So I know its only Saturday night but its been a pretty awesome couple days so far!!
First Mister FINALLY got the ice maker & water doohickeythingie (that is a VERY technical term) on my 10 month old refrigerator fully operational. It makes me giddy that I will not have to make stupid ice in stupid ice cube trays ever again...or at least as long as the maker keeps working anyway...because I do not know the recipe for ice ~ and this drives Mister nuts! (psssst- dont tell him but I really do know how to make ice I just absolutely hate doing it!)
I bought my tickets to Scarehouse for the Tuesday Night Tweet-Up shenanigans on 10/5 that is described ever so fabulously by BurghBaby right here. It benefits a couple of awesome charities, as she explains, and I am asking that if any of y'all would like to join that you do so via HER link on HER page. Please and Thank You! I have also managed to get Mister to agree to take me to this event, which would be our first haunted house trip in years. See...I LOVE this kinda stuff but him not so much but because he loves me he has agreed to deal with me there and buy me some depends just in case. I thank him for playing along and promise not to do too much damage to him as I am getting the bejesus scared out of me. Should be an excellent time!
Attended a seminar this morning & afternoon held by SCORE Pittsburgh about entrepreneurial types of things that provided confirmation that I DO know more than I thought I did (yaay!) and learned a few other things that will be helpful. I think me & Mister have finally decided on the smartest path for us to take that will get us where we want to go with far less head bashing and am actually looking forward to starting this process. We have had a bazillion ideas about "what we want to be when we grow up" and all of them have been pretty awesome, but this one feels right and makes the most sense in my head. We need to think of an awesome name and start the planning, but because Im me half of the plan is written in my head already...now to get it on paper.
Since we were in town all morning & afternoon we decided to have lunch down there. Let me first say that holy hell all the Market Square construction bullshit is going to be well worth it once it is all complete. It was very reminiscent of a Grand Place in Europe and was gorgeous! We had a delectable Mexican lunch at Las Velas (if you dig Mexican you HAVE to go...it was delicious) and had a walk around the Cultural District. They had a bunch of the street lights wrapped up in that colored cello paper stuff and I dont know why though... It was a beautiful afternoon for a walk and as we rounded the corner to head back up Penn I HAD to go get a Burnt Almond Torte from Prantls. I got THE last one and wanted to squeeee because I have been jonesing for that cake since my birthday in August.
I finally got a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with a financial planner dude so we can get our personal affairs in order and get a plan of attack for getting that all squared away. Im sure it wont be the most exciting meeting ever but its a baby step toward bigger ones so win. I kinda felt bad for the guy, 3 weeks hes been trying to get me to set an appt...we finally found a day that works. He wanted to come by the house...I didnt think that was such a great idea unless he happens to be a dog person. Little puppy butt likes strangers a lot and can be a bit much to take if you dont dig beasts.
And in case anyone missed it....IT WAS A HOCKEY NIGHT IN PITTSBURGH!!!! In case you cant tell I'm a tad excited. Baseball - hell freaking no. Football - meh, if Misters watching it I will but otherwise I could care less. Hockey on the other hand - I will watch that alone! It was awesome to see all my boys back on the ice tonight at Consol! Chris "Sex Hair" LeTang had 2 fights, Geno (my hard core hockey crush) beat a guys ASS, I was impressed from all 3 preseason games with Mr Hillary Duff (Comrie, I know but my way is funnier) and Fleury looked really good in net. I will miss Staal until he is back but honestly Im just happy to have hockey back...I missed it so. I also decided that I will sell a kidney (or maybe even kill The Wizard for his tickets) to get into Consol at least once this year to see a game live. Anyone have 2 tickets and need a kidney? I haz an extra one & am willing to sell!
Mister & I also made a mostly final decision...we plan to sell this house sometime spring/summer next year as quickly as possible and move. We want to go downtown/East End and rent. After years of trying to force ourselves to be "responsible homeowners" we have decided that it just isnt us and would rather not deal with all this bullshit. We work way too much & would rather spend our down time doing things we want to as opposed to shit we HAVE to because of this house. If we had kids and had to worry about schools or whatever that would be one thing, but the dogs dont really care where we live and we just plain dont want to. It is going to be a project & a half getting this shit ball rolling but I am motivated to get the fudge outta here. Between the shitty neighbors, abandoned houses, ridiculous borough and just an overall unhappiness with the 'hood its time to roll! Yay!!!
Who knows what tomorrow will bring...but its Sunday so it cant be all that bad. I see a trip to an orchard to I can get some apples to make applesauce and some fall stuff I want in the very near future and as soon as my replacement paddle comes for my mixer I will be regaling you with a recipe for these cinnamon roll cookie things Mister found on line that just look like they should be awesome. Hope you all are having a great weekend too!!!!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
An adventure in food blogging
I blog about food alot. I know this, its what I do and what I like. I wouldnt call this a "food blog" though. I was quite disappointed that I wasnt able to join PghPodCamp this last weekend, but I was able to listen & watch a few streaming while I was at work and that kind of rocked. I got to see Michelle from BurghBaby and loved her presentation and caught a little bit from a food blog focused presentation that I also liked & introduced me to some food blogs I didnt even know existed. I will be making it a point to get there for at least 1 day next year...I dont wanna miss out!
