Pure Food and Wine II...

Sunday, December 3

Into the kitchen again at Pure Food and Wine. It was hard to go in on a Sunday afternoon after a long week, but it turned out to be a very nice experience. Chef Neal gave me and the other interns a variety of tasks, from making a prickly pear juice for sake martinis (they only serve sake and drinks with sake at Pure), prepping herbs and veggies, trying to make a new vinaigrette, etc. The chef is very conscious of giving each one of us a variety of tasks, explaining them, monitoring them and always has time for questions. They have a lot of interns working there and some graduates are asked to continue on in positions and stay on because they really enjoy working with Neal and are given chances to progress, try new ideas, etc. At 5 pm every day, they have the tradition of a family meal with all the staff and Neal and a few others make a special meal for all staff, and a few items as tests. It's a really nice chance for everyone to sit down together and eat, and for the chef to make some announcements about new items, etc.

At service time, chef Neal's tradition is to put out a few items on the service counter to make it cosy, for aesthetics and for good luck like a bronze statue of an Indian goddess that he was given, a plant, and small stones to hold the orders. It's very zen like. Before service, he also has the sous chefs serve on a plate small tastings of every sauce that they are serving so he can review them. He has bulletin board in the kitchen filled with things to note for staff such as menu or ingredient changes and has articles or explanations of why they are using certain ingredients such as hatcho miso or the change to a new sea vegetable supplier. The platings are absolutely beautiful and are truly like works of art. The sous chefs are given the opportunity to be creative and put their unique touches to the dishes, in particular with the use of sauces in squirt bottles. Also, they are encouraged to constantly create new things and improve. At the end of the evening, we could try one dish each and I tried the seaweed salad and Yuki the new salad with satsuma oranges. Other staff joined us at the bar where we were eating, and then the chef, and it was a really nice way to end the evening and our shifts.