Don't say "burn" around me. Don't say "crack" either, unless you got some.

It comes with the territory. We burn ourselves everyday. Sometimes we don't even notice. 10 years ago at the Ale House I accidentally put my hand in the deep fryer up to my second knuckle. Blister fingers. Gross.

We've all experienced those busy services when we get splashed with hot oil bursting from a soft shell crab or the countless times we find the oven rack with our forearm (why can't we learn). Sometime we don't have time to notice.

This lovely burn on my right arm happened while I was explaining to my lunch cook that our hot oven was dirtier than Whitney and Bobby's crack pipe. I guess he didn't believe me (or wanted to compare their crack pipe to his own) and swiftly moved in for a closer look. In the process he hit my arm with the oven door.

I put it under warm water as was told to me by a chef a long time ago. She said it evens out the pain in the nerves and will inhibit blistering. So many people assume just run cold water over it. Cold water does more harm in a kitchen because as the wound warms back up to 80+ degrees it hurts far worse. When a burn happens your nerves start freaking out. Why confuse them even more? Aren't things confusing enough as it is?

the great lasagna fiasco of summer '10

It hurts me to admit that I serve frozen lasagna, but I have my reasons and I believe they have merit. It is made in-house from scratch (aside from the frozen pasta sheets that I get from a great company in Pocomoke City), assembled, portioned and frozen. To serve, it spends 4-5 minutes in our "alternative" oven and 7-8 minutes in the convection oven. ideally, that's thirteen menus for lasagna baked to order. How many restaurants actually have lasagna on their daily menu? How do they execute it? At the last old school red jointI worked, we only served it on Thursdays and Saturdays and full pans went from the freezer to the oven for an hour and then to the steam table. We always had a backup @ the ready on Saturdays when we would usually sell a pan and a half (refreezing the remainder, of course), but otherwise the lasagna you were served @ 8:00 had been sitting on the heat for four hours. It was still delicious, even @ 10:00, but not exactly my idea of a perfect product. The reason I like it how we do it now is that every order tastes exactly the same and my 100% yield nets me a FC around 10%. Once in a while, we get a little backed up because of our low-wattage Tour Bus, but it is has never come close to being an issue in my thirty-one months here. That changed on Thursday night and it wasn't pretty.
Long, shitty story short (but still shitty), we sold 10 orders of lasagna that night. We won't sell 10 in the entire month of September. Basically, our alternative oven shit the bed at some point when the 27-top (a la carte, made a 7:30 reservation @ 5:30) ordered six @ once and we just couldn't thaw out the frozen fuckers fast enough. In hindsight, i may have tried an alternative method of defrosting, but I had my head firmly inserted in my ass with all the saute dishes (and the walk-ins that should have never been seated without at least a 30 minute wait). So, should lasagna come off the menu, should I find a better way to do it or should I stop trying to put out "quality" food in second-rate Italian restaurants?
Have a great weekend, Chefs (03:49).

there is also a sign on the TP dispenser reminding them to wipe their ass

I am tired of finding out that "both 7 tops are seated" from the busboy.

Chris "Chx Atlantis" Greene
www.kitchenconvoluted.com

sent from my mobile cow uniform

Ode To That Fucking Bucket With a Tiny Crack In It

Oh God I hate you. With all the fury and fire of a thousand white hot, pre-super nova stars i hate you. Why for the life of me the dishwashers can't understand "Throw this fucking thing away or I will call INS!" I will never understand. Why for the life of me I keep forgetting that the square 5 gallon bucket with the red lines on the side is the devil, i will also never understand. Why i never seem to have the time to throw the fucker in the trash myself is all my fault. At least a half dozen times you've flooded my saute station with blanching cold ass water. The actual amount of brine you've let drip all over the floor in the walk in will never be known.

But no more. Today was your last. Your last soggy ass Airwalk (worst shoes ever, behind chucks, in a kitchen), your last buffalo chili spill, your last vinaigrette drip. Today I put you in the dumpster myself. Fuck you, you fucking fuck.

