Aisling's Summer Diary

Chapter 17 | Kitchen Goddess

If we were going to win this bet, the first thing our hotel needed was a fresh image:  Goodbye Sea Crest Retirement, hello Shark’s Tooth Surf Shack!  I have to hand it to Siobhan—it was a brilliant idea!  Now all we have to do is get the word out!

7:30 p.m.

I’d more or less consigned myself to the fact that if I was going to figure out this cooking business, I’d have to do it on my own.  Round three with the bread, so!  But midway through the first batch, my phone rang.  It was the head chef at the restaurant in town!  He’d had some sort of trouble with his assistant and wanted to know if I was still interested!  YESSSS!  Of course I was!  And I could start first thing tomorrow evening! 

I was super excited—a PROPER internship in a top notch kitchen!  Not that I’d ever thought I’d be going in for something like this, but hey, it beats scrubbing toilets!  Should I mention it to Siobhan?  Nah.  She probably wouldn’t like the idea of me making my own executive decisions.  I’ll tell her after I become the second greatest chef on the beach!

Tuesday 6 June

1 p.m.

To really set things off at the Surf Shack, we decided to organize a grand opening bash!  OK, so we were nabbing Celia’s idea, but our party was going to be wayyy different.  Instead of carrot juice and hummus (yick), we’d serve REAL party food—hamburgers and milkshakes and pizza!  We’d play chilled-out surf rock tunes and dance under the stars on the beach!  And everyone would be welcome—the surf crew and the footballers, locals and tourists!  Even Celia (if she’s not too big to come.)  That is hospitality Surf Shack style!

3:30 p.m.

After lunch (grilled cheese a la Aisling), Ali, Siobhan, and I hopped on our bikes and headed to the village to tack up flyers uncle Ciaran had helped us make.  We didn’t have very much time to advertise, so we basically plastered the entire main street with posters.  No chance anyone’ll miss seeing them!  

I got so carried away with the cellotape, I completely lost track of time.  And now it was ten to four!  Where had the afternoon gone?!  I had to get to the restaurant, or my new boss was going to flip!  Even over the phone, you could tell he was a no-nonsense sort of guy, and I did NOT want to start things off on the wrong foot.  I told Siobhan and Ali I was really sorry, but I had to go—I’d explain later—and spun off.  They weren’t too happy with me leaving them to put up the rest of the flyers, but this internship will payoff big time in the long run.  I just wish I could’ve told them so they wouldn’t think I was flaking!

4:03 p.m.

I burst into the kitchen, out of breath and a bit flustered, to find the chef taking an inventory for that evening’s menu.  He didn’t even look up.  Apparently I was a whole three minutes late!  Was he serious?!  It was only THREE minutes!  AH-HA, but those three minutes make all the difference—the difference between a perfectly cooked salmon fillet and a dry one, a crusty baguette and a rock-hard one, and most importantly happy customers and NO customers.  Point taken.  

I slipped on an apron and had a gander around the kitchen.  It was immaculate—every surface shimmering stainless, every utensil in its own little slot.  It was mesmerizing and more than a little intimidating!  The chef (who might have been a drill sergeant in a past life) rattled through his “Kitchen Rules”—the first of which (you guessed it) I’d already broken.  There was one rule that capped them all, and that is HE makes the rules.  A kitchen dictatorship.  Brilliant, I thought. 

Then he handed me an onion.  There’s like FIFTEEN different ways to chop an onion!  Or so he said, and he wanted me to show him one.  Now—could’ve been the onions, but I thought I was gonna burst out crying!  I had no idea this was going to so intense!  Wish me luck!

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