A SWISS CHEF'S CAREER: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE YUMMY (11)

CHAPTER 11

Acapulco Princess Hotel

was considered  # I  Hotel in the world in the 1970s

                        I was offered the Executive Sous Chef position at the Acapulco Princess Hotel.  Whenever you get  offered a new and better job in your career you are feeling very happy, excited and eager to start. But there is also dreading the task of the resigning, facing your bosses, coworkers and friends. A task easy to accomplish  but not when you where treated well and respectful the entire time you worked for them. The Houston Warwick Hotel, Mr Warwick, and Teddy Stauffer where great to me for the last 2 Years and believe me I felt bad and like a trader when I resigned. To my surprise they all congratulated me for my new job and wished  me all the best in my future endeavor. My friend Heinz decided to return to Bern, Switzerland. Xaver left for Brasil and opened up his own Pastry shop! After this I felt relived and ready for the Princess Hotel. On Octobre first, my birthday, I reported to work at the hotel.

                          Since the executive housing in the Princess was still under construction I had to find a house for rent because I had to give up the beautiful Apartment at the Villa Vera Hotel. The Princess Hotel is located between the airport and the town Acapulco and the only Building around. So I found successfully a house in town about 20 minutes from my new job. 

            

                          Executive chef  Hans Plunke from Germany was very experienced  and great to work with. The Hotel was still closed and finalising the construction in all areas. we been busy hiring a kitchen crew and stewards around 250 people. We spend time  with menu writing, organizing the kitchen, equipment testing, employee training, food testing, etc etc.

                            We also had to open two cafeterias for all the starting employees. One for the hourly people and one for the executives. They been located in the basement and accessible through tunnels from both buildings. For the hourly we had a buffet and in the executive one we had a menu plus special every day.

                        This hotel with over 1000 rooms was gigantic! It took not long before I realized that this will be one off my biggest job of my career. You will understand this after I describe our food department.  

First the kitchen:

                          The main  kitchen had a 2400 square meter air conditioned room for the garde manger, with two walk in cooler , one as big to fit up to 10 Queen Mary carts. The wall separating the hot side was out of glass to oversee it from everywhere.  The  hot side was roughly 5000 square meters with all the equipment going down the middle with one side being the kitchen line to serve the Princess dinning room and enough space for our banquet set ups.  On the other side we got a 5 shelf rotary oven each shelf able to hold 3 roasting pan. the line also include one 60 gallon tilt skillet, three 80 gallon steam kettles and 3 smaller ones and 4 stainless steel table for our food prep. This location are dedicated to the Banquet, Saucier and Entermetier department, each one with there own walk in cooler.  

                            In the corner they built a big chef office elevated by over one meter with windows all around, able to oversee the whole kitchen area. there are 3 desk's, 2 for the chefs and one for a secretary. 

                             Between the main kitchen and the pastryshop was the Steward department located with his own office, two rotary drums to clean silver, large storage places for banquet equipment, and  serving dishes like platters, bowls, mirrors etc.etc.

                             Just a little bit separated was a 2500 square meter pastry shop with 3 stand up rotating ovens capable of accommodating 8 sheet pan each at one time. There was 2 large walk-ins and one freezer. all the equipment to run a pastry shop like stand up Mixers, rolling maschine, proofer and lots of work tables. Beside the famous Pastry chef from Germany Manfred Prim we had over 20 employee  producing all our breads, pastries and desserts for all the restaurants and banquets with only few exceptions like the gourmet restaurant made there own souffles and some specialty ice cream.   

                                A large work elevator brings you to the basement. There was the receiving area, food store room, Butcher shop, Ice room, Infrared walk-in coolers, employees locker rooms, tables and chair storage room for outdoor functions, banquet laundry storage room , a gigantic uniform room,  the factory size laundry room, a well organized recycling room and of course a large security department office  located by the entrance.

