They ate roast tenderloin in a superb mushroom gravy prepared by the banquet chef. He stood over the stoves and started with plain brown gravy. He had plenty of that because it was needed and already made for the roast tenderloin. Bill chopped shallots very fine. He also sliced a box of mushrooms after washing them and trimming the stems.
Everything was easy when you had the ingredients on hand. Jimmy used fresh butter, a generous amount. He sautéed the shallots and added the mushrooms. In the cooking, the mushrooms emitted a certain amount of water. Jimmy let this reduce until the shallots and mushrooms mixed were almost dry. At this point he added in white wine. Again, he let the liquid reduce until almost dry. He had a choice now. He could have added the brown sauce to the shallots and mushrooms. But since it was for the cooks and his people, he added more wine and reduced it again. Then he added the brown sauce. He finished it with salt and pepper to suit his taste.
Kalista and Adonia made a big bowl of Greek salad, traditional Greek salad with all the proper trimmings. Vegetables and potatoes were varied, several choices.
They sat in groups. The cooks (the Greeks) and Bill sat together with Kalista and Adonia. Bill made sure not to sit near Adonia. He knew he wouldn’t do or say anything, but she was a wild card, a wild one altogether. Jimmy Banquet Chef appreciated this, Bill’s effort to stay away from her, and he told Bill so.
All the kitchen stewards ate together. This was a bigger group than the cooks, more than twice the size. Some of them ate chicken. They put the mushroom gravy on the chicken, and while a chicken sauce might have been more in order, that didn’t matter. The mushroom gravy was superb and went just fine.
Pot washers, dishwashers and cleaning people stayed in their own group. It was always this way. They were very happy to be eating the same food as the kitchen crew and they thanked the banquet Chef profusely as they took their plates from the buffet-style setup lined up on a table near the rotary oven. But then they went off with their food and sat alone as a group in a completely separate space.
At Suburban West Alfreda cooked a staff meal. The setup there was wholly different from the east side where Bill mostly worked. Because they had an open hearth and only one dining room on the west side, the kitchen crew ate before the lunch service started. The dishwashers ate separately, over by the dish machine. Very often Mr. Bowman would eat with his cooks. He would say a prayer and they would talk business while they ate. Drenovis never ate with them. He always ate out in the dining room after the service.
When Bill worked over on the west side Alfreda made sure to sit next to him. In some ways it was the right thing to do because they were both cooks and the cooks sat right up by the owner who sat at the head of the table. Robert always sat across from them, on the opposite side of the table and next to Mr. Bowman. Of course she sat by Bill so she could feel him up under the table which she did freely and happily after awhile. Bill squirmed in his seat at first, but after awhile he got used to it, even enjoyed it. Tit for tat. It was what he’d done to Norma at the weekly meeting that time they were in the booth… so long ago yet not long ago at all.
Bill could have done without the food. He would have been happy with just the Greek salad and he told Kalista so too. Then they were done eating and those who smoked, mostly the men, went off to smoke a cigarette. They and the females tended to their individual needs and afterward, they all went back to work.