So Ive spent a few evenings checking them out and just seeing what they say. I, personally, couldnt run a food blog. I kind of feel that would somewhat a conflict of interest. Running local restaurants I dont feel it would be considered kosher for me to critique the work of others...well that and I really dont have time to go out so many nights a week to make that worth it. But I found a few to be great and a couple others that made me stabby.
The good ones are well written, objective and informative. The ones that have made me stabby bring to mind people who have watched too much TV, have a key board and feel the need to share. I will not list names or link to their blogs, I dont think that is fair and Im not looking to start a food blogger war but if you are a food blogger and you are reading some things to consider...
As an industry professional I take bad reviews of my work personally...especially if it was literally MY work. In my current position yeah, I might create a recipe, but I depend on my staff to execute them and rarely am I actually the one making your food in any of my restaurants...so I tend to get irritated by them, but not hurt...and a hell of a lot more likely to go find the offending KM and crawl up his ass and out his mouth so he understands exactly what they did wrong and it never happens again. But reading some of these blogs I actually felt bad for the chefs. We do what we do because we love it, and its a bitch having to read what some dude wrote about the ONE night he came in that you were training a new grill cook who over cooked a steak or burger, didnt tell his server about it so we could fix it and then writes a post saying the cooks at This Restaurant cant cook. Harsh man...and not true.
I have a few notes for you folks...
I dont know if I have said this before, but if I have you get to read it again. Every human on the planet should at some point in their lives have to work in a restaurant. EVERY human. The life skills learned in that environment are priceless. You learn conflict resolution, tolerance, patience, how to multi-task, how to handle difficult customers & coworkers, team work and immediate deadlines. You learn about all kinds of people and their backgrounds and cultures, you learn to laugh, how to not be so goddamn PC & sensitive and how to curse like a champ. It would also teach people to treat service employees like humans...because there are far too many out there who are just out of line with their behavior & expectations when they are out to eat.
And if youre going to blog about food and "review" restaurants like a pro then do it like a pro and follow the basic etiquette about food writing. Realize the effect you have on the business you review and the potential customers you are either driving there or driving away. Yippie for you that you got a bazillion hits to your site...but in the mean time you have given a small restaurant a "bad service" tag that might not be true because you didnt do your homework adequately.
All that being said I still found some great bloggers that do objective reviews that actually give you a great scope of a place and have made me try places I might not ever have gone to and thats pretty damn awesome...and I promptly removed the ones who seem to be writing for their ego from my feed, their tabloid story like reviews are not valuable to me at all. I dont want to hear about your idiosyncratic dietary issues that led you to not like what you ordered...I want to know objectively what your experience was.
So Ive spent a few evenings checking them out and just seeing what they say. I, personally, couldnt run a food blog. I kind of feel that would somewhat a conflict of interest. Running local restaurants I dont feel it would be considered kosher for me to critique the work of others...well that and I really dont have time to go out so many nights a week to make that worth it. But I found a few to be great and a couple others that made me stabby.
The good ones are well written, objective and informative. The ones that have made me stabby bring to mind people who have watched too much TV, have a key board and feel the need to share. I will not list names or link to their blogs, I dont think that is fair and Im not looking to start a food blogger war but if you are a food blogger and you are reading some things to consider...
- You cant go into a restaurant to review it, modify a menu item from its original form and them bitch you didnt like it. Of course you didnt like it. Chefs dont put menus and foods together because we have nothing better to do - it is done that way because that is the flavor profile we were going for and all of the components need to be included in order to get the dish. If you change it its now YOUR dish and we cannot be held responsible for your poor taste.
- You cant go once and thats it. No food writers does that, even the really really good ones. You have to go back 3-5 times on average to get a solid feel for the consistency of the service & food, check out a variety of menu items and get a feel for the atmosphere. To only go in once, order 1 item and then make a snap judgment about a place is unfair. I mean seriously, just as a customer I would never go someplace once, have a bad or mediocre experience and write it off completely. Thats narrow minded & short sighted. It isnt possible to get a full scope of any business with 1 visit, especially a restaurant or bar.
As an industry professional I take bad reviews of my work personally...especially if it was literally MY work. In my current position yeah, I might create a recipe, but I depend on my staff to execute them and rarely am I actually the one making your food in any of my restaurants...so I tend to get irritated by them, but not hurt...and a hell of a lot more likely to go find the offending KM and crawl up his ass and out his mouth so he understands exactly what they did wrong and it never happens again. But reading some of these blogs I actually felt bad for the chefs. We do what we do because we love it, and its a bitch having to read what some dude wrote about the ONE night he came in that you were training a new grill cook who over cooked a steak or burger, didnt tell his server about it so we could fix it and then writes a post saying the cooks at This Restaurant cant cook. Harsh man...and not true.
