They were still about thirty minutes from meal time. The salads were being transported to a cool station close to where they would be placed on the tables. For this meal they would be set on the tables right at meal start time.
Dish-up for the main course from four stations ran at about ten plates per minute, give or take. Jimmy Banquet Chef was faster than the others. That was a matter of his experience. Jimmy G was slower, only because he was never meant to be a cook and was not particularly adept at the skills a good cook needed. The worst part was that he was completely disinterested.
Bill was fast. Bill had spent a lot of time cutting meat and carving steamship rounds and prime rib. So cutting the tenderloins, to him, was no big deal. He was slower this time than what his regular pace would be because he was getting the feel of the thickness of the portions he had to cut. This took a little time and a general sense of the way the meat ran since each tenderloin, while close, was its own size.
Jimmy Banquet Chef put Bill on the station next to him where he could watch Bill as he worked. Bill would find out later in the day that the executive chef and the banquet chef had a long conversation about him, one in which they decided he was definitely a keeper and that they would work him in on banquets as much as he wanted and they could fit in with his schedule at the Falstaff Room. This was because, as the banquet chef saw and noted, Bill was sure and swift with the knife. His cuts were even, smooth and swift. As a cook, he was clean, neat, meticulous and naturally sequential. That meant he knew what he had to do when so as to keep the flow of the meal service.
Dish-up was the penultimate activity for the cooks. They worked almost forty minutes at it, and then it was done, all the main courses plated, capped and stacked inside the warmer trucks. Because this was a smaller banquet the first plates would not be in the trucks for that long a time. Just about as soon as all plates were stacked, it would almost be time for the saucing to begin.
Along the way, the executive chef came from his office. The chef stood by Jimmy Banquet Chef and they had a detailed conversation while Jimmy worked. What the executive chef was really doing was watching Bill. Bill was not oblivious to his being there but he was focused on what he was doing. Plate after plate, every plate the same until they were all finished. By the time they were finished the executive chef was back in his office.
Last thing was to sauce the meat. This was a fast-paced activity. Now it was stack of five by stack of five. A steward pulled a stack from the truck, set it before Bill and lifted the plates. He lifted the first four at once and stacked one plate at a time after Bill had sauced the meat through the cap. He removed the top cap, the one with just the finger-hole in it, and replaced it right after the meat was sauced.
The waiters stood by. As each stack was completed, the waiters grabbed the stack and set it on their trays. When the trays were done, four stacks, twenty dinners, the waiters hoisted them on their shoulders and headed out to their assigned wait station by their assigned tables.
Very few words were exchanged. There was no fooling around, no joking, no goofing off. One of the female waitresses took a moment in stride to smile at Bill and say “Hey, baby.” And then she was gone, a heavy dinner-laden tray up on her shoulder.
