The Part Nobody Sees

There are so many variables.

I think about this a lot — maybe more than I should — but it's the truth of this work that nobody really talks about. Before a single guest walks through the door, before the first passed bite hits a tray, there are a hundred decisions already made and a hundred more waiting to be made depending on what the day decides to throw at you.

You design the menu trying to hold three things in your head at once: the client's vision, your vision, and what will actually execute well in that particular venue. You factor in the season, the current price of everything (and if you've been following food costs lately, you know what a moving target that has become), the skill level of the people working the shift, the equipment you're bringing versus what exists on site, and how tight the window is from setup to service. The list goes on. It always goes on.

You do everything you know how to do going in. And then you show up on event day and you bring your best — your best game, your best attitude, your self-awareness, your situational awareness. All of it needs to be firing.

And then the weather goes sideways.

A recent event. Outdoor venue. Beautiful setting — until it wasn't. The wind picked up, the temperature dropped, and suddenly we were working in a tent with 20-mile-an-hour gusts and cold that had no business being there that time of year. Just like that, every assumption we'd built the day around shifted.

Keeping food hot when the air is working against you is a puzzle. Keeping plates hot is another one. Reworking the cooking schedule on the fly — because things that could have safely held at room temperature now couldn't, because room temperature was an icebox — is the kind of problem you solve with your gut and your experience and whoever is standing next to you in that moment.

Did we figure it out? Yes. Was it the best it could have been? Honestly, no. And that's the part that stays with you.What could I have done differently, what would I do next time, did I try as hard as I could? The answer to that last one is yes. And at some point, that has to be enough.

Because that's the other thing nobody tells you about this work: you have to learn to let go. Sometimes everything aligns and you knock it out of the park and you drive home feeling like you could do it all again tomorrow. And sometimes you do the best you can with what you have, in the conditions you're handed, with the team in front of you — and that has to be enough.

Oh yea—-in case your wondering. Dinner was fine——it wasn’t the quickest service ever but the plates were warm and the food was hot.