We lost a great man today

The first day I worked for Mike West I remember my immediate admiration. He was whisking a dressing in a large mixing bowl while doing business over his cell phone. He had the bowl in one hand, the whisk in the other and the cell phone held by his head and shoulder. He was talking casually while using a creative mix of profanity. As soon as he hung up he immediately came over and introduced himself. I could tell he was a down to earth cowboy with a true love for the restaurant industry. He shot straight from the hip. He was a solid mentor who smelled like hickory smoke.

I felt right at home on my first day in his kitchen. He treated his team like family. He told me, "Our first priority is to make sure every single person who walks through that door is satisfied. Our second priority is to have fun with it." He treated his cooks very well. He made sure we were happy and well fed. He went out of his way for us. One day he saw me at work bummed out cause I lost my wallet the night before. He offered me $50 out of his own pocket and told me to take the day off to deal with getting a new license and calling my credit cards. He had a lot of cooks at several restaurants and he was quick to do that for me. He was a very generous man.

The first day working for him was hallmarked by my first taste of his baby back ribs. They were fucking delicious. So good that we still to this day use his recipes when we make ribs and bbq sauce at our restaurant. Coincidentally, we have a catering tonight who requested those ribs and sauce. I was telling a cook about that recipe and Mike just yesterday. We are proud to carry on his legacy.

I caught wind that the big fella died this morning. My heart goes out to his family, especially his son, KC's own eatlocalfood. I am grateful to have known your father. I am also grateful to have worked for him. I met so many wonderful people while working for him. Still some of the most wonderful people I've met to this day. I'm sure every single one of them is torn up inside just as I am right now. I will never forget your father, his kindness, or his generosity. Thank you Mike. Thank you for everything.

New menu blues

It seems that we always have a problem when the menu changes. I cannot find a reason for this other then laziness. We are not a high volume restaurant, all of us could easily prep one extra item. I just don't understand why we can't start prepping for the new menu a week out. We have the menu a week before it changes. The prep list yesterday was a mile long and filled with items that wold actually have tasted better if they were made a few days out. It just blows my mind that this happens every month. I want/need to know what is going on at all times. Not because I am nosey, but so I can adjust my plan for the hour, day, week which will allow me to produce a better product and therefore make this restaurant better. I am over this running around like an asshole with a blindfold on just hoping to get first dinner service over with. It is hard to produce a attractive plate when you don't know all the components until you start plating. Where's this? Where's that? Well I didn't know it went with this dish. Needless to say after each course I said to myself that it will be better tomorrow.

Near the end of each menu we always say we are going to make a few of the new dishes as Amuse, that never happens. Well folks I am putting a plan into action. I will either make the next menu transition amazingly easy or I will be fired for being a total dick. An advice would be helpful.

Booze For Breakfast

You have to check this out. They have a few videos out now. Fucking smart to keep the haters out. We're about to get drunk from breakfast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZDv9pgHp8Q

New life for old drug parphernalia

Ice hash extracting bags used to filter a consomme. Cut our filtering time by a few hours. We would normally strain the consomme through a chinos, then chinos with cheesecloth, then a coffee filter. In total about 6 hours(mostly due to the size of the chinos). With this method we could pour all the consomme in at once and it could filter at its own rate. We still put it through a coffee filter, but that took less time due to the filter not needing to be changed more often. The coffee filter also takes all the grease off the top.

how is this guy not 86'd?

so, last wednesday, we were in the middle of party hour (.25 cent wings...and it's actually two hours), and this friggin douchebag comes back into the kitchen and throws his wing basket at us and declares "these are bullshit"

the reason we can sell the wings so cheap is that we aren't guaranteed how big or small they will be, nor what breakdown of wings/legs we get.  and we actually pay 30 cents a piece for them, so we lose money on every single wing we sell.  we hope to get it back in beer sales, and i think we do, but still...  that day they were kinda small.  i admit that.  but we usually toss a couple extra in the basket when we feel they're too small.  if you order 20, you'll probably get 23 or 24.