I have a few notes for you folks...
- If you are so damn good at what we do and think you can do it better come on down and give it a shot. I will be more than happy to sit idly by and watch over a beer while you drive yourself nuts trying to do what we do everyday...and when you collapse in tears in a corner I will also happily jump in and bail you out. I dont come into your full time marketing job (or whatever it is these folks do to as their day jobs) and and tell you how to do your job. I would never assume I could walk into your office and proceed to tell you what you need to do to make your operation better - why would you assume your qualified to that to us? Eating in a restaurant doesnt qualify you to run one - ask any of the millions of people who have failed at operating a restaurant & try to be objective about what you experience.
- Restaurants are operated and staffed by humans. Seriously. Real live humans. And guess what...we have bad days too! Ever have one of those days at the office that the fax machine blows up or you forgot to do something for a flipping out client or clicked the wrong button and lost 4 hours of work because you forgot to save...you know, the days that make you want to walk in front of a bus? Restaurant employees have those days too. We have days where shit just doesnt click, the day that you forget to ring in a tables apps, or forget to run their salads, or just cant get the timing right for shit coming off the grill or drop the last item on an 8 top on the floor and have to hold the whole check back for the refire or the managers didnt order liquor so your out of well vodka or the bartender is fighting with her boyfriend and just cant it together to get service bar drinks up in any kind of a timely fashion. We are people, not robots, and we have lives too and as much as we would love to be able to leave that bullshit at home it doesnt always work. Only differences are 1) we dont get "personal days" to handle our shit...we have to go to work and 2) we get to take the abuse of patrons who think we should be infallible and think its ok to treat us like garbage because we made a mistake. Believe me - there is not a single person I know who works in the food industry that sets out to make sure their guests have the worst experience ever or to fuck up their food order. That would be stupid.
- Realize that it is entirely possible that you just dont get the restaurant you are at. One of the reviews I read basically had the writer raking a place over the coals because the menu wasnt "pretentious" enough for the location. Ummm...Ive been to the place he was referencing, multiple times...and that was their point. The point of this place was to create an environment that fit aesthetically into their neighborhood without loosing their comfy feel and in my opinion pulled it off beautifully. This guy just didnt get it and then felt the need to make this the basis for half of his review. Um no. Thats bullshit. And yet another reason to visit a place a couple times, get to know it and then pass judgment on it - but after reading a few of his other reviews I feel he has that problem more often than not...well that and we just do not agree about food.
- I read quite a few that were obviously written by people with crushes on the owners/staff/ management. Thats some epic level bullshit. I read about places that get constant raves about how fanfreakingtastic they are...in my experiences at these same places its less than awesome - which I feel comfortable saying because Ive gone to them. Are they good bars/restaurants? Yes. Do they have a pretty great atmosphere? Yes, in most cases. Is there food amazing? No. Not by a long shot on most of my experiences. Is their service exceptional? Not at all usually. Are they cheap? In some of the cases, yes; in the majority of them, no. BUT I know why these places get sucked off (pardon my french) by anyone who reviews the place...they know how to pimp and who to pimp to. I havent read one review of most of these places that I would say reflects any of the experiences that I have had at them. They are some of my more regular watering holes because I like them, I like the staff, I like the menus & regardless of the imperfections I will go because I want to. Some of them I will get fed up with and wont go back for awhile, but I always end up giving them another shot eventually. As an operator its a brilliant marketing strategy for creating a loyal customer base, but that isnt the purpose of a restaurant review & isnt bait that a reviewing blogger should take. Facts about their operation shouldnt be skewed by personal feelings about the staff. Go ahead and hang there all you want...but the review should be honest & unbiased.
I dont know if I have said this before, but if I have you get to read it again. Every human on the planet should at some point in their lives have to work in a restaurant. EVERY human. The life skills learned in that environment are priceless. You learn conflict resolution, tolerance, patience, how to multi-task, how to handle difficult customers & coworkers, team work and immediate deadlines. You learn about all kinds of people and their backgrounds and cultures, you learn to laugh, how to not be so goddamn PC & sensitive and how to curse like a champ. It would also teach people to treat service employees like humans...because there are far too many out there who are just out of line with their behavior & expectations when they are out to eat.
And if youre going to blog about food and "review" restaurants like a pro then do it like a pro and follow the basic etiquette about food writing. Realize the effect you have on the business you review and the potential customers you are either driving there or driving away. Yippie for you that you got a bazillion hits to your site...but in the mean time you have given a small restaurant a "bad service" tag that might not be true because you didnt do your homework adequately.
All that being said I still found some great bloggers that do objective reviews that actually give you a great scope of a place and have made me try places I might not ever have gone to and thats pretty damn awesome...and I promptly removed the ones who seem to be writing for their ego from my feed, their tabloid story like reviews are not valuable to me at all. I dont want to hear about your idiosyncratic dietary issues that led you to not like what you ordered...I want to know objectively what your experience was.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
I think maybe I should read more & save myself some irritation...
