Work first! So the week before the Olympics work was dead, every one had been given full time hours, but no one was coming into the restaurant. This meant a lot of people getting cut early, which was annoying for everyone as we were earning an extra $5 an hour. We needn't have worried because when the opening ceromony started on Friday, the city suddenly filled with thousands of new people, I have no idea were they had all been hiding for the last week, as the busiest day in Vancouver airports history had been on the Saturday before. Friday night we had one of the busiest nights in the restaurants history. On Saturday we broke the night sales record. On Saturday we broke the day sales record. Normally my station (Appatizers) can easily be run by one person, and you have time to help out on other stations. But on that night we had 3 people running it at one point, and we still couldn't keep up with all of the orders coming through. Sunday saw the first of Canadas hockey matches, and Valentines day coincide creating the highest sales in the restaurants history. After that it settled down a bit, but we were still running a full line of staff for every hour the restaurant was open and struggling to keep on top of everything. If it calmed down a bit, you had to go out the back and help the day team to prepare the food for that evening. It was at this point I started to get pretty ill, a cold, saw throat and blocked ears while pulling an 8 hour day with no break was not much fun. Normally I would have taken the day off to try and kick it. But the money was so good that no one, including me was letting illness stand in there way. In the second week of the Olympics Canada continued to do well in pretty much all of the events, most importantly, the hockey, only loosing to the US. Whenever Canada played a hockey game you could be sure the restaurant would be full, and everyone would be ordering appetizers (hot wings, an chilli chicken) so my station would get a pounding. On the second week Joeys transformed at night into 'Bosco' as the Russians had payed Joeys a lot of money to let them use the restaurant in the evening. You had to have a Russian passport to get in, and this would secure free food for the evening. They had imported a load of Russian chefs to cook alongside the Joeys cooks to provide both Russian and Canadian (... really American) food. The chefs from Russia were all professional hotel chefs, so the food they created was simple, but looked stunning. I've stolen some of night sues photos of facebook so you can see what kind of stuff they were making:-
Joeys horse covered in Bosco Stickers.
Corder "Expo'ing" and getting a cuddle of a server.
Knowler working pans. The best bit of working pans is setting the oil on fire to "give the meat extra flavour". This station is the most fun, but fooking hard work.
What the servers had to wear. Not only is Tim a sues chef, kick boxing instructor, and award winning chocolate chef, he is also a dab hand with a camera.
Food waits to go out.
Caviar.
Not actually a desert, but a Pickled Herring Salad.
Another Salad.
Salmon.
The Olympics finished this Sunday with Canada playing the US in the hockey final, easily the most important medal in the winter Olympics for the countries who take an active part in it. We were all called into work early to help set up for the day. The game started at mid day, and we opened at 10, and people were already waiting to get in at 9am. The restaurant soon filled, the best part for us was that people weren't really ordering food, they were just drinking, so we had it easy in the kitchen. Canada stayed 2-1 up for almost the entire match, and then the US scored in the final 10 seconds of overtime. We had all left the kitchen to watch. The funny part is when the US scored, everyone in the restaurant looked shocked and put there heads in there hands, while all the cooks just laughed. Not that it mattered because in overtime Canada scored the golden goal and won. After our shift we all sat in the bar and had our free post Olympic drink, while raiding a box filled with Russian Olympic clothing (I now have an awesome t-shirt with the Russian Olympic mascot shooting a rifle, I like to think he's saying "O HAI! I'M KILLIN' PEOPLE WHO SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE GOVERMENT! LULZ") The TV's in the bar showed shots of downtown Vancouver. The streets were filled with thousands of people celebrating the hockey win and the closing of the Olympics. Joe was out in it some were and later told me it took him 15 minutes to walk half a block. I took a bit of a detour to get home, and it still took me 20 minutes longer than normal. The atmosphere was amazing, every car was honking its horn and people were waving flags high fives all round, etc. Normally I hate all the kind of sports based back slapping bull shit, but its Canada, and they won the final, and got the most Olympic golds for a hosting country ever. Cooommmeee on!
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