That Happened

I'm tired. In the past few weeks, my internship at Nopi has come and gone, and my time in London with it. London was great, I can't wait to visit again. Nopi was terrifying, educational, grueling, overwhelming, fun, and a million other things all at once. It is easily the most stressed and awkward I have ever been in a kitchen. It was also an opportunity to make some of my favorite food in the world with some really great people. On reflection I don't really know why it was so stressful. I certainly should be able to chop vegetables and put things into a food processor at this point. But while the processes might have been familiar, the scale, environment, time pressure, and ramifications of the work I was doing were all so far beyond my comfort zone. This wasn't puttering around in my kitchen prepping dinner for friends. There weren't instructors watching over my shoulder as I cooked a 'serves 6-8' sized recipe for Ballymaloe student lunch. This was full on, needed for a 60 cover (on a really slow day) lunch service for paying customers, work. It also turns out, for me, just standing on your feet for eight or nine hours a day is surprisingly tiring regardless of what you're doing.

I'm really happy I got the chance to be in the kitchen at Nopi. Would I be happy doing restaurant service full time after being there? Honestly, I don't know. I'm sure at this point I could do it. I just don't know if I want to do it. I wasn't even on the line at Nopi and I was stressed. Facing a busy Saturday night over one of their grills or fryers or pulling a double lunch and dinner service there still sounds kind of terrifying.

The quick recap of my past two weeks, as best I can remember:
~24 liters aubergine dip
~20 liters avocado dip
~4 liters spring onion dip
~12 liters jerusalem artichoke puree
~6 liters tomato concasse
~20 octopuses
~20 kgs pulled venison
~200 cracked eggs
~50 kgs courgette fritters
~20 sheet trays bruleed squash
~10 kgs pistachio sambal
~150 skinned blood oranges
~many, many trimmed/chopped/diced/sliced/blanched vegetables

Burrata with blood oranges,
aubergine with tamarind yogurt,
sweet potato with aubergine dip.
I made (some of) those.
Photo credit: Kate Gordon

Twice cooked baby chicken,
courgette fritters with cardamom yogurt,
octopus with jerusalem artichoke puree,
truffled polenta chips.
Made some of those, too.
Photo credit: Kate Gordon

However I may feel about my time at Nopi, I have to say that their staff is incredible. They were all super helpful, understanding, and fun to be around. It's all serious business when service is in full swing, but the mornings when things were quiet and everyone was chill will stick in my mind for a while to come. Some of my favorite moments in the kitchen were when the chefs were giving me spoonfuls of some of their sauces or ingredients or just grabbing unusual items out of the pantry for me to taste, explaining how it was made and how it gets used. There's obvious passion there for everything on the menu. It may be easy to forget when you're elbow deep in a sink full of raw octopus, but the food at Nopi is beautiful and the people who make it really give a shit that it turns out that way. Huge thanks to Angelo and Scully for letting me into their kitchen, and all the chefs on the line for fighting the good fight.

So what's next? Vacation to start with. I'm in the Netherlands for a few days, looking at tulips and canals and bicycles. I think trips to France and Italy are in order, then maybe for the first time this year I'll end up back in the USA. For now I'm not planning anything out more than a few days in advance, just chilling and seeing the sights. I really miss all my friends (yes, even you) from back home, Ireland, and London alike. I miss my house, my gym, my local farmers market, my video games, and the comforts of all of those things. But I would be remissed if I didn't take a little time to be a foodie in Europe after coming all this way. Okay, e-hug over. See you later, friends.