Due to Popular Demand…………………….Blog #53.

Hey everyone. Hope you are well. I (although completely knackered) am very well. I had a busy week so let’s get to it.

I had the Food Competition on Monday evening so it was an early morning at the resto in order to do the regular cleaning and do the orders before hopping in the car at 2pm and heading to the big smoke.  The Competition, (Discovered Culinary Competition) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzDxUD5OFA , has the same format as the T.V. show Chopped. 4 chefs go head to head in a black box competition meaning you get a box of ingredients that are unknown to you until exactly when the competition starts.  Than you have 20 mins to come up with an appetizer. At the end of the first dish, they judge you and they vote one chef off. Then there is the entrée course with the dessert course being last.  After each round, a chef is eliminated until there is a winner. I was really hoping to make it past the first round as A) I didn’t want to be the first kicked off and B) that’s a big drive for a 20min job and then drive home.  Well, I got lucky. One chef actually didn’t show up so no one was eliminated after the first course. But the whole thing is on a points system so we still need to perform. My ingredients were as follows: shrimp, honey mustard, asparagus and chorizo sausage for the appetizer round; the entrée round included blood orange, cocoa powder, pistachios and Libre-Terre Korean beef short ribs. The dessert box held apples, ginger snaps, passion fruit juice and Greek yoghurt. I made it up to the dessert course but now came the moment of truth. I was nervous since I don’t consider myself a pastry chef by any means. But on the other hand, I didn’t think I’d win so there wasn’t a lot of pressure on me. I wanted to just have fun with it. So, we come to the moment when they pull the lid off the plate (to show who the winner is) and bam!! It was mine. I couldn’t believe it. I won. My first competition in eight years and I pull of a victory. Then the interviews began. I did interviews for newspapers and TV. I was so happy. I drove home that night, got in at 3am and basically fell into bed. I was up at 8am Tuesday and back to work. You’re only as good as your last meal and today was a new day and it was time to get back to work. Ppl came into the resto talking about the competition! That’s the good think about having a marketer as a best friend. He gets the word out to the right ppl. I, and more importantly, Le Bon Marché were on the radio in several papers and even got to do an interview with CTV. This is great. I don’t have any money to advertise so winning a competition is the next best thing. Free publicity!!! Hahaha.  Now truth be told, I didn’t win the competition yet. I only won the one round. I go back on the 4^th or 5^th of March for the semi finals. The finals if I win, will be held on the 6^th of March at the CFRA show in Toronto at the Direct Energy Centre. Now here’s how different we (in the hospitality industry) are. If I win the whole thing, the grand prize is a trip to Spain to work in a 3 Michelin Start Restaurant under the Chef. How’s that. You work your butt off and the prize is to go work. Ha ha ha. How do I feel about this? I @#$%&*ing love it!!!! To work in a 3 Michelin Resto for a week would be a dream come true.   Now for my L’heure Verte menu.  Due to popular demand, I will feature my winning dishes during this event so make your reservations now.  So back to reality. Tuesday night we got a massive snow storm.  We had a reservation of 10 and I was afraid they would cancel.  Surprisingly they didn’t. And thankfully as well, as they were the only 10 we did that night. But they were great business men to serve. At the end of their meal, one man said to me. “I travel all over the world with my company and this restaurant is right up there with the best. The food was fantastic”, he continued on.  Man, what a high I was on. Wed and Thursday weren’t the greatest. I think the snow scared everyone away. Friday was a good day and then Saturday was upon us. We had a function for the Shriners at the Shrine Club for 75 ppl and the resto was booked up like crazy as well. We had a jazz dinner band in called Twilight. Apparently they have a big following. We were a little short staffed between the restaurant and the outside catering and Kyla was a tad nervous.  I sent Kyla and Gord over to the Shrine and Sol and I carried out the battle at the resto. Jake also volunteered to help out at the Shrine Club.  He and I have worked many functions together with Sheridan Catering so I knew that with his guidance at the front of the house and Kyla’s cooking at the back, we’d be in good shape. I wasn’t worried at all. Sometimes you work well with ppl and sometimes you don’t. This night, Sol and I worked perfectly in tandem. We busted out 53 ppl, which for us is a great night. I had asked a few friends to help me out so I want to say a big Thank You to Jake, Michelle, Darren, Ruth, Caleb and Patty for helping out. I didn’t get home till 3 am and that’s the way it should be on a Saturday night. After everyone was gone, I sat at the bar, sipping a Diet Pepsi just soaking in the moment. I got home, had a hot shower, watched T.V. till 4am and crashed. Sunday I relaxed, played with the kids and went to a meeting with Jake. Tomorrow it starts all over again…. the cleaning….the orders…..