Well 2 days back to work. The first was 13.5 hours...today was 12. I really do feel like vacations are some times not worth the pain in the ass catch up I have to do when I get back. Granted I'm loving having the time to get some stuff done around the house, but 15.5 hours in 2 days, hours in meetings with my managers and problems galore.... ilovemyjobilovemyjobilovemyjob. Hopefully by the time I get to the Steel City Big Pour 4 portion of my weekend I will have sorted out some bullshit and be able to enjoy it as opposed to be on the phone dealing with crap all day. *fingers & toes crossed*
So anywho I got home from The Great Day of Meetings Hell Part 2 and my DVR was kind enough to record Master Chef for me. So I made myself breakfast (yeah...I was totally up at 7am today and literally the first piece of food that touched my lips today was at 10pm) and sat down to watch.
Now I avoided the first half of the season because it was some epic level stupid. I've never watched American Idol, but the concept for getting to the final 16 was kind of like the AI auditions & I had no interest, so I picked it up once they were down to the actual competition. Tonight's episode was getting down to the final four. Overall the show is less than stellar. The winner gets a cookbook deal and some cash I think. So I've watched the last few episodes and this one tonight has made me stabby.
I am a chef. I went to school & have the degree...but in all honestly that doesnt mean shit. Im a chef because I love food, because I have worked a lot of hours in a lot of kitchens. I have cooked fine dining in some of the best restaurants in this city, I have cooked upscale fast casual, I have cooked in a pool snack bar, I have catered, done banquets, worked with one of the best pastry chefs in the country & done full scale commercial from scratch baking. I can make you a batch of chocolate chip cookies off the top of my head that will make your mouth sing just as easily as I can make you sauteed halibut cheeks dusted in fennel pollen served over sauteed fiddle head ferns with a meyer lemon vinaigrette that will make your eyes roll into the back of your head. I havent met a protein yet that I havent been able to butcher or break down and I dont mind getting dirty. I am a chef because I EARNED that title through a lot of blood (work with knives a lot & youll bleed eventually), sweat and definitely tears. I am a chef because that is what I am. I am one of the fortunate few who figured out early that not only do I love being in a kitchen but I'm good at it and I can make a living doing it. Cooking for me is an instinct. I am one of the most klutzy people I know. I drop everything, trip over my own 2 feet constantly and am just generally a danger to myself....right until I walk up to that stove. I can make up recipes with a 90% success rate off the top of my head. Food makes sense to me the way science & math make sense to other people. I hope I'm not coming off as egotistical...I am not. The greatest thing about what I do is I always get to learn, meet people who have so much to teach and constantly explore the food around me. I do not think I know everything and I hope I never will...but that doesnt change the fact that I am good at what I do & for the most part love it. Even now when most of my job entails managing my managers & orchestrating the operations of 5 restaurants I can still step on that line and out cook anyone who works for me....I kinda have to, thats my job.
Now the Master Chef bullshit is all non-professional cooks. They are home cooks. I give them mad credit for their passion and ability but it NOT the same as being a chef. Being a chef doesnt mean standing in front of a small stove making some intricate delicate dish for you & your nearest and dearest or cooking the food for your cousins bridal shower or making a holiday feast for the family. It is also NOT the crap they sling on Food Network. They make it look so fun & ideal...and some days it is...more often than not it isnt.
Being a chef means researching ingredients & methods, tasting, sampling and trying out new things. Its getting up at the ass crack of dawn to hit your line early. Its balancing your food cost, labor cost, budgets & staffing needs. Its hiring, firing, training and leading a team of not always so dedicated cooks. Its standing on a line over a saute stove in 120 degree heat sweating your ass off while perfectly crisping the bacon on a wrapped filet before searing and getting it in the oven to finish while a stock simmers on a back burner and you're cooking 3 other dishes and their sides. Its hefting heavy cases of all kindsa shit and rotating them into coolers, its educating waitstaff about your food so they can sell it. Its dealing with retarded dishwashers that dont get that they need to give you CLEAN plates and that all pots & pans have outsides, too. Its dealing with irrational customers that think you should be able to do whatever it is that they want you to just because they are customers & why cant you hurry up and make me that olive tapenade you had as an amuse bouche a week ago in the middle of a friday diner rush and then bitching out your staff when they are told that isnt possible. Its working 12-14 hours a day until the wee hours of the morning cleaning up a wrecked line after service. Its drinking way too much, smoking far too much pot to maintain your sanity, chain smoking cigarettes and mainlining caffeine to make it through the hangover. Its dirty, sweaty & rewarding work. Being a chef means that inevitably no one will ever tell you you're LOW on anything, just that you're out of it and stopping yourself from launching yourself through a window to ring that idiots neck for not watching the station stocking levels & telling you before you had 4 orders hanging on the board and only 3 left to cook. Its working with many purveyors, watching all your products and foods for freshness & going nutso when they drop the ball so that they know not to do that again. Its stress, its love, its passion, its frustrating.....its fucking awesome & I wouldnt change a thing even if I could.
