch hats depending on the table. [It’s your job; it’s not about you]. Deal with the customers idiosyncrasies, get them fed, shine ‘em up, pat ‘em on the ass and get them out.{When in doubt get management involved.}
Oh, and love them with all your heart because that lovely couple from Des Moines that had Ice tea and left 10% (that you hate) will be balanced out by the self styled comedian with the $100.00 bottles of wine that leaves 20% (that you also hate).
What IS about you is the people that you get to work with; although, you may (from the owner to the cleaning lady) never share anything else in common in your life. At the end of a ‘balls to the wall’ Saturday night you know that ‘brothers in arms’ is a special feeling, it’s time for a drink and after all…it was only dinner.