It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…
Late summer in New England is truly wonderful. The Sox are playing great (great enough to even let the Yanks sweep them and still lead), Cape Cod is always a wonderful escape from the city — once you get by the traffic, and beautiful harvests are coming in from all the local farms. The few cool evenings only remind one that the county fairs are just getting ready to start and the horizon will soon be covered in vivid foliage that almost makes one welcome the not-so-slow slide into bleak winter.
Truly, it is a most wonderful time of the year.
Unless you work in Boston . For a college. As a catering cook. Like me.
Then Labor Day means what it really sounds like it should mean. Work, and lots of it.
Three thoughts always hover around Labor Day Weekend when you live in Boston…
BBQ! Football! School! For most, the first two are welcome celebrations of the passing of the season, and the last a bit of dread to every Bostonian as we prepare for the invasion… For me, it brings a mixture of anticipation of exciting times and foreboding of much too exciting times.
You see, I work as a catering cook at a top-tier university in Boston, and Labor Day means classes begin, and we change from a sleepy campus with about 2000 daily guests to our own town of 17,000 students, staff, faculty and visitors, all looking to be fed and entertained as part of the college environment. Preferrably several times a day. Normally, that is handled admirably by a staff of 500 dining services employees (from chefs and bean counters to students seeking a little extra cash). But even our wonderful cafeteria food doesn’t fit the desires of all our customers, and we generally have a few dozen functions each day that demand a special bit of attention. And then there’s football, when we invite 45,000 of our closest friends to come enjoy a nice game and consume tons (literally) of our catered food…
“In 2006 a crack cooking unit was sent to Walsh Hall for a crime they didn’t commit. These chefs promptly escaped from a maximum security walk-in to the campus underground. Today, still wanted by the administration, they survive as caterers of last resort. If you have a function, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire: THE A-TEAM”
We might not be the A-TEAM, but the adventure and wild rides are certainly here.
Herein is told the adventures of ten caterers, a dozen support staff, one old kitchen with character, a few trucks and vans, a wall full of event sheets, and highest expectations on unmoveable deadlines. See what makes our team tick, learn a few tricks of the trade, and maybe leave with a greater appreciation of the life of a caterer.
The hours are long, the stress constant, and the kitchen hot and humid. Or, as I am far too fond of saying in the kitchen,
“Easy Money!”
I’m not sure I’ve quite got the hang of the English language yet…
amphibolous
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