Because being a chef is also creating the perfectly balanced bernaise sauce that is thick yet fluffy with that divine tarragon white wine tang. Its taking a perfectly seared steak off the grill, its seeing that gorgeous rich purple of sashimi grade ahi as you remove the skin, its getting all a flutter when you get word the Copper River salmon is coming in...or Dover Sole is out & about. Its the smell of toasting almonds and crispy bacon...its the pop of a perfectly heated pan when you slide a filet of Chilean sea bass into it or the crackle of the oil as you drop in something delicious. Its the clanking of plates, the chatter of a busy staff, fast paced-angry & sometimes violent. Its getting the perfect sear on a seasoned pork tenderloin, or the golden brown of a caramelized shallot reduction, the snap of a fresh pea, the ripe richness of perfect tomatoes & the earthy delicateness of wild mushrooms and the sweet crunch of an in season apple. Being a chef is having a vocabulary of curse words that is almost unequaled & using those words daily, speaking a secret restaurant language civilians dont understand & being extra raunchy - seriously I have worked on lines with cooks that would make Richard Pryor blush and that was just the idle chit chat going on between the service & kitchen staff during service. There are about eleventybillion more reason I could give you for why I love what I do and all is better than the next while I am thinking about it.
And now back to my original point...I swear to great fictional dieties if I heard this toolbag on this show call himself a great chef one more fucking time I was going to hunt down his over testosteroned egotistical ass where ever it was in California and drag him to the nearest restaurant and throw this "chef" on a hot line and watch him cry like a little girl who lost her dolly. Watch him get burnt by the guy on saute slinging pans like a mad man putting out 4 dishes while cooking 5 more & setting 3 more up for firing while listing to an expo holler out orders that you have to keep in your memory and telling the guy on fry what sides & garnishes he needs to plate. See if he can call himself a chef when the host comes back to tell you that we just had a walk in 20 top off the menu that was just sat & needs to be out the door in an hour for a show they are going to or having the Skippy the Wonder Server (every restaurant has one I guarantee it) come back while you're 20 checks deep with a pasta dish that was supposed to be the dinner special and he got confused when taking the order and you now have to fly the right item out because the guest was pissed or my personal favorite the steak/burger/fish that is cooked to a PERFECT medium rare that is sent back because "its too bloody, I just wanted it pink" was the reaction of the lady who ordered it that makes you want to go out onto the floor, find her and inform her with great anger then order it MEDIUM you fucking twatball!!! I wonder if he could call himself a chef when he finds out half way through service that Jackass the Prep Cook (every restaurant has one of these as well) SAID he made the minoinette sauce only to find out mid service he didnt and you are chopping shallots like a mother fucker while cooking checks because 86ing that item isnt an option with ingredients in house & orders on the board.
I doubt it. I am willing to bet that these "chefs" would no more be able to handle the pressure that your average line cook does every shift than I would be able to pilot a rocket ship to the moon. It pisses me off to hear the term "chef" used so loosely. Chef is a title that is earned, it is a title that you work for...and Master Chef - fuck me. There are chefs that work their entire careers to actually attain that level through certification programs, and it offends me that it is used so cavalierly. Not one of those people, regardless of their skill level, would last more than an hour on any of my lines & its a bunch of bullshit they are being proclaimed as Chefs by anyone. I cant throw a bandaid on a cut and call myself a surgeon - how the fuck can you saute off a piece of salmon butchered by your fish monger and call yourself a chef? Any asshole can put a pan on a stove - it takes love & talent to make that pan give you a dish that will make your mouth smile & belly happy.
I'd like to take a minute to thank Food Network for making every idiot with cable think they can cook and that being a chef is this picture perfect overly romanticised delusion of grand cuisine- its not - sometimes its tearing apart a clogged dish machine drain & scrubbing pots. And shows like Master Chef for equating really good home cooks to real chefs who would eat those people alive in the real world of chefdom. There is so much more to being a chef than reading a recipe and cooking. Its a hard job, a demanding job and for me, an amazingly rewarding one some days and a frustratingly irritating one on others...and I wouldnt change a thing about it. I do love what I do.
I have worked with some amazing chefs & cooks and for all of them and myself I finish with this - you want to be called a chef then earn that right with the blood, sweat and tears we did - not by winning some reality TV show that brings you 15 minutes of fame followed by a career of mediocrity that embarrasses us all. Real chefs dont need to tell you how great they are...they show you that on their plates every freaking night. Reading a cookbook or getting on a reality cooking tv series doesnt make you a chef any more than driving a car makes you a mechanic. Know that.