 With that, I hope this week is another good one. Thanx for reading and I’ll blog at you next week.

Cheers, Rusty Chemise.

There by the Grace of God go I……… or do I? Blog #Rocket Ronnie Sheridan

Hello everyone. Well what a couple of weeks it’s been. A thousand pardons for not blogging last week but I had to go home to take care of some family matters.

Right, I left you last time with New Year’s behind us and I had a new positive attitude towards 2012. Well, adversity once again flew in the face of Glenn Sheridan. The first Tuesday back to work (Jan 3), we had a really good lunch. Dinner was well on its way when, lo and behold, I saw a fire truck pull up out front. Being a curious George, I went outside to see what was going on.  The store 2 doors down, was engulfed in flames!! And let me tell you it was raging! So I could tell that with all the fire trucks on main street, we were probably done for the night. I felt so bad for the owners. I mean, I’ve seen fires before but, you never know what the person has really lost. Yes insurance will cover “things” but pride, blood, sweat and tears can never be replaced. The fire brigade got the fire out pretty quick or so I thought. Kyla needed a ride home so I thought I’d take her home and come back and see what would happen to Le Bon Marché. When I got back, the entire upstairs of that business was a light. Now it was serious! I watched the brigade work diligently. My brother Ken was a fire fighter and is now a Fire Marshal (or what ever they’re called today) so it was neat to watch these guys doing their job. I understand a bit more now what Kenny went/ goes through. As I said before, there’s nothing like watching someone do what they do best. And these guys were amazing to watch. At 11:30 the fire seemed to be out and I got a hold of the Chief to ask if he thought LBM would be alright? He said we should be ok. So with that, I left to go home for the night.

Wednesday I came in at 10am only to find the fire burning again!!! I got a hold of a fire captain and asked if I could go in and look around LBM. He accompanied me inside and we did a walk through. To my astonishment, there was not a single bit of damage. No water or smoke had come in. What a relief I thought. Unfortunately, I couldn’t open Wed because of safety reasons. So I left to do a couple of business errands, had lunch with Jake then went home and played Legos with the kids. I built a plane FYI. Thursday morning, I was back in town and to my horror, the street was closed off. The side walks were also closed off too. We did two ppl. Here I was, lucky enough to escape damage and yet I was suffering anyway. I hit facebook and called ppl telling them we were still open. But it made no difference. Friday I went to a DIA Press release to find out what was happening. I had already talked to Ken, and I had a feeling that things weren’t going to be good for LBM. While at the press release, a reporter asked if she could have a few words. I didn’t know what to say. Jake and Amy are always on me for being negative, so I told it how it was. I was lucky to have escaped the fire but unless ppl came to support the downtown, we would be closing the doors. January is a bad month for the hospitality industry as it is. This could kill us. We did 5 on Friday.

Well, Saturday we opened up at 11am and ppl were waiting at the door! “We read your article” they said and “we’re here to lend support”. A City Counsellor was the first one in. Some of these people had been into the Resto and loved it and others were there just because they didn’t want to see us fold.  My favourite (which almost put me in tears), was a little old lady who said. “I want to support you but all I can afford is a bowl of soup”. I’m a pretty insensitive guy but that lady really hit me hard.  I was beside myself.  This is what you watch on T.V. Small town disaster and everyone pitching in to help. I was and am still, in awe at the ppl who came to my side in a time of need. One owner, who also lost her business to the fire, came in to support me even though she had lost everything. Wow!!! I refused to let her pay.  I just couldn’t.

So Sunday comes around and I had to do my family thing for a few days. Kyla was left running the show. I took off. Then another shocker hits me. Two Resto’s in town (good ones too) closed their doors and were gone. Wow just like that. I don’t think this person is in trouble, but it just goes to show you, you never know what someone’s going through. This is why I like this blog. Anyone who knows me will tell you. I tell it like it is and I don’t mince words. That has resulted in what I call, a low friend count. However, I am very honest and loyal to the friends I do have.

