Batali, Ramsay and the 5:00 Whistle
Mario at SalumiYou know, if I didn't write about it, I'm just not that impressed. Yeah, the food was good, the new book is awesome and it's cool to have a signed copy, and yeah, I have a picture of me with him (somewhere in the bins of my digital camera), but what I'd really rather have done is just go out and get drunk with him. Not because I'm a spellbound foodie, but because I'm a young cook, he's a master, he's someone I can learn a lot from. I remember my dinner at babbo and being just amazed at the way the restaurant was run and how good the food was. His food may be haute cuisine, but most of it is still respectful of a cook's attitude ... it's food a cook would want to eat. I remember the pig's food milanese there as being absolutely divine and that earns high marks. Hell, any place that has trotters earns high marks from me.
Gordon Ramsay and Hell's Kitchen on FOX, Monday(Forgive the cursing, but I'm feeling a bit back of the house right now ...)
As any frequent reader of this blog would tell you, I have
no love for annoying foodies and I've been wanting a show like this ever since I became a cook. Most people have no idea what it's like to be on the line in a kitchen and for once, here's a show that's going to show you what it's like.
Anyone who's seen the previews has seen that Ramsay comes across as something of a raging ass, insulting everyone and their food. Which is fine to me. It's a TV show and they're meant to come across more as characters rather than real people. That lunatic of a personality has more to do with entertainment value than any sort of reality ... most of these mad hatter chefs have been replaced by the more quiet, easy going, down to earth types.
But what the show does seem to convey is two things:
1) When service is on, you need to get your shit into the window. NOW! No excuses, no BS, no whining. That's all a waste of time. Just get it fucking done.
2) You are going to be held to a standard, hopefully a high one (if you choose the right restaurant). In this case, he's looking for nothing less than perfection, which is what any quality restauranteur will hold you to. If it's not right, he won't sell it. Re-fire, and stop your bitching. Just get it fucking done.
He may come across as abusive, but you might want to remember the stories of French chefs in NYC in the not so distant past, walking around with a paring knife in hand. If he didn't like what he saw, you got it in the ass. Crude, but effective.
What's the most effective way? For me, I have my own internal standards. I know what they are and I hate to sell something that isn't right. The standards of the restaurant where I work are looser than my own standards and most days I will hold myself to my standards. But when we get into the weeds, good enough for the place I work will do. It's the truth. If we were putting out gourmet shit all the time, we'd have two idiots on my station instead of one. But I digress ... for most chefs I've met nowadays, all they do is simply point out your mistake. Your own internal dialogue takes over from there and it's most effective, especially if they've built a staff that cares about food.
These amateur foodies are going to be in a shock when they realize how high Ramsay's standards are. I will be watching this show with a delightful gleam in my eye, waiting for these doe-eyed foodies to break down and cry. Is it mean-spirited? Of course it is. Do I care? No. it's the business. You can either hack it or you can't, and there's no room for doubt. You're going to get screwed like this one way or another. I had my trial by fire that made my working days miserable. They get theirs. Welcome to initiation, pledge.
The best part of all this, though, is the prize. If you win the show and Ramsay pronounces you as the best of the crop, you get to run your own restaurant!
What a fucking shitty prize! Fuck, just give me a million dollar prize instead ... I'd rather piss it away on something a little more fun than watching a long treasured dream go down the drain.
Some of you reading this might be surprised. Others, with deep knowledge of the industry, won't. Experienced restauranteurs have a hard time keeping places from going under. Most new restaurants fail within the first year. So what happens with one of these amateurs, with no real line experience, no expo experience, no restaurant management experience, no food cost management experience, no (insert whatever's important) experience, actually goes out to run the place? I personally know that I don't have the experience to run my own place, and I'd be stupid to try until I thought I was ready, but it would be even better to wait until I was actually ready ... ego has a way of tricking you to thinking you can do the feats of Superman sometimes. (especially, say, if you win a contest on national TV).
