LONDON CLUB KITCHEN Executive Chef Stefan During the busy months at the Club running a full service kitchen, offsite caterings, and a busy banquet department can be quite a balancing act. Recently a lot of members have asked “how do you do it all? “. Without our dedicated culinary team none of this would be a possibility, every person counts from our dishwashers all the way to the top. Every team member has an intricate part of a successful, busy work day. When I think of one of the best and biggest days of the year spiced beef buffet always comes to mind and I would like to offer a peek behind the kitchen doors. A week away from spiced beef I start curing and smoking all the salmon and trout. The day prior to spiced beef is a flurry of activity. Orders being received, checked, and properly rotated in our fridges. The restaurant is still open for business so cooks and chefs are busy running the restaurant and prepping the buffet for the big day. Once we feel like we have accomplished all we can that day without compromising quality Robert the Sous Chef and I take a small nap and come back at two in the morning. At two in the morning the eight whole briskets, eight whole prime ribs, four suckling pigs, and two honey glazed hams go in the oven. We start shucking five hundred oysters and cook fifty pounds of shrimp for our seafood buffet. Then we start cooking forty trays of bacon in batches, this will take around three hours to cook in all. At six o clock the rest of the team comes in and begins poaching two hundred eggs and assembling the eggs benedict. At nine the seafood buffet begins to be put together and a team of cooks clean up all their work stations and decorate the kitchen with lights, chaffing dishes, and Christmas ornaments. At ten thirty the finishes touches on the buffets are done and the rest of the buffet is presented. At eleven o clock the festivities commence and around three hundred and sixty people enjoy both buffets. At four o clock the last of our members are returning home, the buffet is removed and cleaned, and the dishwashers start the largest part of there day and the building is closed at seven. The kitchen team and I would like to extend our gratitude to our amazing membership. Without all of you this wouldn’t be such a special and amazing place to work. Sincerely, Stefan Pellman, Executive chef
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