A NEW JOB: PEARL OYSTER BAR

Back in early August I applied for a job at Pearl Oyster Bar. I didn't hear back and shortly after that I joined my classmate Tim Kline where he was working in the pastry department at the Water Club. I completed a 200-hour unpaid internship at the Water Club. A few weeks ago I got an email from Pearl saying that a position opened in the Garde Manger station at the restaurant and that they would be interested in having me come in and trail.

More on my new job on the jump...

My responsibilities at Pearl are to man the Garde Manger station. Someone is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong, but technically, in French, Garde Manger means, the guard of eating! Actually, Garde Manger is the station in the restaurant where the cold buffet dishes are prepared.

I man the restaurant's raw bar, shucking and plating little-neck clams and Malpec oysters on the half shell. Garde Manger responsibilities entail prepping combination appetizers (clams, oysters, lobster tail, claw, and shrimp with cocktail sauce), shrimp cocktails (also known in The Times as five firm fellows) and half chilled Maine lobster. This is also where salads are made, a caesar and a mixed greens with Fourme D'ambert (a traditional, French blue cheese). Some other dishes which are finished in the kitchen are also started on this station: the crab cake and salt-crusted shrimp plates. In addition, I prepare the desserts: chocolate mousse, apple pie, butterscotch praline parfait and ice cream sundae.

I alternate working days and nights every week, switching off with my Garde Manger colleague, Jorge. A week working day shifts start at 8 a.m. and end at about 3:30 or 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, but include working a Saturday night. During weeks that I work nights I come in at 3:30 p.m. and depending on late stragglers, get out anywhere from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. During these weeks I don't work on the weekend (that's a great perk in this business).

The morning person works lunch which while busy isn't anywhere as crazy as the night-side, so he's also largely responsible for prepping the station for the night shift. So you've heard what dishes I prepare but what do I actually make? Well, I don't make the pies or the mousse-- nor do I make the caesar dressing (which is held secret). But I do make the tartar sauce, celeriac root slaw, vinaigrette and crab cakes from scratch. We also make the cocktail sauce, the green bean salad for the salty plate and the mignognette.

For someone like me with little front of house experience, the great thing about working the Garde Manger station at Pearl is it's placement in the restaurant. While unfortunately I don't get to see food getting cooked in the main kitchen, there are other perks. Garde Manger is situated so that I don't see customers enter but I do have a view of part of the bar and almost all of the tables in the restaurant. I get to see the customers get seated, the waitstaff take their orders, relay them to the kitchen, see how orders are expedited by the chef (then of course I help prepare the food!), and then see the food taken out to the tables. It's a good opportunity for me to understand the building blocks of how a restaurant works that are second nature to experienced waitstaff and cooks: how tables are numbered, customers are served, tables are turned. I also get to see customers reacting to food, waitstaff reacting to tips, chefs interacting with kitchen staff, waitstaff and customers, human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together...mass hysteria!

There are no tickets with orders written down for me to easily check on so I've got to remember the list of things being ordered or ask the expediter what I owe "all day," if I lose track. When the second turn comes, desserts are going out for the first turn at the same time that I'm making salads and shucking oysters. On a Friday or Saturday things can get a little hairy, but depending on who is wokring and how they're gabbing, even under pressure with six things to make and trying to keep the station clean as customers walk by, it's definately a lot more fun than staring at a computer screen all day.

I can only imagine what the summer is like when the cold weather that inspires people to order chowder, steamers and mussles, is turned on it's head and doezens of oysters are going out one after another!