So if I, a professional, know that I'm not ready and would go down in flames, how do you think these amateurs would do? If I was a betting man, my money would be on it to go under within a year. Any takers?
And I hope to god that FOX locked up the rights to make a reality TV show about the winner's restaurant. I'd like another laugh.
My alarm is set for 5:00 AMI get thrown to the wolves tomorrow. I get to open up the restaurant, working brunch and leading it, cooking saute and being responsible for the entire morning's production. They're slating me to be the new breakfast cook, it seems, and tomorrow is my first real test.
Bring it.
A lack of time, not a lack of thoughts ...
Some people are wondering why I haven't posted in a while. It's not for a lack of thoughts. I've got plenty, about 20 or so that I want to write about, but this week it's been about time. Not only am I working the regular job plus the stage, this past week I've also had a house guest AND have been dancing quite a bit at the dances this week, both in and around
Camp Jitterbug. In fact, one of my friends and fellow blogger
Tim, a cook in training, had a great old time doing a barbecue this past weekend.
So I've been busy and scraping by on 5 hours of sleep ... caught up with me a little today, so I had to take a nap. But I'm feeling a little refreshed now, so I'll update you with some of my thoughts ...
Thank you, Alton Brown
I don't think I've ever met a cook or foodie that doesn't love Alton Brown. If you're not familiar with him, he's the host of a FoodTV program called
Good Eats. Good Eats is something of a culinary phenomenon that offered the right thing to the audience at the right time.
Previously, cooking shows had consisted, for the most part, of the chef in front of the camera and explaining their dishes . Some were better than others. Julia (do I really need to say her last name?) and Ming Tsai were two of my favorite solo flyers. But when FoodTV launched sensation Emeril Legasse, they used an audience format that worked well for Emeril and created a national sensation. America was primed to learn more about cuisine and Emeril presented it in a way that was friendly, fun and unintimidated. As much as modern chefs pan Emeril as being nothing but a "fuzzy little ewok" (the words of
Anthony Bourdain), he brought a whole generation of people who were raised on microwaved food and TV dinners back into the kitchen.
Good. They're in the kitchen ... but what do they do?
That's where Good Eats came along.
You see, with America being the land of prepackaged convenience, many people's exposure to cooking in their young lives involved nothing more than opening a box and following instructions. A lot of the "why" and "how" of basic culinary knowledge got lost. Sure, you could go out and read Harold McGee's
On Food and Cooking, a book that explains the science of cooking, but for most people it's a dry read. Brown's show takes the "why" and "how" of culinary science and puts it into an entertaining format.
And entertaining is putting it mildly. One of my favorite episodes is "The Man Food Show" which starts off with a shot of Brown with a breakfast tray and a large glass of OJ. He begins to explain that the episode is going to be devoted to teaching the men in the audience how to make breakfast in bed, but that the women need to leave the room so it will be a surprise. Once he's confirmed the women are gone, he proceeds to pull a bottle of beer out of the OJ and lifts the cover of the tray to reveal some mini-burgers and corn dogs, saying:
Let me tell you something, fellas. The last thing on Earth you want to go messing around with is breakfast in bed. You want to know why? Because all it does is raise expectations. Pretty soon, you're going to be expected to share and cuddle and take out the trash. Nope. What we really need to spend time doing is working on our man food skills! Now why did I run them out of the room? Simple. They want you to watch what you eat. They want you to watch your cholesterol intake, your sodium intake, your fat intake, your intake intake! They want you to watch your waist. And that's all fine and good. But you know, sometimes a man has got to eat what a man has got to eat. And I'm here to tell you that these guilty pleasures, besides tasting good, really are good eats.
Yes, a cooking show that makes you laugh and teaches you something ... you gotta love the guy. Later on in the show, he goes on to explain why you buy the right deep fryer, the science of frying and why deep frying, when done right, leaves food that isn't greasy. That's right, even junk food can be done well.
