Whats in the enclosed and locked cabinet? Almost looks like spices.

Seems like that would need more than 24 people. But you mentioned having cleaning people, so I guess things like that help out a lot.

Do you actually cook very much any more, or do you mainly do manager stuff?

the cage in the walk-in has a bunch of naked juice smoothies in it.  the cages in the kitchen have all kinds of stuff, spices, booze, everyone's tool boxes, attachments for our huge mixer, a kitchenaid mixer, stick blenders of various sizes, squeeze bottles, other various smallwares.  

we have a stewarding department that does all of the cleaning, food running, and fetching of things.  if we need plates, bowls, shot glasses, etc i just get on the radio and ask for whatever and they bring it.  if i need equipment cleaned or the floor swept and mopped, i get on the radio.  speed racks?  get on the radio.

i don't do much cooking these days and per the union contract management isn't supposed to cook at all.  i order the food, sometimes put it away, make prep sheets, go to meetings, supervise the cooks, check out the various parties and make sure everything is set up right.

and now I have to go to the store to make shanks or short ribs

That is totally impressive. Both the facilities and the volume you do.

my kitchen did $51 million in revenue last year for a profit of $36 million.

we did a duo plated dinner tonight.  sous vide ny strip and sous vide butter poached lobster tail, parsnip puree, roasted baby rainbow carrots, and sauteed spinach for 550 people. we don't do the stereotypical shitty banquet food.

shanks all the way.

 
That's impressive too! Are you the E Chef?

nope, i just help run the banquet kitchen.

Ok so you cook like that for your job/career.

Do you cook "normal food' at your house when your off?

Or, do you cook like that for EVERY meal you eat?

cook them in butter and cream, put them in a blender and add some of the butter/cream mixture and puree until smooth.  its best to run the puree through a fine sieve or tamis. season with salt and white pepper and add a little dessert spice (clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.) if you'd like.

it depends on what the wife wants, but its usually steaks, grilled chicken, scallops, shrimp, grilled veggies, pork tenderloin, polenta, risotto.

Who made the macaroons?

Why the hell does fancy food always have tiny ass portions? I didn't want "fun size" I wanted food.

Meh.  

This is all I need OP, and I am almost never hungry.

we have a pastry shop that does all of that sweet stuff.

i don't know what your previous experiences are, but when we do plated meals they're at least 3 courses, if not 4 or 5.

Want me to show them how to pipe them nicer and make them shiny and smooth?

 

nah, there's a reason why the pastry shop is all by itself.

thats awesome! it's funny I love working a restaurant kitchen, I like the challenge of putting out my best work, again and again as quick as I can, it's done amaxing things for my skills. it helps having an awesome group of people in the kitchen and out on the floor a well, this is the first restaurant I've ever worked in where the kitchen crew and the FOH crew get along and like each other.

May I have some soup?

holy hell am i hungry now

Folks like you give me faith in this country. People who are simply at the top of their field, who can charge what they want, because the customer knows damn well that it's worth it! Carry on, good sir.

my saucier is making 5 gallons of conch chowder tomorrow.

having 1,000 rooms right on the beach and over 200,000 square feet of convention space helps.

Well my wife and I have been meaning to take a weekend getaway and stay at the Diplomat for about a year now....may need to get on it now after seeing all these pics! Plus I'm only like 10 minutes away lol

Can you make me a ham sandwich?

i think so.  do speck and prosciutto count?

then yes, i can make a sandwich.  there's a sandwich pic on page 1, but its house-cured pork belly, not speck or prosciutto.

pic dump:

Remind me not to check your updates before I've had breakfast, since I was already hungry before I clicked, and am now really famished, and I now want all of that delicious-looking food and not a lame bowl of cereal.  

What is the corn-on-the-cob coating? It looks like parmesan cheese, but I know that can't be right?
And what are the squares of what looks like raw salmon on the white "spoons"?

Also, your fish pics reminded me of my unprepared foray into "fine" dining...way back many years ago I was a sheltered small-town 16 yr old who was lucky enough to go on a school trip to Paris. Paris! Our first day there, jet-lagged and starving, pretty much fresh off the plane and a long trek through the Metro to drop off luggage at a small hotel, our French teacher took our little group out to a nice French bistro for an early "dinner" (really breakfast for our inner time settings) and, completely exhausted and defeated by the French menu, I ordered fish, hoping for a simple filet. What I got was an ENTIRE FISH, staring up at me from the plate with a cloudy cooked eyeball and gaping mouth.  

