Ale-Alejandro

by Kristin Kradolfer
Alejandro Enriquez leans confidently against the ice cream cooler behind the cash register in SLU's cafeteria on a Thursday morning. He looks more like a gym teacher than a chef. He has the build of a football star with a broad back stretching his blue polo, strong arms that whip out cafés con leche in an instant, and his checkered cotton pants seem more like a track suit than part of his chef's uniform. He can be heard from even outside the cafeteria as he calls out people's orders in his booming Argentinean accent. Alex's presence is big and undeniably the life of the SLU cafeteria.

"Puerto Rico!" He hollers at a student as he rings up a customer and dashes to make a coffee for another. "Un sandwich mixto?" He asks, remembering the students regular order.

Next he rushes to fulfill a strange request by a math teacher to fill a plastic cup with garbanzo beans for her class to do an estimation project, all the while making coffee and handing out muffins. He never loses the smile on his face or stops making jokes with the students.

"Alex is a happy person," says Geraldo a 29 year-old Uruguayan who works on the maintenance crew at SLU." He gives life to the cafeteria, he's always laughing and joking with the students and besides being entertaining he does his job well."

Alejandro is a 38 -year-old international chef who hails from Argentina and has stumbled into gur cafeteria. Besides managing the chaos of the SLU cafeteria he is also a family man, a worldly entrepreneur jumping from country to country, and someone who has even served 8000 of the Queen of England's closest friends. While Alejandro appears to be an open book, there is a lot about him that most people don't know.
As far back as he can remember Alex has always wanted to be a chef. He got his big break as a chef during a camping trip at the age of 12 and since then he has been addicted.

After meeting his wife of 18 years they moved to Spain for better job opportunities. Since then his family has grown to seven and Alex has been all over the world for work. He attended culinary school in Switzerland and opened a restaurant in Hong Kong. In addition to his native Spanish he speaks Italian, English, French, and Portuguese and has lived in as many countries.

Five years ago Alex accepted a job working at Buckingham Palace as the Executive Sous-Chef for banquets and events. He was second in line in the kitchen; A huge responsibility which could be overwhelming as well as gratifying.

Splitting his time between Madrid and a flat in Covent Garden in London, he worked four to seven days a week and anywhere from eight to 20 hours a day.

The kitchen he used was of tremendous dimensions. Preparing events as large as 8000 people he used large equipment, called keepers. One keeper was a grill the size of a table and the other a giant pressure cooker that held up to 40 liters of liquid. He would throw 20 kilos of onions on the keeper and then 30 kilos of meat, some sauce and voila!

Between eight and 40 chefs worked in the kitchen depending on the event. Alex found the hardest part of his job was keeping the food hot.

"Serving cold dishes is no problem: you make it beforehand and take is directly to the table," he says. "But with a hot dish it has to be right there immediately and that can be difficult for an event of 3000 people."
An all day event for the last polo game of Prince Charles was one of the most challenging he managed. It consisted of breakfast, lunch and five o'clock tea. "Breakfast and tea were easy," he says, "coffee, croissants, pancakes and scones and tea, but lunch was hard."

They used 45 ovens and 250 cooks. Two waiters cleared and set each table while three waiters served the food. Alex served five courses including two complicated dishes. The first was a Salmon Terrine which consisted of three layers of different types of salmon: smoked, boiled and marinated salmon with a layer of cheese and herbs.

"You had to cut it just right, so that everything would layer perfectly," he explained, "it was good but very delicate and very difficult to do for 8000 people."

His next challenge was a sirloin steak with a layer of vegetable mousse, a layer of eggplant mousse, and a sprinkle of toasted bread crumbs.

"It took three to four hands to put each plate together," he recalls, "and for a minute we thought we had lost 25 portions. I went running to the refrigerator and in the end they were in the oven!"

If something went wrong the responsibility would be on his shoulders. "If ever there was a mistake they were going to cut off your head!" he laughs, " That was as clear as water!"

And who would be doing the cutting? The Queen of course! Alejandro even met the Queen during his time there although luckily not under such dire circumstances. When he accepted the position he was introduced to her as the new Sous-Chef. He snagged a picture with her and chatted for a few minutes.

So why did Alex leave such a glamorous job?

"My wife was pregnant with our last child and she was feeling bad," he said. "So I left the job four months before the birth and began working for the Palacio de Congresos in Madrid."

Three and half years ago he became the head of the SLU cafeteria. Now his days are quite different from those in London. The food is much simpler. He usually uses fresh and cheap food and prepares dishes such as chicken, meat, pizza and hamburgers. His kitchen is five times smaller than the one he had in London and his staff has dwindled to four.

Alex arrives at 7am and and leaves at 2.30pm. He orders the food, creates the menu, sets the hours for his staff and takes orders. He also takes time to chat and joke with the students. His favorite topic is football.
"He's a Barca fan, and an Argentina fan, and a Messi fan", Chris Travers a twenty-three year old Communication major at SLU says, "I started talking to Alex because he was always talking shit to my friend who is a Real Madrid fan, he just talks shit all day but he always does it with a smile."

Apparently Alex doesn't know Chris's real name. He calls him Francoise. Ruby, a Colombian woman who helps take orders in the cafeteria tells us why. "If he doesn't know someone's name, he calls them by their country....or their football team," she says laughingly as if she is divulging a secret. " He'll say Korea or Galacticos!"

Christina Petrevska admits that sometimes she has a hard time understanding his thick accent. "Petrevska!" She recalls him yelling one day, "When do you graduate, en Maysho?" Christina thought, "Maysho, maysho, what the hell is maysho?" Then after translating the accent in her head she realized he had been saying Mayo which is May in Spanish.

It may not be Buckingham palace, but Alex is happy working at SLU.

"I like the hours, the environment and the people," he says. "The two jobs are totally different, one was for my career and this one is so I can be in Madrid with my family. You can't compare them".