All of the stuff that he teaches can be used in the real world. Today, I was using a technique he discussed for taking corn off the cob (made a nice spicy black bean and roasted corn soup today) and I also used one of the best tricks I've seen from him. In one of his episodes about sauces, he explains how you can use a thermos to hold a sauce at temperature for service. Very important for sauces like hollandaise, which can curdle when held at the wrong temperatures.
And hey, we have a benedict on the menu ;)
So, every morning when I make hollandaise, I also go to room service, get a coffee thermos, prime it with boiling water, and then store my hollandaise in it for service. It stays pourable and delish throughout service ... no lumps, no mess, no fuss. And it also means that I'm not scrambling to make hollandaise on the fly when an order of benny is done and I've found that my hollandaise has turned into a giant lump.
Thank you, Alton Brown.
Stage revisited ... and other thoughts
Had one of the coolest nights of my young culinary career last night. At my stage, I worked a station on my own. I don't care if it was a slow night, they were trusting me to work one of their stations on my own. Going solo at one of the best restaurants in Seattle ... ahh, wonderful.
Back to the regular job tomorrow ... not the same kind of fun, but definitely fun ... been playing around with some bosc pears we've gotten in lately. My favorite idea has been combinging the dessert and cheese courses. Since pears have a natural affinity for bleu cheese, I've been trying out bruleed pear halves with some crumbled bleu cheese in the hollowed out centers and some candied walnuts. Sweet, crispy, creamy, earthy, tangy ... it's got it all. And, damn, I hate myself for saying this, something that only a foodie would love. My dad would probably pass it over on the menu for ice cream ... and a glass of port.
Now if we put the two together ... that could be some good eats.
Funny how pastry wasn't exactly my favorite course in school, yet quite a bit of the creativity I have with food ideas nowadays is devoted to dessert ... but there are some big differences between fancy shmancy cakes and plated desserts ...
My hands: an addendum
On my day off, I was in my kitchen at home, making some ramen noodles (don't look like that ... it's one of the comfort foods of my youth ... we've all got them ... I've also got corn dogs in my freezer - chili cheese flavored). I had my sauce pot going over a high flame and I had to reach over the stove in order to get into the cabinet where my dry goods are stored.
Can you see where this is going?
Well, after I grabbed the noodles, I noticed that my right side, near my pocket, was feeling kind of warm. Warmer than it should have. So I reached down to touch it and it was ... hot! Flaming hot. I quickly patted myself down, putting out the flames, ruining my shirt, and adding a few more scars to my hands in the process.
Hand in pain, examining where the blisters would form, I still couldn't help but laugh. Setting myself on fire for a bowl of ramen noodles :D Sometimes even the pros have a bad day.
Walking Wounded
Cooking is my second career. In my first career I was in the IT industry and I was at a job where you made three times as much money and had cool benefits like, oh, say, subsidized (or even free) health care. Now as someone that is living on the other side of the fence, I think back to some of the cocktail parties that I went to and listened to the political talk that emanated from some people's mouths. The lack of perspective is frightening.
Want an example?
Today was Mother's Day, one of the busiest working days in the industry (Valentine's day is another one, as well as any major holiday like New Year's or Thanksgiving or Christmas - trust me, Norman Rockwell's picturesque image of a family sitting around a dinner cooked by mom is long dead in many households). Between 10:00 and 1:30 we did around 145 covers with just three people ... the exec as expo, me working the flattop and prep, and one saute cook. I was busting my ass all day. In fact, I've been busting my ass the past few days, days in which I've been sick.
Sick as in feverish, chest congestion, aching muscles, wish I could be in bed sick. Sick as in, if I stopped a few minutes on the line, my aching body would just catch up with me and I would wish that I could be in bed again. Sick as in when I got home every day, I would slip into bed, take a nap, then get up and make myself something to eat, then crawl under the covers again, waiting for it to be bedtime. Sick as in, if this was my previous job, I would have called in sick and not gone into work. Sick as in I would have gone to a doctor.
So I was stay in bed sick, yet I was at my position, working on one of the biggest days of the year. Why?