Friday I had to don on the whites again as Kyla needed a couple of days off. Wow my retirement from the kitchen lasted 12 days. Call me Troy Aikman ha ha ha. I had a great time being back in the kitchen but Kyla is back next week so back out front I go. Now I’m friends with some of the staff from the Japanese restaurant Kabuki House.  Anyway they called me up on Saturday and said they wanted to come to Le Bon Marché for drinks and dinner. I said sure, can you bring me some sushi? They agreed and brought me some over. So there we were, sitting in LBM, they were eating French food and I was eating Japanese food. Absolutely brilliant!!!  It’s great to be working in tandem to make North Bay a dynamic place to dine. We have the talent here. Ppl just need to realize it. I apologize for the winter menu being late. The fire and my family thing set me back a bit. I hope to have it out by next week. I wrote the “L’heure Verte” (coming Feb 7^th) and the Valentines Day menu’s today. We will also be having a poetry reading on Valentines evening as well. As you know, Le Bon Marché is “just a little bit different”. Do I ever get a day off you ask? Ya right!!!  Tomorrow I have to clean the Resto as per usual and do a post fire interview for the local paper then it’s off to Toronto for a food competition that I entered a few weeks ago. I’ll save the details for next week. Ahhh!!!  Under pressure and not enough sleep. I love it!!!! So having said all of the above, this past week was a good one.  We got a couple of parties coming up and I’m counting down the days to where we can open that big garage door and get really rocking!!!!

So with that, I’ll bid you adieu and look forward to seeing you at LBM. Have a great week everyone.

Cheers Rusty Chemise. 

You got 12 mins. Go. Blog #51

Happy New Year to everyone out there. Now I received millions and millions of fan letters as to why the last part of Blog #50 was encrypted. I wanted to see how many of you out there were reading it. Ok I can’t lie. I really don’t know why I did that. But if you put your curser over the white space and double left click it magically appears.

So let’s talk about the Resto. We had a pretty good week to end the Christmas season.  We were closed for a few days which gave me a much needed rest. I went to my family’s for the holidays and really did nothing but sleep.  I came back on the 29^th and had a really good day.  Friday was ok and then Sat was the big day and for the first time, I was nervous although I’m not sure why.  Maybe it was more excitement then nerves. We had to seatings and the menu was as follows. 

                      Seating one 6pm – 8pm

Escargot napoleon French snails, bacon, garlic, spinach finished with a chardonnay cream

Frenched Provimi Veal Chop with fondant potato and eggplant caviar with sauce bordelaise

Baby pears soaked in cognac with strawberry ice under a sugar cage

Coffee and Smoking Le Bon Marché Pralines.

Seating two 9-pm-12am

Fantasy of Goose Liver with quail egg, with a moat of Gewürztraminer Jelly and Melba toast

Rosette of Canadian scallops dressed courgette blossom, port truffle sauce.

Slow braised oxtail and fillet of beef on white bean ragout with shallot tart.

Peach Nellie Melba

Coffee and Smoking Le Bon Marché Pralines.

Includes one glass of champagne at Midnight. 

The menu was one that I’m very proud of. I learned a lot of the dishes in Britain. When I bought the ox tails, I could hear the cooks screaming bloody murder. I told Kyla and Sol that at the SaVoy we were given 12 mins to debone one tail. After showing them how,  I said, “your turn”. They started at it I could see them struggling but not saying anything.  By the last one, they had it down to 15 and 13 minutes respectively. That’s the great thing about making the dishes from scratch. I get to teach ppl what I’ve learned and they get to learn something that they probably would never see anywhere else.  The Foie Gras pralines are another favourite of mine. To cut into them and see the layers of green spinach, pate, the white part of the quail egg and lastly, the bright yellow of the yolk, oozing out ever so slightly is perfection!!!! It is a very difficult dish to create and it’s such a thrill to see it come together. I also found out that if you through a little dry ice into warm water and serve truffles on it the crowd goes wild!!!!  Ha ha ha. It’s the old Smoke On The Water vs. Lazy scenario. Oh well a happy guest is a happy guest.

Alexis and Ted were there to provide musical entertainment. They were even nice enough to learn my favourite Nora Jones song which they performed flawlessly. I had some dry ice left over from the dinner and put it at their feet so that it was kinda like an Adele meets Ozzy concert.  Ha ha ha. I was very happy with the night and we laid the first building block down for years to come.  Everyone had so much fun that we lost time and missed New Years and had to do our own count down at 12:01.

So that was our Holiday season rush. For our first time out, I was very happy and proud of the team. On a sad note though, the 31^st was Brendan’s last day. He is leaving for New Zealand in a few days. The poor bugger. I feel so bad for him. Tomorrow, I officially start as a server. And lucky me, we have a 16 booked for lunch.  Now I’m nervous!!!!! So that’s it from this side of Lilith until next week. The News Letter will also be out this week so if you want a copy, email me at: glenn@lebonmarche.ca and I’ll add you to the list.  Have a great week everyone and I’m wishing you all the best in 2012.

Cheers

Rusty Chemise.