The night I dropped a whole hotel banquet's worth of béarnaise on the line at 6:30 PM

I work as a saucier at a Marriott in Denver. Last Saturday during a 400 person wedding reception, I had a 5 gallon pot of béarnaise slide right off the stove because I left a rag under it. It went EVERYWHERE, all over the burners, the floor, my chef pants. The exec chef just stood there staring at me for maybe 10 seconds. I had to remake the whole batch from scratch in 20 minutes while the servers were screaming for pickup. Used cold butter chunks to cool it down fast and prayed it didn't break. It held. Anyone else had a sauce disaster that nearly cost them a job?

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1 Comment

gray_patel16d ago

Oh man, that's brutal! I once knocked a full cambro of hollandaise off the counter at a brunch service and it splattered all over the pastry station's cakes. The pastry chef didn't talk to me for a week, and I had to borrow eggs from the breakfast line to start over. At least your béarnaise held together in the end, that's a win in my book.