                                  In the butcher shop we hired Crattacus, a very experienced butcher. he lost one leg in a accident years ago and to get around in this large kitchen facility he used a regular food service cart to sit on and used it like a scooter. he had 12 butcher helper to supervise and prepared and cut all the meats, fishes and seafood for all 6 restaurants and the banquets. he's job was also cutting and aging all the beef. Hanse Plunke took a trip to a Hermosilla cattle ranch and finalized a purchasing contract. We received every month 100 cattle and the butchers had to separate shoulders, legs, prime ribs, sirloins and fillets, then hang them on meat hooks in a large  walk-in with infrared light for 21 days. This was a huge job but we had first class quality for a third of the regular price. Of course we still had to buy some extra fillets, sirloins and prime ribs to accommodate all the banquets.

 The food establishments:

                         

                                   We opened the hotel with 6 restaurants and the banquet department. There was the main dinning  room, of course called the Princess room, only open for breakfast and dinner. We found Werner Kunz a Swiss chef and he loved his job and spend lots of time training and motivating his employee. He had to feed over 600 people for breakfast and dinner every day. he did on excellent job and very seldom I had to jump in to help. He and his family also become good friends of mine.   

                                   

                                      Chula Vista was a outside restaurant located in a tropical forest surroundings 150 seats under umbrellas and lots of palm trees  made for on unique atmosfair. We served only buffets breakfast, lunch and dinner prepared in the main kitchen, set up by a kitchen supervisor and food runners under Plunkes, the Garde Mangers and my directions.

                                    Then we had a casual 100 seat cafeteria also serving breakfast , lunch and dinner. Definitely the most problematic we had on premises. There wasn't a day where I hadn't to run over there to help them out, main reason was because you cant find a qualified chef, its not exiting to work in a simple cafeteria for them. I totaly agree, I would be the same.

                                     On the first floor overseeing the lighted pools and beach was our 80 seat fine dining establishment serving only dinner. This jewel of a restaurant was run by a very experienced French chef. Francois even wrote the menu, and came up with incredible specials!  Plunke and I had not much to worry about but of course sharing all the great compliments from the happy patrons.

                                    We also had a pool side 40 seat snackbar serving lots of seafood like oysters clams, mussels, shrimp grilled red snapper and also a variety of tacos, tamales, posole, flautas, carnitas and of course Hamburger and Hot dogs. Open from 11am to 7pm daily.

Behind the waterfall is a 20 seat bar, serving also bar food

                                    The free standing Steakhouse La Hacienda was planned and there started construction about a year after the hotel opening. In my opinion La Hacienda was one of the best steak house at that time especially having all that home made dry aged beef! We managed to get a great crew together and it became a absolute success.

                                     The biggest business, as in all resorts, was of course the banquet events.The ballroom could hold up to 1800 people with stage and dance floor. Hans Plunke was able to bring Henry Franz a banquet chef he worked with before at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas. I have to admit I had not very much experience in banquet cooking before now, but happy me I got teached by one of the best. He was so calm under pressure and never missed a timeline. we worked great together, he was very helpful and even started teaching me to make Ice sculptures. What a great person, I never had to ask him to help me out in the restaurants when there was no banquets, he always volunteered.

                       This picture was taken the day I had to check out the food display on the top floor of the pyramid.  The owner of the hotel Mr. Ludwig and his wife occupied the whole top floor when they came to visit about 3 times a year for a few days. Stressless for us, he flew in medical related food from Dallas every day and got served by his own people.  I just had to make a tropical fruit display and take care of a few special requests.

The kitchen staff organization                                        

                       As you see I had nothing to complain about, a dream job in my view, but most of the time  there is something not quit right. Executive chef  Hans Plunke and I were an awesome team. Nothing really could go wrong with the crew we put together. 

