The other day I found one of my best cooks making rope with butcher twine. When I asked her the purpose she told me she is planning on hanging herself. I said I'd allow it if she first prepped for me 150 mini crab cakes and did a quick tidy up in the walk in.It was a rough Sunday in our kitchen. I am broken hearted and feel a sort of numb. I read the post "Heard about your boy" and realized there are 1000's of us in the industry having a bad time. You can live and die by this work and have nothing in the end. Weird shit. No time to grieve now. It is go time. We lose soldiers. We lose legends. We come and go and pass through each other's lives. He's my boy and he's your boy. No time to look back now. There are more people to feed and obviously some training to do.
2 comments:
I thought you would have immediately berated her for wasting butcher twine. Saran wrap is remarkably strong so long as you double or triple it and much more cost effective. However, you need really high ceilings (walk-in just will not work) because of the "stretch" factor.
As far as Coco Lopez, he was given more chances than most anyone deserved. I'll never forget coming back down to the kitchen from the office and finding him putting a lime in the scampi. "Lemon. Lime. Same difference." That was ten years ago and he wasn't going for fusion flavors. Do you really want anyone that lazy or disinterested having anything to do with your cuisine?
I would never have hired him. I would never ever ever want him touching my cuisine. That is the point I was making. After spending a big part of his life hiding in kitchens, he is left unemployable. This is the industry to be in if you are an alcoholic, drug addict, felon, stupid, or all of the above.
Mad Redox, you inspired me years ago to want to be better at what we do. You made it fun to be serious about food. Others who were around you had/have every opportunity to learn from you, yet they do not. All those assholes at the WSAH were more annoyed by your skills than interested in learning a few things.
Too many cooks in this industry become counter productive and self destructive and then convince themselves they possess no other skills than cooking. That is a defeatist personality trait plaguing so many of the kitchens we've all passed through. It is up to us to remind them that they are in charge of their own destiny.
Take control of your destiny or else you're fired.
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