anyway, those of us in the kitchen really wanted to 86 the guy, and be outside when he got kicked out, and give him a gentle lesson on the cost of dental work and the difficulty of walking home with a broken kneecap.  he came back into our space, and yelled at us in a very aggressive manner.  this does not go over well.  the worst part is that apparently he's an ex-employee (i never worked with him), and by all rights should fucking know better.  actually, the real worst part was that all the servers were passing it off like it was no big deal, like "ah, you just don't know him.  it's okay."  they kept apologizing for his behavior but still acted like it was perfectly acceptable to come into the back and fling his fucking wings at us.  we actually confronted him in the dining room and basically his whole issue was that the wings were small.  he knew full well that we in the kitchen had absolutely no control over how big the wings were...i cook the product that's there for me to cook.  i don't order it, nor do we pick through the wings to make sure they're all big and pretty.

they're a fucking quarter.  deal with it.  they're not going to be huge all the time.  it's still a killer deal, and regardless of how big the wings are, they're good.  anyway, this guy came in on saturday for brunch, and our bar manager let him know that his doucheball antics were not welcome.  however, i don't think he got 86'd.  i'm not sure why not (possibly because ex-employees seem to be treated like royalty at my place, but i digress), and none of us cooks are happy about it.  i don't show up where he works and knock the cock out of his mouth just because it's small, ya know?

ahh...the lowly life of a scrub cook...how it fascinates and frustrates me...

10 things chefs wont tell you

Nothing new. Just a little funny.

http://www.chefgui.com/2009/06/05/10-things-chefs-wont-tell-you/

The Diminishing Birkenstock Profs

Back in 2000 I was turned onto what I thought was the best kitchen shoe ever. I was working at Buckley's Tavern when I got my first pair. This shoe was everything you needed it to be: slip resistant, easy to clean, and no gross laces. That first pair lasted me until 2003. The reason I had to replace them was because of a tear down the middle of the top part of the shoe.

I got my second pair thinking that I would not need to buy another kitchen shoe for another three years. WRONG! I went through at least 4 pairs over the next 3 years. They all tore just like that first pair. Fortunately the store where I purchased them is really cool. If the problem happened within 9 months, they would give me a new pair for free. If it happened after, then they would give me 50% off.

Recently I got a different model by Birkenstock. The shoe is more narrow and seems tougher. That was 9 months ago. They tore last week. Does anyone else use the Birkenstock kitchen shoes? If so, are you having the same issue?

New Toys?

Did anyone get some new kitchen gear for Christmas?

Restaurant: The Movie

  A little exercise to boost morale: imagine your restaurant scores a movie deal, a heavy-hitting screenwriter and goes on the silver screen.  Who's going to play you?  My last restaurant would have put a whole new spin on Veal Oscar.  First choice is obvious, but we all know how Hollywood and budgets work.  Some names have been changed or omitted alltogether to protect the incompetent.

                          Tattoo Tony: Kevin Smith
                                    Valet:  Jason Mewes
                     Pasta Dropper :  Elijah Wood (Seth Rogan, Rory Cochran)
                                       Me:  Jason Lee
Passive-Aggresive Dyke GM:  Eddie Murphy (* Kevin Spacey, Edward Norton, Jr., William H. Macy)
                                  Owner:  Shaquille O'Neal
                 Bipolar Bartender:  Steve Buscemi
           Gay Waiter/Host(ess):  David Hyde Pierce
                            Guadalupe:  Angeline Jolie (Rosie Perez)
                                    Pony:  Robert DeNiro (Herve Villachez)
                                      Rita:  Penlope Cruz (Salma Hayek)
                                       Bill:  Jared Leto 
                           Oscar/Luis:  Georgo Lopez
                                  Donna:  Cameron Diaz (Phillip Seymour Hoffman)
                                 Taylors: Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrel
                         Mr. Battaglia:  Abe Vigoda
                      Brian Growney:  Michael Richards
                         Takeout Taxi:  John C. Reilly


(* the budget and actor availability really is a factor here, but I don't need to tell you that we're talking about a fucking Academy Award for this role.)

Because it is Slow

I would like to think I am forgiving. Today's lunch service was one fuck up after another. Both the front and back of the house were fucking up left and right. Courses were misfired. Food was being forgotten. Things burned. Things were rung in with a modifier, "on the fly plz." I about lost it on several occasions. How could one thing after another go so wrong? I heard 3 times, "It is because we are having such a slow day." Is that what I am supposed to tell the unemployment department when they ask why their line is out the door on a Monday? Is that what we are supposed to tell our guests who did make it all the way out here today. "Sorry for the long wait for your chicken sir. The cook forgot about it because it is a slow day. Sorry for the wait on your soup sir, the food runner was too busy talking and forgot about it because it is a slow day."