Side note - the jackass that inspired this post (Sharone for any who watch the show) was eliminated tonight and I did the happy girl dance while reveling in his embarrassment. Perhaps if he talked himself up a little less & learned to combine flavors & textures a little more he would have been a chef....after about 10 years working in a real kitchen.
So anywho I got home from The Great Day of Meetings Hell Part 2 and my DVR was kind enough to record Master Chef for me. So I made myself breakfast (yeah...I was totally up at 7am today and literally the first piece of food that touched my lips today was at 10pm) and sat down to watch.
Now I avoided the first half of the season because it was some epic level stupid. I've never watched American Idol, but the concept for getting to the final 16 was kind of like the AI auditions & I had no interest, so I picked it up once they were down to the actual competition. Tonight's episode was getting down to the final four. Overall the show is less than stellar. The winner gets a cookbook deal and some cash I think. So I've watched the last few episodes and this one tonight has made me stabby.
I am a chef. I went to school & have the degree...but in all honestly that doesnt mean shit. Im a chef because I love food, because I have worked a lot of hours in a lot of kitchens. I have cooked fine dining in some of the best restaurants in this city, I have cooked upscale fast casual, I have cooked in a pool snack bar, I have catered, done banquets, worked with one of the best pastry chefs in the country & done full scale commercial from scratch baking. I can make you a batch of chocolate chip cookies off the top of my head that will make your mouth sing just as easily as I can make you sauteed halibut cheeks dusted in fennel pollen served over sauteed fiddle head ferns with a meyer lemon vinaigrette that will make your eyes roll into the back of your head. I havent met a protein yet that I havent been able to butcher or break down and I dont mind getting dirty. I am a chef because I EARNED that title through a lot of blood (work with knives a lot & youll bleed eventually), sweat and definitely tears. I am a chef because that is what I am. I am one of the fortunate few who figured out early that not only do I love being in a kitchen but I'm good at it and I can make a living doing it. Cooking for me is an instinct. I am one of the most klutzy people I know. I drop everything, trip over my own 2 feet constantly and am just generally a danger to myself....right until I walk up to that stove. I can make up recipes with a 90% success rate off the top of my head. Food makes sense to me the way science & math make sense to other people. I hope I'm not coming off as egotistical...I am not. The greatest thing about what I do is I always get to learn, meet people who have so much to teach and constantly explore the food around me. I do not think I know everything and I hope I never will...but that doesnt change the fact that I am good at what I do & for the most part love it. Even now when most of my job entails managing my managers & orchestrating the operations of 5 restaurants I can still step on that line and out cook anyone who works for me....I kinda have to, thats my job.
Now the Master Chef bullshit is all non-professional cooks. They are home cooks. I give them mad credit for their passion and ability but it NOT the same as being a chef. Being a chef doesnt mean standing in front of a small stove making some intricate delicate dish for you & your nearest and dearest or cooking the food for your cousins bridal shower or making a holiday feast for the family. It is also NOT the crap they sling on Food Network. They make it look so fun & ideal...and some days it is...more often than not it isnt.
Being a chef means researching ingredients & methods, tasting, sampling and trying out new things. Its getting up at the ass crack of dawn to hit your line early. Its balancing your food cost, labor cost, budgets & staffing needs. Its hiring, firing, training and leading a team of not always so dedicated cooks. Its standing on a line over a saute stove in 120 degree heat sweating your ass off while perfectly crisping the bacon on a wrapped filet before searing and getting it in the oven to finish while a stock simmers on a back burner and you're cooking 3 other dishes and their sides. Its hefting heavy cases of all kindsa shit and rotating them into coolers, its educating waitstaff about your food so they can sell it. Its dealing with retarded dishwashers that dont get that they need to give you CLEAN plates and that all pots & pans have outsides, too. Its dealing with irrational customers that think you should be able to do whatever it is that they want you to just because they are customers & why cant you hurry up and make me that olive tapenade you had as an amuse bouche a week ago in the middle of a friday diner rush and then bitching out your staff when they are told that isnt possible. Its working 12-14 hours a day until the wee hours of the morning cleaning up a wrecked line after service. Its drinking way too much, smoking far too much pot to maintain your sanity, chain smoking cigarettes and mainlining caffeine to make it through the hangover. Its dirty, sweaty & rewarding work. Being a chef means that inevitably no one will ever tell you you're LOW on anything, just that you're out of it and stopping yourself from launching yourself through a window to ring that idiots neck for not watching the station stocking levels & telling you before you had 4 orders hanging on the board and only 3 left to cook. Its working with many purveyors, watching all your products and foods for freshness & going nutso when they drop the ball so that they know not to do that again. Its stress, its love, its passion, its frustrating.....its fucking awesome & I wouldnt change a thing even if I could.
