Before I left for Spain in March 2012, I had already lined up a cook's position at Origin Restaurant (the sister restaurant of Colborne Lane). When I got back, I called up the chef de cuisine there, and started a few weeks later.
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| MOZZARELLA DI BUFALA, CONFIT TOMATOES, BASIL, PRESERVED LEMON |
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| SPICY TUNA, APPLE, SHISO, PICKLED GINGER, PUFFED AMARANTH, MISO MAYO |
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| OYSTER, RED CHILI, SHISO, VALENTINE RADISH, YUZU |
Anyone who's worked in kitchens will know that service is only as good as its mise en place. In other words, how smooth service is depends largely on how well you've prepared. That includes preparation of today's needs, setting up your station, and preparing for the next day's mise. The Origin kitchen, to be fair, wasn't the worse kitchen to work in, it could just be better. A lot better.
My demi chef de partie at the time, Ichiban (not his real name), was a Korean guy, mid-20s who worked with the same kind of vigour, dedication, attention to detail, and passion as I did. I worked the early lunch service before handing over station duties to him for dinner service. Every time we were scheduled on together, our raw station ran like a fuckin' well-oiled machine. Like magic!
Summers in the Origin underbelly literally reached inhumane temperatures. Unlike our service kitchen, our prep space was in the basement. When you factor in the convection oven, three stand up fridges and a walk-in, along with a Sani-Clean, it was a pressure cooker of a different kind. It still amazes me how the dessert station produced what it produced when the temperatures routinely reached 40 plus degrees C.
Working conditions aside, the months at Origin were actually quite enjoyable. Post-service prep for the next day while random tunes such as the Naked And Famous, Foster The People, as well as Lionel Richie, blared from a comically underpowered set of desktop speakers.
But like all the proverbial good things, it all came to an end in June. Acadia was set to open in July. I needed to jump ship.
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