Now, I'm an hourly worker. I miss a shift, I don't get paid. I don't get paid enough as it is. I need that cash to pay my bills for the month. And there's no way I can go to a doctor. Most cooks in my situation usually go without health care. I'm at least of sound enough mine to buy a catastrophic plan ... but I won't be using it unless, say, I lose my leg in a freak skiing accident (luckily I don't ski).
So I work sick. Sometimes this job can be a miserable toil of an experience, but you do what has to be done. And in fact, that's part of the job description. You go to work unless you literally can't get into work or you've had a death in the family (and we're talking like immediate family ... your cousin can wait until your day off for a funeral). The only thing that doesn't make it a miserable toil is the fact that I can actually have fun while having a day like this.
Sometimes I look back and think that most of the cocktail set has no conception of working this lifestyle. They should try living this lifestyle for a while and then still support things like our current healthcare system (anyone can have it ... as long as you can pay for it). And that just doesn't go for the free-marketers out there ... many of the compassionate do-gooders out there also lack that sense of perspective. In a sense, it becomes condescending ... I don't need condescension. A regular doctor, dental and vision insurance would be nice instead.
PS Yes, I'm sick writing this post ... but my focus carried me though ... well that, and a bunch of medicine ... back to passing out on the couch ... new episode of Family Guy will be on soon.
Foodies ... we love you, we hate you
As I start to develop some of the bitterness that comes with the territory, I notice things that didn't bother me before (or even occur to me before) strike me now. One of them is foodies. This is a bit of a rant, so forgive me for my back of the house language.
We love you, we hate you.
Why the love? That's obvious. Foodies are one of the main reasons that nice restaurants are in business. They provide a steady amount of income for people in the industry and they make our paychecks. And when you do something nice, they are people that are most likely to appreciate it.
Why the hate? Well, it's not the average foodie ... the average foodie goes out, appreciates the meal, pays and leaves. Or the knowledgeable foodie, the kind that knows what's going on in the back of the house, how a restaurant works, appreciates the meal, pays and leaves. It's other types of foodies. Shall we make a list?
1) The expert. This type of foodie is someone that thinks they know everything. Often they're out more to show off for their friends rather than actually eat. They are often condescending and they make server's lives hell ... which makes my life hell.
2) The esoteric. This foodie is looking for novel combinations for the sake of novelty. There's a reason that things like hollandaise have been around for hundreds of years. I'd like to make you eat a meal straight out of Larousse.
3) The trendie. They're at the restaurant because it's the hip thing, not because they know anything about the food. These people ride trends that are just ridiculous, make no sense, and are very image conscious. I'd like to sit one of these supermodel thin trendies in a French bistro and make them go through a cream-and-rendered-fat smorgusborg. If it tastes good, it tastes good. You don't need some stupid article to tell you what's good. Trust your palate and go and eat somewhere decidedly un-trendy ... you might be surprised.
4) The perpetual critic. This is someone who is constantly breaking down every little nuance of the food. I relate it to the kind of person who sips a wine where the land originally had an apricot plantation and claims to be able to taste a hint of apricots. Sure, I believe in
goût de terroir (the flavor of the earth) but does the apricot flavor seriously fucking come from the soil and the manure fertilizer? If that was the case, why wouldn't people detect "the pleasant earthiness of cow shit?" Mmmmmmm. Shitty.
5) The chef-wanna-be. I really hate you. This is the foodie who is constantly substituting something on the tickets, putting "SEE ME" all over it. Unless you're allergic to it, just fucking try it. I've had people turn cobb salads into monstrous concotions, filled with thousand island dressing, shrimp and other ingredients instead of what you would normally find in a cobb. You want to make your own salad, go to a fucking salad bar. It says cobb salad on the menu. Eat the cobb, otherwise why the fuck did you come here? And don't bitch that salad bars are in crappy places. Best salad bar I've ever seen was at the decidedly upscale chain Fogo de Chao.
