# No Clue for the Clueless



## chefross (May 5, 2010)

This past Saturday I prepared and served a buffet for our local Sportsman's club. 
In years past the dinner was cooked by members but because of various circumstances none of them were available this year. 
The person in charge was frantic and found me on Facebook. 
I was handed the main ingredient list but no menu. (Smirk here.) 
I more or less created the menu from the ingredients listed. There was ham roll ups, shrimp cocktail, layered Taco dip, stuffed mushrooms, deviled eggs, Rumaki, and a cheese tray. Dinner was hand carved prime rib, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and cake. 
This was an easy party, but the insane part was the shear amount of food leftover. 
No guarantee. 
225 tickets sold, 
146 showed.
I cooked 11 ribeyes and had 6 leftover. I had obscene amounts of shrimp, cheeses, sauces, deviled eggs ect. leftover.
The ingredient list itself was so overblown that had I not mentioned this to the purchaser, and made adjustments the amount would have been more.

Now back to the story. Apparently I blew these people away. 
Mind you this is the same, exact menu they have been preparing for years. 
I got a standing ovation and people coming up to me to say that's the best prime rib they ever had in the 34 years of this dinner.

WTH...it begs the question what were they eating before?
They paid me, but expected my helper to donate her time. Yeah right, like I'm going to ask someone to bust their ass to prep, serve, and clean up a banquet for free. 
Fund raiser or not the kitchen crew should be compensated. So I did the right thing and shared my pay with the one person who helped me. Yup just me and my friend  for 146 people buffet.
No big deal.....to me.


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

Heh, 146 prime rib covers with one assistant? Yeah, I think you could afford to pay them pree good. lol
How ya be Chef Ross, Ive been travellin a lot during the last 6 months. Been a weird year and a half for all of us I think.


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## brianshaw (Dec 18, 2010)

That’s an absurd assumption on their part… but why wasn’t that discussed beforehand?

what became of the leftovers… they could have auctioned those roasts to make a few more dollars!

Turnout at these kind of events seems unpredictable. Too bad they can’t ascertain earlier who bought tickets as a donation versus intending to actually participate.


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## chefross (May 5, 2010)

Yeah, it turns out I heard the real numbers. 135 tickets sold and 109 showed. They knew the amount the day of but never cared to tell the cook.
They did sell the fully cooked ribeyes for $50.00 apiece. As for the rest of the food? Who knows.
Hey back Meez....


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

Brings back memories of “ mandated parental volunteering” at my kids high school. First one I did was a grad breakfast, showed up at 7 as required— no food to work with , Sycko didn’t really acknowledge the order, and it showed up at 11:30– we had grad breaking for lunch.

The next one was an annual back to school buffet for staff. Eerily like Chef Ross’s experience—pile of food is delivered, 6 “volunteers” with no cooking experience looking at me. Cooking the food was no problem, just had nothing to serve it on. The “ organizer” (Koff koff) had blown a bundle on rental tables, chairs and chair covers, flowers, wine glasses, but no chafers,, no serving bowls/ platters, and definitely no carving station or even a cutting board, sheet pans, or pots.
After that I “ volunteered” setting up and taking down bingo tables for the rest of the year...


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