Because being a chef is also creating the perfectly balanced bernaise sauce that is thick yet fluffy with that divine tarragon white wine tang. Its taking a perfectly seared steak off the grill, its seeing that gorgeous rich purple of sashimi grade ahi as you remove the skin, its getting all a flutter when you get word the Copper River salmon is coming in...or Dover Sole is out & about. Its the smell of toasting almonds and crispy bacon...its the pop of a perfectly heated pan when you slide a filet of Chilean sea bass into it or the crackle of the oil as you drop in something delicious. Its the clanking of plates, the chatter of a busy staff, fast paced-angry & sometimes violent. Its getting the perfect sear on a seasoned pork tenderloin, or the golden brown of a caramelized shallot reduction, the snap of a fresh pea, the ripe richness of perfect tomatoes & the earthy delicateness of wild mushrooms and the sweet crunch of an in season apple. Being a chef is having a vocabulary of curse words that is almost unequaled & using those words daily, speaking a secret restaurant language civilians dont understand & being extra raunchy - seriously I have worked on lines with cooks that would make Richard Pryor blush and that was just the idle chit chat going on between the service & kitchen staff during service. There are about eleventybillion more reason I could give you for why I love what I do and all is better than the next while I am thinking about it.
And now back to my original point...I swear to great fictional dieties if I heard this toolbag on this show call himself a great chef one more fucking time I was going to hunt down his over testosteroned egotistical ass where ever it was in California and drag him to the nearest restaurant and throw this "chef" on a hot line and watch him cry like a little girl who lost her dolly. Watch him get burnt by the guy on saute slinging pans like a mad man putting out 4 dishes while cooking 5 more & setting 3 more up for firing while listing to an expo holler out orders that you have to keep in your memory and telling the guy on fry what sides & garnishes he needs to plate. See if he can call himself a chef when the host comes back to tell you that we just had a walk in 20 top off the menu that was just sat & needs to be out the door in an hour for a show they are going to or having the Skippy the Wonder Server (every restaurant has one I guarantee it) come back while you're 20 checks deep with a pasta dish that was supposed to be the dinner special and he got confused when taking the order and you now have to fly the right item out because the guest was pissed or my personal favorite the steak/burger/fish that is cooked to a PERFECT medium rare that is sent back because "its too bloody, I just wanted it pink" was the reaction of the lady who ordered it that makes you want to go out onto the floor, find her and inform her with great anger then order it MEDIUM you fucking twatball!!! I wonder if he could call himself a chef when he finds out half way through service that Jackass the Prep Cook (every restaurant has one of these as well) SAID he made the minoinette sauce only to find out mid service he didnt and you are chopping shallots like a mother fucker while cooking checks because 86ing that item isnt an option with ingredients in house & orders on the board.
I doubt it. I am willing to bet that these "chefs" would no more be able to handle the pressure that your average line cook does every shift than I would be able to pilot a rocket ship to the moon. It pisses me off to hear the term "chef" used so loosely. Chef is a title that is earned, it is a title that you work for...and Master Chef - fuck me. There are chefs that work their entire careers to actually attain that level through certification programs, and it offends me that it is used so cavalierly. Not one of those people, regardless of their skill level, would last more than an hour on any of my lines & its a bunch of bullshit they are being proclaimed as Chefs by anyone. I cant throw a bandaid on a cut and call myself a surgeon - how the fuck can you saute off a piece of salmon butchered by your fish monger and call yourself a chef? Any asshole can put a pan on a stove - it takes love & talent to make that pan give you a dish that will make your mouth smile & belly happy.
I'd like to take a minute to thank Food Network for making every idiot with cable think they can cook and that being a chef is this picture perfect overly romanticised delusion of grand cuisine- its not - sometimes its tearing apart a clogged dish machine drain & scrubbing pots. And shows like Master Chef for equating really good home cooks to real chefs who would eat those people alive in the real world of chefdom. There is so much more to being a chef than reading a recipe and cooking. Its a hard job, a demanding job and for me, an amazingly rewarding one some days and a frustratingly irritating one on others...and I wouldnt change a thing about it. I do love what I do.
I have worked with some amazing chefs & cooks and for all of them and myself I finish with this - you want to be called a chef then earn that right with the blood, sweat and tears we did - not by winning some reality TV show that brings you 15 minutes of fame followed by a career of mediocrity that embarrasses us all. Real chefs dont need to tell you how great they are...they show you that on their plates every freaking night. Reading a cookbook or getting on a reality cooking tv series doesnt make you a chef any more than driving a car makes you a mechanic. Know that.
Side note - the jackass that inspired this post (Sharone for any who watch the show) was eliminated tonight and I did the happy girl dance while reveling in his embarrassment. Perhaps if he talked himself up a little less & learned to combine flavors & textures a little more he would have been a chef....after about 10 years working in a real kitchen.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
What I did on my (2nd) Summer Vacation
HOLY HELL! So Ive been on vacation all week. Sort of. Well.....I havent been to work all week anyway.