Amen

www.thatGuy.com

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titles

In my checkered sixteen years of restaurant work, I have held many positions. Ninety-three percent have been less than desirable and have ranged from dishwasher, salad bitch, fryer bitch, head fryer bitch, line cook, chef de partie, lead chef de partie, sous chef, executive sous chef (even when there were no other sous chefs?), kitchen manager, chef de cuisine, executive chef and assistant director of blame coordination. As a certain former owner (glorified pretzel salesman actually) once told me, "just like none of your staff knows what it is like to be executive chef, none of you understand what it is like to be an owner." I recently had an informal interview for a new opportunity and what stuck with me most was the owner telling me that he's not stuck on titles. That's a deal breaker if I've ever heard one and I'd love to hear some of your opinions on the subject.

Chris "Chx Atlantis" Greene
www.kitchenconvoluted.com

sent from my mobile cow uniform

Controlled Chaos

Problem solving is 95% of our jobs as chefs. Writing the menu is the easy part. Hiring the cooks is the easy part. Checking our email is the easy part.

Then there is the staff training, the dealing with a dozen farmers and specialty purveyors, and the obscure email conversations that tend to spin the information into an almost new language. During a busy service things can become very confused very fast. All the prep work and the shared information can suddenly become this cloud of convoluted kitchen nonsense. It is in those moments that we put all of our cunning to the test. We have to untie the knots. We have to restring the instruments mid solo. We have to put out the fires before they become wild.

When problems happen the easiest thing to do (usually our first reaction) is to get frustrated. I say things like, "Really?...really?...wow." Then I start blinking a lot. Then more often than not, split decisions are made and the problems go away. I wish I could skip past the frustration every time. Last week I observed my Chef problem solving the shit out of a Sunday lunch/brunch service. We ended that service with 310 covers and $12,000 in sales. I noticed very little frustration, and believe me he had plenty to get frustrated about. Instead he deflected problems back on their source or in the general direction of the lunch cooks, which I have to say is quite entertaining to the rest of us prepping for dinner service.

Solving problems in a busy restaurant requires creativity. It requires knowing when to rely on instinct and when to trust your sources. It requires gathering as much information available in the shortest amount of time and getting the problem solved and out of the way before the next one happens.

As chefs we solve so many problems in a day, half the time we can't even remember what exactly it is we are bitching about. :)

Come ooooon winter!

I have never been more anxious for a summer to end in all my life. this summer has been slower than we expected but not slower than we planned for. the only other time i was close to this not thrilled with a summer was 2 years ago when we opened Stingray, down the beach. Fuck resort work. Fuck it right in the ass. The only way ill step foot into a kitchen in a resort town is if i am either visiting it, or owning it.

Anybody have a different story or is this the consensus?

also, not drinking is way friggin over rated. just saying.


Shatty

What makes a Chef?`

I was thinking about what the difference is between a chef and a cook. Does a Chef have to have a degree, does a degree make you a chef? I know the difference between a cold and the flu, but I don't call myself a doctor. What about us kitchen workers who have been have learned on the job, can we not call ourselves Chefs? What are the signs that we are no longer cooks and have become chefs? Is it in the job title? Wikipedia says a chef is someone who cooks professionally. So does that mean homeboy down at the corner bar who heats up frozen meat patties in a microwave is a chef?

It is that "time of the month"( menu change) at work and I have been seriously doubting my abilities recently. We changed the menu on Thursday and that normally translates into two long days of changing and tweaking recipes. But it has been five days and I am still getting beat-up daily. Every dish requires 7+ components. So many things can't be made until service and that makes life extremely tough. I am in the weeds at 5pm every night running around trying to get all the prep done. Shit I am in the weeds at noon when I look at the prep list.

I like to be challenged it makes me feel alive and certainly helps with my short attention span. I hate giving up more then I hate Bon Jovi, but do I throw the towel in and ask for help? My boss told me I would hate him after having to prep this menu, I am starting to very quickly. Oh, his ass is on vacation so it is not like he is around to help. Today I am going in at 1030 and hopefully kicking this prep in the nuts. I will keep you posted.

One quick Pastry story. Our Blonde Pastry chef went to some pastry gathering and decided her bag was to heavy so she came up with the brilliant idea that she would CARRY her knife kit on the plane. That didn't work out for her