One Day in the Life of a Restaurant

By the end of the day, the rotating staff of six cooks behind the line will have produced 111 steak frites, 90 French onion soups, 88 Balthazar bar steaks, 69 burgers, 68 omelets, 62 goat-cheese tarts, 56 chicken paillards, 51 chicken clubs, 48 seared salmon fillets, 46 heirloom-tomato salads, 45 sides of fries, 44 chicken-liver-and-foie-gras mousses, 43 duck confits, 40 grilled dorades, 39 steaks au poivre, 39 eggs Norwegian, 38 steak tartare appetizers (plus 16 entrees), 32 escargot, 32 moules frites, 29 grilled trout — the list, pulled from the P.O.S. terminals, goes on and on and on. The volume benefits the whole staff. Tonight, the waiters earn $345 in tips, the runners $207 and the busboys $172, which does not include the $5 an hour Balthazar pays them.

Our pal Willy Staley has a really lovely story in the New York Times Magazine giving readers a behind-the-scenes look at Balthazar, a popular French brasserie in New York. Three hundred reservations in one night is considered “mellow!” One of the butchers preps 150 steaks in 30 minutes! The thing that’s unclear to me in the above is whether the tip money is what each of the workers earn, and not what will be divided among them (with 300 dinner reservations, it must be what they each earn).

Photo: Ralph Daily

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