I survived another restaurant opening (and closing, on the same day!)

Next week is my last Teen Camp of the summer, and as usual by this time of year, the novelty of spending all my waking hours with a bunch of 12-year-olds has worn off a bit.  The Advanced Teen Camp's takeover of Après two weeks ago was successful, if exhausting.   It was fairly typical for a restaurant opening: we hadn't quite gotten all the prep done, we hadn't had time to do a dry run, and our timing was a mess.  But we fed 30 people a three-course menu with two options for each course, entirely conceived, cooked, and served by 10 kids with no restaurant experience.  The food was good--I would have paid for that meal--and the kids held up under the pressure.  I'm pretty sure they've all decided not to go into the restaurant industry, which is a wise choice.

As always when I work with kids, they provided some unexpected pleasures and amusements.  At a tense moment right before our restaurant's opening, I was coaching the "servers" on how to take orders, and the kids were frantic about what they were going to write the orders on.  When I said, "Relax, I have some pads for you," they all cheered.  Who would have thought that getting to write on order pads would be their favorite part of the whole experience?

I should have taken some pictures of the food we served, but it was so crazy that I never thought of it.  At the end of the camp, I told the kids they might as well play with knives while I took a group shot: