New Faces

This week brought the end to a long tenure by a valued staff member. It's always a shame to see someone go, but the addition of new and promising staff members is exciting. Everything that goes with such a change is felt especially in such a small and tight knit organization such as ours. Mostly, it causes me to think back on various times I was a new employee. It can be a strange transition for even the most seasoned service professional. Every restaurant is different and offers new challenges to the new faces. As the chef, I try and approach each new staff member as an opportunity to improve on how I handled the previous person in his or her position. I've long felt that dealing with the people around me is the most difficult responsibility of a leader, and approaching each new person with a fresh outlook helps serve to improve my style and hopefully improve the overall quality of the restaurant at the same time.

This week also brought the first time someone left their bed on our patio. I've always suspected our front porch would be a comfortable place to set up camp, but never actually tried it. It would seem from the picture above that someone did give it a go. It took some convincing to make everyone believe that I had not actually slept on the porch so as to be at work earlier the next day, and in the end I disposed of suspicious blankets and pillows followed by a severe hand/lower arm washing.

Sippy Cups

I know we've all felt at times as though the rules set by health inspectors are a bit of a burden. They seem oblivious to the reality of restaurant service. Let me state unequivocally that I fully embrace the guidelines set forth by our local health department. In fact, witnessing some of the shadier establishments around town that regularly make the grade I'm convinced that I take it more seriously than the inspectors.

On our last inspection I got an earful about the proper drinking cups that all employees handling food must use. Must have a lid, must have a handle and a straw. That sort of thing. He even gave me a handy little pamphlet just in case I was having trouble picturing such a cup. It may seem trite to some people, but the message was clear to me: Use the mandated style of cup, or incur a violation on your inspection. Not a big deal! In fact, it will only serve to make us cleaner and safer. I made sure to tell everyone how simple yet important the drinking cup issue is as well as explain the proper cup style and what the purpose is. Simple, right? Not so much, it turns out. Every step of the way this issue has been disregarded and resisted by employees hell bent on bucking the system by drinking water from uncovered, no handle drinking vessels; commingling their mouth and hand germs. Come on people! How can such a simple rule be so difficult to just follow if it means making the health inspector happy? This surly municipal employee has the ability to make our restaurant look very unattractive to the public or even close us down. Just do what he or she says for the love of Pete! Furthermore, I would expect restaurant professionals to be dedicated and possibly even passionate about serving clean food. I certainly am. I was dumbfounded to observe that one server just over a bout of violent food poisoning contracted from another local dining establishment was particularly resistant. Another employee argued that even with the incorrect cup, he was using it carefully so it should be okay, as if the health inspector would give him a pass once he gave this nuanced explanation. This post is beginning to sound a little too much like a rant, and that's not my aim, so I'll sum up with this: Being clean is paramount. It's just as important as cooking awesome food and providing top notch service. Take pride in working clean the same way you would any other aspect of your job. I think you will find that it actually enhances your ability to work quickly and efficiently. It certainly does for me. Finally, DO WHAT THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT SAYS! Sure, they're dorky, annoying germophobes, who piss on age old cooking tradition whenever possible. But, they have the authority to fuck your shit up if they want to. Don't test them. You've got enough to worry about...

Craziest thing that happened to me recently:

• In the middle of an incredibly busy service, the oven door handle ripped right off as I was reaching in to grab something off. Completing service with no oven door handle is challenging.

Idle hands

I wish that I were able to say that the restaurant is always busy. That we are breaking sales records on a weekly basis and that no matter how hard I try, I cannot begin to keep enough product in house, prepped and ready to go. That would be a good problem to have. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Don't misunderstand me...we have our busy nights. The typical weekend nights come through regularly, but being newish and unknown has it's drawbacks. Put simply, there are nights that just don't deliver more often than I'm comfortable with. It comes down to a lack of exposure. Response to food and service has always been overwhelmingly positive, however not enough people know we exist and those who do cannot come in every night. Time will take care of the issue, but in the mean time...

I firmly believe there is always work to be done in the restaurant, but sometimes all that work is finished with time to spare. I've found myself in that situation a few times over the past year. You can only prep so much, and only make the space so clean before the list is finished. I've managed to work this to my advantage recently. There was a period of time that I worked too much, mainly because I was not efficiently using the down time that we are so unlucky to experience. Now that I have figured out that little trick, I tend to have a few extra hours of free time each week, which can be nice. Staying busy is important for more than just the obvious reasons, though. Idle hands will inevitably lead to a negative outlook on the situation. It's boring to stand around, and no one wants to work somewhere that is boring. Not to mention the financial implications it has. Staying busy means staying positive. As chef (or any leader for that matter), others will feed off your positivity and that is the only way to keep everyone motivated...I started this post a few days ago and had to leave it for a while. I've lost my momentum, so rather than continue I'm going to close it out with tonight's most ridiculous food idea...

• Tiny "bucket" of fried quail served with tiny mashed potatoes, tiny coleslaw and tiny biscuit. Hopefully this will not be seen in reality anywhere any time soon...

Pablo's wisdom...

Earlier today I was reading an article in Meat Paper that made reference to the factory farming objective of breeding pigs to be more lean than fat (boo! but that's not what this post is about). It seems that early on in the process scientists had achieved the goal of creating a rapid growing, muscular pig that made farmers and agribiz tons of money, but there was one problem. The pigs were randomly dropping dead. Rather than recognizing the omen, they pressed on to try and figure out what might be causing these spot occurrences of porcine demise. It turns out that stress was the culprit. An outwardly invisible genetic trait that is commonly associated with leanness was making the pigs so highly susceptible to stress that the slightest noise - a stiff wind, backfiring tractor, errant oink, or frolicking siblings in the hayloft above - would send the herd into a contagious panic that would leave some short of breath and, well....dead. This delightfully macabre image got me to thinking...

The restaurant is a fast paced and stressful environment. It's been clear to me for some time that success of an individual lies not as much with intelligence and physical prowess as it does with the ability to cope with pressure. In other words, some of the finest cooks, servers and bartenders I've known have only one thing in common: they are cool under pressure. In his book, Blink, Malchom Gladwell writes about how our heart rate spikes when we are under pressure and that there is a range of beats per minute where our performance of the act at hand improves greatly. Sharper focus, prioritising movement, split second decisions and the like. Beyond that peak range we begin to break down. Things go out of focus, our movements become clumsy, and little makes sense. While reading that I remembered images of cooks looking from a rail stuffed with tickets to me and saying, "I don't know where the hell we are anymore!?" And yes...I humbly remember myself being in that situation many times before. In fact, the first kitchen job I ever had was an over-taxed pantry station in a very busy restaurant. I worked with this guy Pablo, who told me in my first week there, "just don't get angry while you're working. If you get angry, it's all over." That moment still ranks as one of the most memorable and certainly one of the most important lessons I've learned during my career. Over time and with much practice, I believe it's possible to train one's self to operate in the range of improved performance. Much like the spontaneously dying pigs, we can selectively eliminate our propensity for falling to pieces and move towards a state of mind that stays together most of the time, no matter how badly rattled it gets. More to the point, though is that stress is contagious. In making the transition from cook to chef I realized that how I act in the kitchen when we are busy is central to how everyone else performs, and in a restaurant so small, the entire house is affected one way or the other. There is no cook bad-ass enough to save a chef who spins in circles when the tickets start to dangle from the printer. The frazzled state of mind one person is in while busy can easily drag others along with it. That being said, I think the opposite is true. Calmness and focus can trickle down to the people around you and make even the busiest service seem like that well oiled machine we always hear about. Sure, it sounds a little new-agey, but I've found that staying calm and collected has gotten me out of more tight spots than I care to remember being in. These days, when I feel myself getting close to imploding on the line it's always the result of being overcome by stress, not because it's "too busy," or someone else fucked up the seating. I feel more confident now than I did in the past and it's easier now to pull myself back into focus. Those are the moments when life in the dish pit seems pretty attractive to me. It is the one place where I have come close to mastering the zen-like concentration I'm trying to describe above. Luckily, I get to spend time there regularly these days...

And so it begins...

At some point recently I thought to myself how wonderful it would be to start a blog that chronicles my coping with the switch from cook to chef.  A detailed examination of how drastically my outlook on cooking professionally has changed since I took on the executive role for the first time.  Anyone who has ever made this switch knows what I speak of.  And so, I have decided to begin right here and now recording my thoughts as I experience this transition and all noteworthy observations that go along with it.  I am hoping that at least a few people may find it intriguing enough to read about thus allowing me to contribute in a small way to restaurant culture and the cooking community.  One slight problem, though.  My experience as a chef began just over a year ago when I started work on the restaurant project I am currently part of.  I guess that puts me a little behind the eight ball on getting this here blog started, but late is better than never as the saying sort of goes.  It's a small example of how time consuming this industry and the role of chef can be.  I could go on at length about how many hours I work, but that is a given.  All industry folk do, and hopefully I'll be able to avoid getting bogged down in the daily minutiae, whining and general ranting that is prone to playing out in my head before I move past it and get the tasks at hand done. So here goes with a brief recap of the past year...

Never underestimate the difficulty of starting from scratch.  I don't mean building from the ground up. In the material realm, I took over an established property, well built kitchen, sufficient equipment already in place and all that.  By scratch, I mean a new business, with a new name and a new chef (me), who with nothing more than a fairly descent pedigree built over a measly three years in a burgeoning US dining mecca had minimum (or NO) hype.  It's one thing to open your doors to anticipation by the general public.  I opened doors that had previously enclosed two failed restaurant concepts and beckoned in a public most likely wondering who the hell I was and what was going to fail next in this space.  We haven't failed yet, but the battle has been decidedly uphill.  I've learned and relearned many of the basics, but I'll skip that for now (I promise, no minutiae).  It's a small place (60ish seats), so to keep afloat I have been forced to redefine the role of chef to take on a broader set of responsibilities.  For instance, I don't have a pastry department, I do that all myself.  No big deal you may think, and you would be right.  I actually enjoy that challenge.  I also cook on the line every night and at brunch, do most of the prep myself, run food and bus tables when necessary, update the menus and website regularly, and of course wash dishes.  I was dishes often, because when labor cost is a factor having enough hands to prepare food in a skilled manner takes priority.  I enjoy washing dishes, however I don't enjoy the financial uncertainty that me washing dishes is a symptom of.  Time spent wielding that hot water hose is undeniably the most humbling and important part of my day.  All at once everything right and wrong with my situation is crystal clear.  Like any job I will own it and conquer it.  I approach a pile of plates, cutlery and cookware with the same sense of purpose and determination to sign my name to it that I would each and every dish we send out of the kitchen before it becomes part of that pile.  Hence the title of this blog.  Being a chef is about so much more than creating.  Sometimes it's about maintaining more than anything else.  There are many people out there who can create and even execute wonderful food, but does that alone a chef make?  I, for one am sure that it does not.  The question one should ask if considering the transition to chef is what overall qualities do I need to make this ship sail?  There is no substitute for experience when searching for those answers.  Luckily, I emerged from being a punk-ass know-it-all just long enough to learn a thing or two before opportunity knocked.  I'm still a punk, though.

So that is where I'm at.  From here on in I'll keep things current, reaching back every now an again to reference a poignant moment from the first, undocumented year of operation.  Perhaps at some point someone will actually read this...