HELL'S KITCHEN no failure

According to the New York TIMES: The two-hour premiere of the sixth season of “Hell’s Kitchen” helped Fox finish No.1 in the ratings on Tuesday in the demographic of adults 18 to 49. According to Nielsen’s estimates, the reality show attracted a modest audience in total viewers of 6.5 million. In the 18-to-49 set, however, the show easily led the 8 p.m. hour and at 9 finished just slightly behind “America’s Got Talent” on NBC, the night’s most watched show over all (13.6 million).

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Must read: FasterTimes: When the chef is trying to kill you

Scott Gold describes his experience with a Foie gras jelly donut for $16..

"When my appetizer arrived, it was both exactly and absolutely nothing like I’d expected. The fatty liver wasn’t incorporated into the donut — it wasn’t a foie-filled pastry — nor was it some sort of mousse cleverly disguised as chocolate frosting. There was no subtlety about the dish at all, which made it that much more brazen. It was, quite literally, a house made jelly donut topped with a generous lobe of seared foie gras, with yet another lobe of foie on the side. It was fried fat topped with seared fat, plain as can be"

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YOU'RE FIRED: NIGHTS WHEN THE ENTIRE STAFF (EVEN ME) SHOULD GO

Yes, there are those nights.. Those nights when the you see the bartenders slipping sips to themselves.. or a little too much to people that already had a little too much.

Nights when a server gets a new phone and instead of focusing on even the slightest bit of customer service, she's busy using her new Facebook app on the iPhone and texting friends behind the food cart..

Nights when cooks seem to lose all concern about food looking decent on plates ..

Nights when the owner's wife who's also a waitress gets so angry that she punches out before the post-banquet event is even cleaned--all because she wants to go home to watch the races.. (?!)

Nights when the dishwasher is antsy about going home because he wants to have sex--even though he just "knocked up" another girl in another town..She's keeping the baby, but they broke up anyway.. (!?!?!)

Nights when the manager "got there before everyone else" so she leaves immediately after dinner service, and without even lifting one buspan or tray of dirty dishes..

Nights when the owner takes no active role in stopping any of it..

And nights when even yours truly, this blogger Bryan, should get the can due to an enraged yelling at a cook after I took a piece of fish off a plate that was sitting there for over 40 minutes cold.. "SOMEONE else could have eaten that, and you picked at it" .. I did.. I yelled. Even I should have been fired tonight ..

I'm just glad it's over...

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Another wedding.. another storm..

Outside wedding planned today. Too bad they can't see weather reports a year in advance. Severe storms called for in Eastern Pennsylvania.. updates later on how wet the bride got.

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Take out food..

I'm so sick of it. My second job is a restaurant.. my main job is in an office. Everyone always wants take out. Overpriced beyond belief. But everyone pretends to like it..

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Tale of the waiter...The unsung hero: The Fourth of July wedding, 2009

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but I may have saved a life tonight//

It was a fourth of July wedding--really, I was sick a year ago when I saw that a Saturday fell on July 4th.. The calender is cruel. Wedding season is here.. And there WAS a wedding tonight, the Fourth of July..

The crowd was as some crowds can be.. Incoherent, drunk, rude, etc etc etc.. I could write a book, I'll tell you.

But a strange situation developed around 8pm.. A man on the front porch appeared to be either extremely intoxicated into oblivion, or as many around him said, having a heart attack...

Luckily, my paranoid father gave me a heart healthy Aspirin only moments before I went to work, he worries about me, and I worry about him for the heart reasons--problems run in the family.

Little did I know that by not taking that heart healthy pill like I should have I would have possibly saved a life only hours later..

When I heard someone may have been having a heart attack, I quickly brought the pill out, instructed the 20 some odd drunk wedding folks around him holding his head and feet up in the air to tell him to chew the pill and keep it under his tongue.. Moments later he walked to the car, and chose his wife to take him to the hospital instead of the ambulance..

A completely unexpected burst of reality on a wedding day filled with "joy" (and rudeness that only two families brought together in love can show)

...Reminds me of the time years ago when I was a busboy and a napkin in a bread basket got too close to a candle on the table and caught ablaze.. I poured a water pitcher with ice over top of it, not caring that I also wettened 6 customers.

It also reminded me of the time--again when I was a busboy--when a woman literally had a stroke in my arms.. I caught her and held her until the ambulance arrived..

We think of ourselves as constant--and we never figure the Angel of Death will show up on our door when we're drinking ourselves into oblivion.. But it can. And sometimes does.

Luckily tonight I had a heart healthy Aspirin.

It didn't wreck the spirit of the evening, either.. fireworks were set off in the parking lot after the wedding.. Few noticed the 65ish-year-old man wasn't there to see them...

P.S. >> After everything was said and done tonight, the evening ended with a clearly large intoxicated male telling me and a bartender that the owner should fire us because of how bad we were at our jobs..

Thanks a million.
Nah, make it a billion.

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A WEDDING ON THE FOURTH OF JULY..

NO KIDDING.. REALLY. MORE LATER.

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