Some work food…

…at my new job at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work at:

1) Pretty much all our desserts are premade food-service things that we plate up and maybe dress up a bit, but we don’t really make them there in any real sense of the word, and they’re all in this little side fridge in “the server alley” with saran wrap over them and stickers with freshness dates and bright red "USE FIRST" warnings that we must obey or we have to throw them out.

2) The breaded and deep-fried brussel sprouts have this blue cheese dipping sauce, but they’re also served over greens onto which house vinaigrette is poured, so you can try dipping the fried brussel sprouts in there, too – it’s the better sauce, in my opinion – and plus you get like a free third of a side salad at the bottom of your plate, if you choose to eat it.

The bigger ones also have more interior texture, too, since they probably don’t cook all the way through and get mushy like the smaller ones do, although the breading is always crisp and the taste is always good and so the mushy texture of some is more a neutral fact about the dish than a deal-breaker.

3) For some big birthday party where they had a special cake and leftover slices were later brought back and divvied up among all the workers, the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager asks me what I think of it, and I say the frosting is amazing but the cake is a bit dry, and then she tells me that the cake was made special in-house – which I did not know – and that the one (short) (perky) (daytime) manager made the frosting, while the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner made the cake.

“Oh damn,” I was like. “I didn’t realize this was a test.”