2 years in London (part 1)

I will be honest about this, this is really the beginning of my career, and it was hard. Not just the cooking, but the life style as well. i say this is the beginning of my career, because it had the biggest influence on my current style.
I worked in a two Michelin starred restaurant, one of the best in London. I started at the bottom, making breads, and petite fours. Arrive at 7.00 in the morning, and start running, it was push push push for 5 hours until the start of Lunch service, it did not matter how many were booked, i was always in the shit, i had to bake 5 types of breads, 6 types of petite fours, make tuilles, and and help the pastry chef get ready for service because he was a complete idiot. How the hell was this guy running a pastry section in a 2 star restaurant. I was stuck in a hard place, help him get out of the shit, and let my section go down, or do my work, and he would go down, and then i get bollocked for not helping him, come on, i have only been working there for 3 weeks.
after about 1 1/2 months of this, one afternoon stands out to me. I sent up a tray of petite fours, and abou t20 minutes later the manager comes down, and passes to the head chef something small, he looks at me adn shows a small metal tart shell, (used to bake the filo for the pink praline tarts). He then passes it to the executive chef.

'What the fuck are you thinking, that is a fucking commis chef mistake, and you want to be a chef de partie, are you fucking happy, could you fucking eat that. Think your so fucking good don't you'
'No chef, sorry, wont happen again' i replied.
'I fucking hope it wont happen again, if it does you can fuck off'

I didn't know what to think. i was upset that i had let it go to the dining room, i was embarrassed, i was working 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, for what? to cop that?
The next day, i look at hte situation, i deserved it, we work those hours to produce a perfect experience for the customer, and who was i to stuff it up for the rest of the team.
After 3 months, the pastry chef resigned, thank god for that, i had had enough of him, he was so slow, and then i was asked to take over his role.
'Absolutely', it was what i was after, to start moving up in the kitchen.
Now this was an experience, i had not done a great deal of pastry work, but really wanted to learn. It got me going, It was not as hard as the Bread section, or maybe i was adapting more, but i started to get more organised, then after a week, on one busy service, the first pastry order came in, and i was determined to get it right, the pre dessert went up, and it took me about 25minutes to get the plates ready, for some reason i was running in circles, just couldn't fininsh the plate ups, the exec chef turned to me, and asked politely where the desserts were, i said up in 2 minutes chef. He turned to the sauce chef, and i overheard him say, i hope we dont have another ............. here.
That hurt me, I would have preferred a barrage of abuse, but comparing me to the previous pastry chef, i was embarrassed. Fuck me i was angry about it, but what could i do? I decided then that I needed to work harder, and prove him wrong.

to be continued.........