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From tasting menus to morning buffets, restaurants everywhere stay open on Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year’s Eve to bring joy to guests dreaming of that white dinner plate . What’s it like to be a chef, working as a holiday warrior in the kitchen? See what these NoVA chefs have to say about Christmas magic and running a restaurant during the holidays.
2941: Chef Bertrand Chemel
When do you celebrate Christmas? What drives you to keep the restaurant open for the holidays?
While working on New Year’s Eve, it’s always what I would say a crazy time in the kitchen. We’re trying to combine good service, good food for a special holiday. I think we’ve found that [during the] holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, people like to celebrate more in restaurant than previous years.
We close for Christmas Day so that’s kind of the day that we give to our staff. You know, [I've] been working for almost 22 years and … I think it’s part of the sacrifice to be a chef and be in the restaurant business. People want to celebrate on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, so chefs and restaurant have to be open. But on the other hand, you know, it’s great for the business. It’s the period of the time that people celebrate more, enjoy more high-end food, spend a little more money, drink a little bit more, high-end liquor. So, it’s better revenue for the holidays.
Usually I don’t eat family meal [food for the kitchen staff provided by the restaurant] on Christmas Eve, and when I go home, I do something with my wife and my kids. I think it’s a nice spirit; People come celebrate. It’s a great atmosphere. Usually it’s the month that’s the most busiest of the year. So for sure it’s more hectic than regular months. There’s a lot happening. We’re having a lot of banquets, big lunches, big dinners. It’s long days.
Have you ever experienced a sparkly, magical holiday moment in the kitchen?
My sparkly moment is to make my guests happy, so usually it happens at the end of the service. I think that if everything went smooth, the guests are happy. We are happy with our staff. I think that’s the magical moment for me, to provide what we sold to the guests. It’s good food, good service, great atmosphere, and I think we try to do that for our guests but also for our staff. We open this year for lunch and dinner for Christmas Eve so I’m going to organize a family holiday meal for my staff the … first week of January because it’s slower and we have more time for our staff.
Tuscarora Mill: Chef Patrick Dinh
Have you ever had a magical holiday miracle holiday moment while working in the kitchen?
No. [Laughs]
What drives you to stay open during the holidays when considering employees, profit and family?
I think it’s all that. Employees, profits and family and also our customer demand is pretty high. This is our busiest time of year. You know, everybody’s going out to eat. But yes, these things have a particularly high demand right now. We’ve been booked for Christmas Eve and all week long for a while. And so it’s, I believe, the customer demand for us to be here for them is what keeps us open.
I’d rather be fishing.
Any other thoughts on working over the holidays?
But this will all come to an end abruptly right after New Year’s. The remainder of next week will be pretty busy until Sunday, and then when Sunday happens–I guess that’s what, the fifth?–by the sixth, Monday, it will be like, they shut everything down. So you got to make hay when the sun shines. It just slows down because the customer demand is no longer there. The holidays are when everyone has been binging on everything for two weeks now, and suddenly you realize the party’s over, and it’s now got to come back to work and I got to get a diet. And this is the reality of the business.
And you know, we expect it. I like to think of it as a biorhythmic cycle of business because it swings up and it swings down but all very much in almost a predictable way. So, we’ve seen this movie before.
The Grille at Morrison House: Chef Brian McPherson
Have you ever experienced a miraculous and magical holiday moment while working in the kitchen?
Magical moment is probably going to be the good food to people. They’re out celebrating with their families, and to bring that to the guests is very important to me and the kitchen…We’re all a family here in the kitchen, so we get to kind of spend it together here again. It’s a kitchen family. We’re all a pretty close-knit group of people in the kitchen so it’s not bad.
Bistro Vivant: Chef Katie Busch
Have you ever experienced a magical holiday miracle moment while working in the kitchen?
We usually have a special family meal together with everybody from work. So we take some of the special items from our dinner that we’re serving and we sit down and eat together. We create kind of a magical family moment between us. And it’s a very intense time because the people that have chosen to be here and have a lot of pride in their work and volunteered to come in are all celebrating together. And it really boosts morale and it just creates a very special atmosphere here. It makes you want to be at work, and it makes your coworkers feel like a part of your family.
I always loved that part of the year. I find that to be really, really awesome to me.
Since you work on Christmas Day, when do you find time to celebrate Christmas with your family?
With my family, you know, they knew that my schedules is always going to be crazy so they generally either hold off holidays until the weekend after or whenever I can scrape two days together in a row to get off. Or they’ve gotten used to celebrating twice. So we always get to celebrate for Thanksgiving. My dad always cooks the turkey at least two to three days after Thanksgiving, and he just knows that that’s what he’s going to do because he’d rather spend the day with me. My family’s very supportive of it. They’ve always told me that’s the way it was going to be so I was prepared and ready for what I got myself into. It’s our busiest time so it’s the time I most enjoy being here.
What drives you to keep the restaurant open on Christmas when taking into consideration employees, profits and family?
It’s not about profit or about forcing people to work when they don’t want to. We try to do a volunteer basis as much as possible so people that aren’t planning on or aren’t able to get home to their families, they’ll usually even want to work, and anybody that wants to we try to do that first instead of forcing people. And other than that, we’re really open for our customers, for the people that either can’t cook dinner and are looking for a special meal or places that people don’t have large enough houses to accommodate their big parties. In New York City, the kitchens are just too small and the apartments are just too small to have a lot of people over so we stay open and we find we get a lot of people that are looking to spend the time together and don’t have another way to do it. We create a special meal for them. We bring in things that aren’t on our normal menu and that’s what drives us to stay open. It’s not about being open an extra day or anything like that. It’s about doing something special for our customers.