So I am lucky in comparison to many other interns in that I am easily within walking distance of my work; it only takes about 15 minutes to get there. It is located in Cabinteely Village, a small stretch of shops that is located in a very nice area surrounded by houses. For my first day, Daniel brought me in at 11:00 am and introduced me to the owners Niamh (pronounced Neev) and Katie. They are quite young, only in their twenties I think, and before Urbun they owned a small baking company for a few years selling baked goods at local markets, so the café is a big upgrade. I didn’t really know what my first day of work was going to be like but I thought it would be short and would consist of me observing how things operate. It kind of started out like this with me introducing myself to all the other staff and watching things for a little bit, but then Niamh started asking me to do things, very simple to begin with. For instance, the first thing I did in the restaurant was slice a lemon into wedges. Things quickly escalated though and after about 30 minutes I was making sandwiches for the lunch rush, which luckily on Monday is very calm. While although some menu items are always available, it changes every day and isn’t finalized until around 11:00 am that day when Katie prints off the new menu (this happens every day). After the lunch rush died down around 2:30 pm I took a lunch break and you will all be glad to hear that I get free lunch. I can make myself basically anything to eat using whatever is available at the time (which is a lot). After lunch, I start working on making food for the next day. This includes making soup, traditional Irish soda bread, the dry mix for scones, at least one frittata and a few other things that change from day to day. I ended work on both days around 7:00 pm.
I must say that I am really enjoying the people I work with. The entire restaurant is quite the melting pot too. The dish washer Rafael (Rafi for short) is from Brazil and is still learning English so there is a minor language barrier. One of the other cooks is Fabrizio (fabi for short) and he was born in Italy but grew up in Australia so he has an Australian/Irish accent. One of the hostesses (her name escapes me right now) is Canadian and is married to a true Irishman; she is working on getting dual citizenship. Niamh works primarily in the back while Katie handles the front more, but both of them work together throughout the day. I spend a lot of the day talking with everyone about differences in food culture and how things are either different or the same in the states. It is incredibly interesting and I plan on making little posts about the things I learn after work every day. For instance, wheat bread is generally called “brown bread” at least were I work, to measure out a teaspoon or a tablespoon you use and actual teaspoon (a spoon for tea) or a tablespoon (a larger spoon served on the table).
Something that I think Niamh and Katie are excited about is having an America who can bake because they want me to help them out with lots of different recipes. On Tuesday, I made Chocolate chip cookies using the nestle recipe from memory, but you would be surprised how hard it is to find chocolate chips here and the ones I did find were not even nestle. Katie has been wanting to make more things with peanut butter and is therefore really excited I am here because Americans are much bigger into peanut butter. If you have any suggestions on what I should teach them how to make please let me know. I plan on doing snickerdoodles soon because they had never even heard of them. It seems like they are eager to have me help make new items for the menu and as the internship moves on I will probably get more and more liberty to do so.
My work schedule is not entirely set so there is still some work that needs to be done on that but I am working this Friday and Sunday. I will post my next blog entry after Sunday to let you all know how the brunch rush goes, which was apparently crazy last Sunday.
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