LudoBites Episode 6.0: A New Hope

Call me crazy, call me an adrenaline junkie, but I signed up for another round of internship at LudoBites 6.0 while still going to culinary school in the morning (and some evenings). I missed the intensity of service, the speed of work. Though school is nice - I get to screw up product in practice without someone yelling at me - I don't quite like feeling I'm the fastest person (apart from the instructors) in the kitchen. I feel like the lackadaisical attitude carries over and dulls my skills (which already aren't even close to where I want to be when I'm in a professional kitchen).

It was nice to be back in the kitchen with the team the first week. I'm only there part time, because of my evening classes, but I came in to help out on one day of prep just to familiarize myself with the kitchen at Max in Sherman Oaks. It was smaller than Gram and Papa's, but at least we're not sharing it with someone else. This makes organizing your product a little easier in the walk-in.

Service was a little hectic at first - opening night, hit the ground running. The tickets weren't printing where they should go, so the expediter had to call them out. This was my first experience with this formal call-and-response. I kind of loved it. I smiled every time the expediter called out "runner-rrrr!" when food was ready to go out. It reminded me of being at a craps table in Vegas.

On the second night, the guys all got into a rhythm - especially when "foie gras" was called out. Without naming names, let's just say that pronouncing "foie gras" with a slight Korean accent is amusing in itself. Add to it an American imitating a Korean saying "foie gras," then a part Native-American/Mexican imitating an American imitating a Korean, then a Frenchman correcting an American on his imitation of a Korean saying "foie gras" and you really have a special kind of melting pot hijinks.

It was a good thing so much foie gras was being ordered because everybody got to practice their pronunciation a lot that night.

Speaking of practice...

Quenelles.



These practice quenelles were from the last round of LudoBites when I was on the station with the pork belly confit and mustard ice cream. As you can see, the ones in the back are kind of sad. The ones in the front aren't bad.

I'm going to have to practice some more because there's a mango sorbet on the carrot cake plate at my station. Chef has already poked at me about not knowing how to do a quenelle.

So in the interest of possibly funding some of my practice this weekend, here's a plug for the ice cream I used at home. I bought it because it was the cheapest, but when I looked at the ingredients, I was pretty surprised that there were no crazy additives in it. Creamy and delicious. Thank you, store brand premium ice cream!



LudoBites 6.0: A New Hope (for quenelles).