MasterChef 2011
As far as I’m concerned there should only be one 6.30 in the day and it should definitely be the start of cocktail hour rather than breaking dawn. However, when it is the departure time for our Masterchef weekend the even more appalling 5.30am alarm barely needs to beep as I am leaping out of bed in anticipation.
Clothes thrown on, the suitcase and other bags – which the boss man still struggles to understand are necessary for three days away – are being loaded into the van and me, Mr Boss and Donkey are trundling down the road towards Olympia, London. I would say there is a slight feeling of trepidation of the long, busy days ahead but no it’s all excitement mingled with Mr Boss’ traffic tempers and early morning road rage!
A small preview of how we roll on these work trips is that on the journey in to the big city I am applying fake tan to my legs – one has to look good behind the Roast stand
In fact we all know that our usual nutritious diets will be abandoned in the chaos of serving almost 3,000 customers. It sounds a tough gig doesn’t it – are you beginning to understand why it is one of the many events in our yearly calendar that is greeted with such excitement?
Another small clarification I must make is that our team all have nicknames – Donkey is not actually an ass with long ears and big teeth but a lovely brunette called Vicky, thus named as she has the delightful job of trundling all over London to pick things up; Mr Boss – not that we would ever expand his head enough to call him this – is indeed Paul McIntyre, otherwise known in the team as Paulo; Harold is in fact a lady named Jane but with the surname Steptoe, need I say more; there is me, whose nickname is Chewie from the way I yawn apparently and not thankfully because I have excessive body or facial hair, and then there is Larry, otherwise known as Lawrence Keough, supposedly a celebrity chef!
All congregated and ready for action, we assemble before the stand for the annual team photo before the ‘work’ commences. And by work I mean breakfast and then wait for the mania to begin. With an estimated 45,000 footfall over the weekend we know the restaurant experience, where we are situated, gets hit hard; combine that with the delicious menu of pork belly and root vegetable mash, sirloin steak and straw fries and Laverstoke Buffalo mozzarella with figs we are going to be busy.
However, regardless of the long hours on your feet and seemingly never-ending queue, the ribaldry and raucous behaviour in the kitchen, thankfully most of the time out of sight of the customers, keeps spirits high and the team in excessive good cheer.
You often wonder if the chef programmes on the TV are true to life or whether they are slightly dramatised – believe me you haven’t seen anything yet! I think on the basis of my experience on these types of events, it must be almost compulsory for professionals in the kitchens to have at least one screw loose or many but the lunacy backstage does not impact on the quality of food produced and therefore it works.