                       And then it happened! After only 6 months Hans had to resign because of personal problems and return  to Dallas. The big change for me started immediately. The upper management promoted the Garde manger Johann Schoepke to the executive chef position. He was a high regarded Garde manger all his career and but lacked some experience to run the whole kitchen operation. As I was afraid off, he spent all his time between the office and the garde manger. He left everything else up to me. Hans and I used to spent time in the butcher shop, Pastry shop, in receiving, help organizing  the steward department, run to the different restaurants, helped on banquets or where ever we be needed. 

                      At this point Henry Franz was the only person I could rely on for help when needed if there were no banquets. I spent 10 hours a day before and now I had to spent 12 hour a day to keep up. I always took Sunday afternoon off and every other Monday. Then we had on accident, one of the 80 gallon steam kettles malfunctioned and tilted,  pouring a boiling beef stock with some fat on top all over my Saucier's lower body. He got burnt badly and was out of work for the next 8 weeks.  Now I had  to spend extra time training another person to produce the stock and sauces for all the outlets. All that work finally affected my health. I started feeling really bad for 2 to 3 weeks and one afternoon I fainted working in the butcher shop. Cratacus called security and they took me to the hospital with hepatitis C.  I had to stay there for 2 weeks and one week at home before I could return to work.

                         I felt great and healthy again especially after the reception I got from all the employees. they all seemed  to be very happy to have me back. My 3 week absence had a good affect on Johann Schoepke, he had to start helping out in the restaurants and other location and he did so after my return and made my life a little bit easier, we became friends and start being a good team again, the time was flying and 2 years later out of nowhere I got called to the hotel lobby. A gentlemen introduced himself as Claudio Silvestri, president of the hotels Fiesta Americana a sister company of America Airline, with 3 hotels here in Acapulco. To make it short, he offered me a Job as corporate chef for the hotels. Wow, an offer I could not refuse. I did give my 2 weeks and spend the next 10 days going to goodby parties. On September first 1975 I started my new job at the Fiesta Americana Hotels.

The fiesta Americana Hotel

Condesa del Mar

Before I finish with the chapter of the princess hotel, I have to express one thing . The 3 years I worked there impacted my career for life. I was so lucky to work with these professional people, each specialized in their area where there been responsible for. Leaving there I knew I could handle and make profit for any hotel in the world. Also my biggest job ever was in the Princess. 4000 travel agent from the USA planned one dinner together. 2000 guest stayed with us and 2000 where placed in 6 large hotel downtown. On one night they planed dinner together in the Acapulco Convention Center. Johann and I had to coordinate with the 6 other chef’s a Mexican buffet. We made each one responsible to produce two items. It needed 22 lines to be able to serve from both sides. During the day I went there and set up each buffet table with cardboard decals marked with the Items to place there so each and every buffet looked the same, and it made it very easy for the 22 food runner.

                   A gigantic event, great success, satisfying and definitely a self confident builder.

                        

 Lobster bisque

8 servings

2 each 3.5oz lobster tail

1 lb raw shrimp

4 oz onions chopped

3 oz carrots chopped

3 oz celery chopped

2 oz olive oil

3 tbs tomato paste

3 tbs all purpose flour

1 jar clam juice (8oz)

1 cup red wine

1 quart water

3 each Knorr shrimp bouillon

2 cup heavy cream

2 oz cognac

black pepper, paprika, bay leave

3 oz sour cream for decoration

Cut lobster tails long wise in halve and and peel raw shrimp keeping the shells (use the shrimp for something else) saute lobster tail and shrimp shells in olive oil together with Onion, carrots and celery. Ad tomato paste and mix well over heat, add flour and mix.

Ad red wine, clam juice, water and shrimp bouillon. Let boil for 3 minutes and remove the lobster tails. Remove meat from lobster tail and set aside and return shells to the bisque, let simmer for 10 minutes and ad heavy cream. Let simmer for 10 more minutes and strain the bisque.

Before serving ad cognac and diced lobster meat.

Decorating with sour cream. (optional) 

BON APPETIT