Day 2 - Melbourne Cup Day at Wildfire!

Today was a bit different to an average day at Wildfire due to the Melbourne Cup. The guests arrived at midday all dressed up and ready to eat! The menu was not an average À la carte menu but Justin was telling me how today they use a special type of menu called a degustation menu. It consists of 5, 7 or 9 courses and a different type of wine with each course. Each course is in a small portion but of extremely high quality and in this type of menu type, the restaurant serves its best dishes to show off basically.

So I took the ferry today from Huntley’s Point and in my race to catch it, I dropped my phone at the wharf so couldn’t get any photos all day L (the police gave it back to my parents later.) When I got to the restaurant at 9am, I think I was an hour early but I helped out in the grill section to start. Then I moved to entrees and desserts for most of the day. I didn’t have a break so 8 hours on my feet was a struggle but fun all the same! Justin was telling me how they don’t really go on breaks because it slows everything down and they eat enough picking through the day at different foods – so that’s what I did too.

The first thing I did in the grill area was to make a béarnaise sauce. I separated 18 eggs, added white wine vinegar (that was marinating with tarragon and black peppercorns) and WHISKED WHISKED WHISKED until my arm was too sore to whisk anymore! I did this over hot water so that it got thicker but not so much so the eggs cooked. Then, slowly whisked in heaps of clarified butter, salt and finely chopped parsley and coriander. Walah! It was delicious J

Before I moved to entrees, I did a few other jobs including blending these warm hard liquorice pieces to make a powder, chopping chorizo, cutting up pork and finely chopping parsley and coriander.

When I was back with the entree guys, we had to plate up 45 plates of “Citrus cured ocean trout” which looked amazing on the plate, I wish I had a photo! It had a small circle of chopped ocean trout with citrus salt, with goats cheese, cucumber sorbet, avocado drops, caviar, micro-herbs and cucumber. It tasted really good too! We had everything ready and whenever we got an order from a table, we would plate up that many and then wait for the next lot.

In between waiting, I was helping Paula, the pastry chef (dessert section) to compose the macaroons (mini ones). She had cooked the shells and piped the inside onto one side and I matched them up according to size and put them into containers. They tasted DELICIOUS!! She had four flavours; peanut butter and banana, cereal milk, caramel and strawberry mint.

Next, I helped plate up two different desserts. The first was “Vanilla Cheesecake” which also tasted awesome and looked fantastic – it had caramel sauce, coffee crumbs, caramel popcorn, honeycomb, salted caramel ice cream and some other bits and pieces.

The other dessert was a double layered trifle – I think it was raspberry and lychee with some mixed berries, champagne jelly and a scoop of white chocolate ice cream. It was ALSO delicious J

Plating up these three dishes used a GREAT amount of teamwork, cooperation and a production line. It was great to be part of this however at times there were so many people around and I felt like I was in the way a little.

Later on Justin also taught me how to skin ocean trout which he said was so hard to do it well at the beginning. I did it well! He was pretty impressed! Oh and he also told me an easy way to make banana ice cream; juts blend banana, honey and vodka and shove it in the freezer. It’s because the banana doesn’t need churning and the vodka will keep it from freezing hard – can’t wait to try it!

Some of the career paths of the workers there:
Paula dropped out in year 10, got an apprenticeship and was qualified by the age of 18. She’s now 19 and a full time chef at Wildfire.
Justin used to be a personal trainer and then became a chef in fine dining. He then moved to the entree section of Wildfire as being in fine dining requires a perfectionist attribute and very careful hands which is also needed for entrees.

Some more observations of methods of communication was one of the head chefs, Jason, was swearing at some of the chefs to get the message through. But mostly, the communication was nice and everyone can take a bit of harshness anyway. The way everyone gets around the kitchen is interesting too because you will constantly hear “behind” or “coming through” or “under” depending on where they are so they don’t hurt you or you don’t run into them. It’s all very organised.

Overall, I had another great day but my feet hurt and I’m so tired! Nearly fell asleep on the bus home a couple of times. See you again soon Wildfire!