6) The Jet Setters. Someone whose idea of food comes from a magazine like Food and Wine or Bon Appetit. I recently picked up a copy of Bon Appetit that was sitting in our kitchen on one slow Sunday afternoon and was disgusted. It was basically a food porn/travel writing porn piece about the food of Italy. The authors were rhapsodizing about various cities, eating in little bistros, where the best places were to shop in the farmers markets. And to think that someone would plan a vacation about this, go, and then come back and wax eloquent in the same manner as the article. I would kill to be able to go to Italy, but I wouldn't be wasting my time eating at these places ... I'd be finding grandmothers all across the country to teach me how to cook. After all, teach a man to fish ...
7) The Food Porn photographers. With the advent of digital photography, many foodies have become amateur food porn stars ... some even have sites dedicated to them. I don't get it. There is something beautiful about a nice plate, but for god sakes, not everything is worthy of admiration and the slopping of vaseline on the lens.
8) Fussy celebrities (not foodies, but hey, I'm in a bitchy mood). I really hate you. The menu is there for a reason: to tell you what we fucking have. No we don't have grits. No we don't have raisin bread. No we don't have pork sausage. If we have it, honestly, most of the time, I'd be happy to accommodate (they're not asking for substitutions, just something new ... way less worse than subs to me). But I really wonder why they are asking in the first place? They are just really used to getting every whim of theirs catered to, and it makes me sick to see my friends, my co-workers bend over backwards to try and fulfill these requests (like, say run to every bakery in a mile radius to see if there is raisin bread). Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if someone just told a celebrity, "I'm sorry, but we don't have that. I really wish we could accommodate your request, but it's just not on the menu."
9) Groupies. These are people that are more interested in the celebrity of the chef rather than the food. The only thing that I hold in more contempt than these people are the chefs that encourage this practice. Remember Rocco di Spirito?
In reality, at the end of the day, I do love foodies. Hell, that's how I became roped into the business. I made a third space out of my favorite restaurant, hanging out there all of the time. In fact, when I look back on myself, I cringe. I must have been really annoying in some respects (asking the chef to whip up something on the fly, hanging out in back of the house -unobtrisively in a corner- during service , for example), but in the end, I think they liked me more than they hated me (I ended up taping Survivor for the staff). So I can look back and laugh.
And again, the average foodie, the one that just loves food and goes out to eat, pays, and leaves, maybe leaving a little comment or compliment, you're great. We love you.
And for the more difficult ones, if you have even the slightest sense at how my life can be a living hell during service, I'll cut you slack ... you know what it's like for me to be behind the line and you can understand that it's slammed and your dairy free item needs to be made special. But otherwise, let me end with one thing: at the end of the day, it's food. There's nothing inherently magical, sophisticated or any other (insert fru fru adjective here) about it. It's food. Eat it and be happy (but don't write about how it makes you happy ... go get drunk or something ... or find something else to write about).
You don't eat in a kitchen ...
Since I've started working in the restaurant business, my waist has shrunk three notches on my belt. Extra physical activity is only part of it. Sure I'm on my feet all day. I'm running around all of the time. But the biggest thing is that I am forgetting to eat.
In fact, in a kitchen, surrounded by food, cooks usually don't eat. There is simply a massive amount of work that needs to get done, and you never have enough time to do it. There is always something you can be doing. So basically, if you do eat, it falls into one of two categories: grazing or wolfing.
When you graze, you're basically trying out stuff that you're plating, making sure it's seasoned well, or just picking out of your mise, making sure it tastes good ... but sometimes it isn't even that ... it's just an absentminded action, popping something into your mouth to sustain yourself for the next ten minutes.
Wolfing down your food is the other option. This usually happens when you grab something from family meal, go to your station, and eat and work at the same time. Shovel a big bite of food into your mouth, put the plate down, and chew and prep work. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
Where I work, family meal goes out at 11:00. Today, I didn't eat it until 2:45, when I remembered, "Oh, hey, I haven't eaten."
