Allow me to explain - for those of you not in the hospitality industry, or perhaps not in the hospitality industry in a city that participates in restaurant week, restaurant week is a special time of year, that happens twice a year, that means a whole bunch of people descend upon restaurants of all kinds, and strike terror in the hearts of pastry chefs ( and chefs in general) everywhere. At my particular establishment, we endured 2 weeks of this lovely extravaganza because numbers have been flagging since about mid-December. So we prepared a small selection of appetizers, entrees and desserts ad nauseam for the entire time, for the bargain price of $20.11 at lunch and $30.11 at dinner. The important part to remember however is who eats at restaurants during restaurant week. They run the gamut from the best (the simply inexperienced diner), to the tight budgeted ( the poor student who doesn't usually eat out otherwise), to the worst ( people who are just truly cheapskates and then expect amazing feats of service and cuisine). Pretty much all restaurant week diners fall into one or more of these categories. They oftentimes mispronounce things, like the names of wine, ( a past favorite is pinot noir pronounced "peanut noor". It was then consumed through a straw.) or the varieties of fish ( salmon pronounced saal-mun, and of course ordered extra well done).
I've had all sorts of strategies in the past for restaurant week. Viewing it as a challenge helps, timing yourself to see how long it takes you to pipe 100 meringues can be interesting, a couple of times, some sort of hard liquor comsumption is generally helpful... but then generally it comes down to one thing for me - the certainty that unless I get a new job in the next 6 months, I will be doing this again, in 6 months time. At least it's predictable I guess.
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