Christmas in Vegas Baby!!!
Christmas Eve Banquet Nightmare!
Mandalay Bay Banquet Ice Nightmare!
We catered to a Xmas party once for all the grande hefe (big bosses) of Nike!
Everything was going smoothly with canapés being passed around to 3000 people in our 600 thousand square foot banquet room. Then about half an hour before the main buffet and service area was unveiled, we had a slight technical issue!
Entire menu was sorted out and back ups made, all in the back up kitchen, just behind the banquet room, so all we need now is the showpiece for the sushi bar where the chefs would put some of the sushi onto the Nike swoosh ice carving.
So, me and 3 other sous chefs start rolling the ice carving out of the banquet kitchen (which was about a 5 minute walk to the banquet room), make it into the lift, then get to the banquet room. I guess nobody thought about the weight and physics of ice, slightly melting over a 10-20 minute period of being out of its comfort zone (or should I say freezing zone).
So, we rolled it again out of the lift at a snails pace, when disaster struck! One of the wheels of the trolley buckled and the ice carving decided to “swoosh” its way onto the floor! The strength of 4 sous chefs couldn’t stop it sliding off that trolley and onto the floor. My only excuse is that, that was a bloody long weekend with 16 hour prep days, and all the chefs were knackered and we probably had slow reaction times lol. Note to chefs (try not to celebrate a mise en place day by going out on the lash, the night before the banquet) lol.
The swoosh end part was smashed into football sized pieces, so that went in the trash! Would have been good for the bfg if he wanted a cocktail!
The base of it though was still kind of like a rectangle so we used that part. Thankfully the whole ice carving deal was supposed to be a surprise, as in the host of the Nike banquet never knew we were going to add an ice carving of a Nike swoosh! To this day, I don’t think he ever knew the story of what happened behind the scenes that night.
Anyways, the night went smooth and we received great feedback on the food, plus we all got a complimentary free Nike wristband from the host. Yay 🥳 lol.
Sabotage Chef
Unique and bizarre moments like this and the long shifts created a forged relationship between our crew, even though we had around 60 chefs (garde manger and hot kitchen) there was always a sense of “I’ve got your back man” when the shit hit the fan. Thankfully I’ve almost always been around a good crew, I’ve heard of the stories of sabotage, but that always seemed to came from the elite fine dining restaurants. You’ve got your fine dining restaurants then you’ve got your restaurants that are on the verge of getting a Michelin star. I’ve heard from a couple of chefs that experienced sabotage, mainly for that commis or cdp to get in the head chefs good books or try and make themselves look better to the crew. One story, was when they all had their 5pm smoke break, a fellow cdp was the last one out to smoke, and turned the hob onto a high heat which burnt a sauce, said chef was adamant that he pulled the sauce to the side and it was on a low heat.
Cheating and Consequences
Then there are sneaky customers, one other dodgy moment was when I was working the buffet in Caesars Palace, a woman complained about a bolt being found in her meal, as always the casino gave them a free meal, then a free meal at the gourmet restaurant and a free room!
Over the next 2 days, security looked into it with the eye in the sky, Vegas casinos have more cameras than the FBI’s classified vault! Turned out that the woman had the bolt with her in her purse and planted it into her plate of food, which then equaled a lifetime ban from entering Caesar’s again. I guess they configure that with the facial recognition technology. In the 70’s when they caught people counting cards or cheating, they would take them to a hidden room in the lower floor and say they have a bonus for them and will need their I.D to get them situated in an executive suite for the night (just to get them to the dodgy room). Then the security guards would hold their hands onto the table and smash their hands with a hammer. So this would let other casinos know that anyone with messed up hands, would be dodgy or known cheaters.
Vegas baby Vegas!
Written By Chef Brad Roe