I get it. It is easier to get distracted when its slow. It is more difficult to stay focused. I will however not accept such an excuse. If you only have half the amount of work to do for all of the pay, then I expect the highest quality possible. Needless to say I am a bit annoyed right now and trying to cool down before I head back into the kitchen. The second half of service was me constantly reminding everyone of the obvious so they wouldn't "forget because its slow." I felt like I was helping a group of Helen Kellers.

the master prep list and thensome

I had a great talk with cornstarch the other day and one of my favorite topics of all was a good portion of it. We discussed the masterpreplist, whether it is scrawled in a looseleaf notebook between those first sips of crackaccino or meticulously formatted the night before (preferably before 4:20) complete with a diagram of the kitchen and who will be working where. I have seen it done many ways and by many levels of staff. My first job treated the preplist like gospel and it was done by the closing FOH manager without any fudge factor. If there were six pounds of crab imperial portions, there would be six more on the next day's list (twelve if it was the weekend). Since prep was pretty heavy there and it had to be done between 8:00 and 4:00, it had to be set in stone and there was no BS about getting slammed at lunch and not getting around to breaded oysters. The chinese lady with the chemical engineering degree would knock it out every day and be done her share by 4:00 on the dot whether there were 22 items or 12. And she still had time to sit @ table 201 for lunch @ 3:00. It fascinated me. Once the kitchen evolved to the point that there were salaried guys on at night, the prep list was put into the closing AKMs hands. A very wise move save the fact that I was one of those guys. We had recently put chx parm on the menu and I saw fit to par them at 5 and include that with the rest of the day shift's list. You might have thought I asked her to tar the roof or make me a pitcher of iced coffee. That restaurant no longer exists, but it taught me a lot about putting systems in place and taking the guesswork out of the equation. My next restaurant had a system as well, but most of that involved only the day shift and they only did what their leader forced them to do. I started there as an overly ambitious line cook and tried to fix everything I could on my way to KM. I knew better than to have anything to do with the ghetto preplist, so I came up with my own....the infamous "4:00 list." Now, this place was high volume with the same menu day and night and things would occasionally get missed. That's where the four o'clock list came in. If we only had 8 orders of wings because chx wasn't coming until to-morrow, I just wanted to know instead of looking like an asshole @ 8:15 with a full restaurant and my night crew scrambling around the 4x6 basement walk-in looking for product thay didn't exist. There was pineapple salsa for the tuna that wasn't on the day preplist, because I refused to continue serving a #2 can of diced pineapples mixed with our house salsa on a $14 seared tuna entree. Putting it on the 4:00 list was the solution and that didn't mean remembering that we had a full 1/6 pan yesterday so you mindlessly checked it off. Eventually, I forced them to actually taste it to make sure it hadn't soured, but that took months. The lucky person given the daily burden of correctly completing the list made it known what a huge hit he was taking for the team, even though it took all of five minutes to do and there was NO physical work involved.
In any case, I've been in charge of the preplist @ every job since and I make it the same whether I am part of the prep team or not. It is a recipe for successful service with no room for excuses and it deserves all the attention you have time to give it. It doesn't fix lazy, but it covers your ass and eliminates the dreaded, "So, what else do you need me to do?" Those especially lazy specimens secretly hope you'll grow tired of this question and incrementally finding them something to do. There are still the holes that are created by busy chefs that don't think of everything.  The counterpoint is that something not written is something not done.  
I just heard the best reason ever for writing a prep list yesterday: "I like crossing things off."
That's work ethic, sense of urgency and passion in five words.


[This post was originally written many moons ago in a kitchen far, far away.  The only new advice is not to use a Sharpie(TM).]

ps here's his resume

this was hanging in the dishpit when i got to work today.  that's his actual resume.  i can't decide which part is my favorite.  the obvious choice would be the creepy picture.  did he not have any pics where he was looking at the camera, or smiling?  at least his turtleneck is there.  i do like how he sets his goals pretty low, so he totally hits them.  i'm intrigued as to exactly how much "some" college is.  did he do a semester at a JC?  or is he three credits short of a masters in chemical engineering?  The .au email addy and the fact that every job he's had recently has been in a different state are probably red flags, though. 

throughout the day we left offerings of crackers and ketchup packets under his picture, in hopes that his spirit will fill it's cargo pockets and be on it's way.