I had no idea how to handle it or what to do, and watched in misery as all my classmates ate their meals, identifiable and easily handled slices of meat, etc,, while I stared at that stupid fish not knowing how to get at the meat properly. Attempting to cut into the side, where I estimated part of a "fillet" should come from, netted me nothing but some flakes of flesh and a mouthful of tiny bones. (I had never been fishing, and had not the faintest idea how to bone a fish, let alone how to de-bone a cooked fish.) It was a horrible non-meal, made worse by my being a self-conscious teenager who was too intimidated to ask for help and lacking the self-confidence to order something else (besides being hampered by a language barrier and just flat-out exhausted and overwhelmed to boot!). It's a funny memory to me now, but it was not a good moment for me then.

So what is the proper way to handle a future fine dining establishment order of fish, if it comes out staring at me from the plate? (Besides singing a quiet little chorus of "Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads" under my breath while I stare back at it? )  I understand I am supposed to just cut the head off somewhere around the "neck" and push it to a side of the plate, while I then make some magical motion that pulls the entire little fish skeleton out, leaving me with a delicious fish dinner, but how is that done correctly? Hmmm...off to Google and YouTube, to see if someone has already provided an instructional video.

Thanks for the pics! And the trip down memory lane!

The corn is grilled them brushed with tarragon aioli and dusted with cotija cheese.

The stuff on the spoons is compressed watermelon infused with mojito, with goat cheese mousse and micro greens.  To compress fruit you use a cryovac machine and suck all the air out. You can add an ounce or 2 of liquid to infuse flavors (rum and pineapple, do it).

Those fish were for a carving station.  You can pull some of the bones out from the top after its cooked.  For service they take the skin off and flake portions off the top fillet, pull the bones out, then serve the other fillet.

Thank you for the answer. I swear "watermelon" was my 2nd guess, but it was a bit too compact/solid/red and the blob of white creamy substance on the top kept reading as some sort of dill/aioli/tartar sauce to my uneducated eyes. The goat cheese mousse accent sounds delicious. I would have never thought of the cryovac/infuse-it-with-liquor that way sort of thing...that will really step up my next party's vodka-saturated/soaked watermelon standard a notch!

And I do like the idea of a carving station where a skilled person does all the real prep work for me, the hungry consumer; unfortunately I did not have that option presented to me back in that small Parisian bistro way back in the dark ages of the mid/late 80s...those darn Europeans just assumed everyone knew how to eat a "real" fish properly. (I did work for a catering company in my college days, but they relied on a tenderloin station and a baked seafood/crab salad type of dish stations for their fancier get-ups...not once did they ever do a whole cooked fish carving station, thank heavens, since I am pretty sure some cosmic god of "funny" would have stuck me on that thing having to stare at fish heads all night while I had to try to carve them up and serve the guests!)

Anyway, your "kitchen" pics are a cool reminder of a high speed version of a life I got to experience just a taste of many years ago...thank you! Moar delicious food pics when you get the time, please!

we do a number of carving stations.  whole tenderloin, brisket, churrascaria (skirt steak, sausages, etc.), steamship round, prime rib, whole hogs, pork loin, whole snapper and grouper, pernil (mojo pork leg), turkey, salmon en croute, whole striploins.  other action stations we do include pasta stations, cuban sandwiches, risotto station, guacamole, elote (the corn pictured above), wagyu/crab cake/blackened chicken sliders, oysters, mac and cheese, salads made to order.

That all looks awesome !  

Steam corn in husk with silk for 25 minutes then pull the silk off and grill the corn with the kernels directly on the grill grates. Steaming the corn first makes removing the silk way easier (comes off in one big clump) and shortens the time needed on the grill.

Hey OP, how come the food is always cold at catered events like you do? How long does a dish sit after it leaves the heat until I am stuffing it in my piehole?

if the food is cold it was probably in a hot box that didn't work properly.  they're supposed to plug in and have a heating element, but they don't always work well.  we put sternos in the boxes and then listen to the banquets servers bitch about the pans be too hot for their sissy hands.  either toughen up or smarten up and use folded napkins to handle the pans.

It's so very Stainless...

Maybe try and break up the monotony with some granite?

But seriously, damn! I can't even imagine how you can cook that volume of food and have it all turn out so delectable!

Granite?  Hell no. Cooks are like Marines, they'll break and screw anything.

OP a very nice operation, I am assuming you have a core staff of experienced and loyal people? Are you dreading the crush of
Thanksgiving, that's when the few unprofessional people always ask for time,and take it no matter what. Best of luck with the coming
season.
 P.S. Are you in Miami Beach?