First - I will NEVER understand why when I tell the folks that work for me that I will be off work and incommunicado for a week and to PLEASE email me if I am needed they still insist upon calling. I would NEVER call any of them on a day off, least of all while on vacation, unless it was dire. None of the calls have been dire. For the record I have let them all go to voicemail and havent returned one of them...all could have been very easily handled via email, so thats what I did. Just annoying. I run restaurants, not hospitals...there is no life & death in my job generally and an email will suffice. I have had a blissful week of not really knowing where my phone is...leave me alone and GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
So Mister''s jerkface manager decided to go ahead and schedule him to work this week and ignored his ROs for the weekend...so no going aways for me. Side note: I have met & chatted up Jerkface manager he is not JUST a jerkface - he is also an amazingly incompetent assbag who, if when my vacation rolls around end of October, is still Mister's manger and pulls this bullshit again will not only be dealing with a surly Mister (this is torture BTW, I know from personal experience) he will also be getting a pissed off Mindy upside his melon of a head. Last I had spoken to Jerkface Manager was while I had dinner at the bar while Mister was tending. He was telling me how amazing he was for being a corp assistant manager at 34 and all about his resume full of suck (Mister did not enlighten him as to what I do for a living at all apparently) and I took a moment of sheer pleasure when I told him my job title at 34 and a little about what I do. Unrelated - through the course of this conversation he said the weirdest thing to me. Hes a black guy, and made a crack about how he doesnt understand ebonics. He made this comment out of no where and it had NOTHING to do with our conversation. Even made a comment about his brother not being professional and "ghetto". I am not sure why he felt the need to tell me any of this -strange fucker to say the least. And Ill kill him if he fucks up another vacation for me.
Anywho....back on track. So since all travel plans were prohibited by Misters work schedule I decided some home improvement was necessary to keep me busy - I cant sit on my ass at home all week with no purpose. The Dining Room. It was one of the first rooms we tackled when we moved in here...and it showed in the plaster & patch work we were learning to do when we did it. Honestly that wasnt the main driving force behind my desire. When we did the room initially I did a sponge paint on the walls, we hung mahogany wainscoting & a chair rail and it was done in taupe & beige colors. This room is also in the back corner of the house so its kind of dark but I dug it for awhile. The more Ive looked at it over the last, oh I dont know, 5 years, the less Ive liked it. For some unknown reason that I do not understand at all I decided that I wanted the ceiling painted the same base color as the walls - a beige kind of color - and I hated it more the more I looked at it. Made the whole room look like a cave and it was just dark and felt oppressive......yeah for the 3 times a year we actually use that room. So dining room make over it is.
I painted all the wood a light sage color, the walls are a really light yellow, ceiling is white finally and we spent yesterday laying a laminate floor that I AM LOVING. The whole room just looks airy & bright and welcoming. Have a couple more floor pieces to lay today or tomorrow that involve some serious cutting around the radiator base...but overall I feel like we have a new house! So many hours of labor, a lot of swearing and most of a bottle of ibuprofen later and its looking good. Once its finished completely I will post some pics...at the moment it looks like a bomb went off somewhere around the center of the house and shit got flung everywhere.
My Mother-In-Law will be here Monday for a week - itll all be cleaned up & put away before she steps foot in my house!!
Have a whole nother post to write about this house....but I'll write that one later. I'm going to go sit on my new floor and bask in the glory that is our happy new dining room!
First - I will NEVER understand why when I tell the folks that work for me that I will be off work and incommunicado for a week and to PLEASE email me if I am needed they still insist upon calling. I would NEVER call any of them on a day off, least of all while on vacation, unless it was dire. None of the calls have been dire. For the record I have let them all go to voicemail and havent returned one of them...all could have been very easily handled via email, so thats what I did. Just annoying. I run restaurants, not hospitals...there is no life & death in my job generally and an email will suffice. I have had a blissful week of not really knowing where my phone is...leave me alone and GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
So Mister''s jerkface manager decided to go ahead and schedule him to work this week and ignored his ROs for the weekend...so no going aways for me. Side note: I have met & chatted up Jerkface manager he is not JUST a jerkface - he is also an amazingly incompetent assbag who, if when my vacation rolls around end of October, is still Mister's manger and pulls this bullshit again will not only be dealing with a surly Mister (this is torture BTW, I know from personal experience) he will also be getting a pissed off Mindy upside his melon of a head. Last I had spoken to Jerkface Manager was while I had dinner at the bar while Mister was tending. He was telling me how amazing he was for being a corp assistant manager at 34 and all about his resume full of suck (Mister did not enlighten him as to what I do for a living at all apparently) and I took a moment of sheer pleasure when I told him my job title at 34 and a little about what I do. Unrelated - through the course of this conversation he said the weirdest thing to me. Hes a black guy, and made a crack about how he doesnt understand ebonics. He made this comment out of no where and it had NOTHING to do with our conversation. Even made a comment about his brother not being professional and "ghetto". I am not sure why he felt the need to tell me any of this -strange fucker to say the least. And Ill kill him if he fucks up another vacation for me.
Anywho....back on track. So since all travel plans were prohibited by Misters work schedule I decided some home improvement was necessary to keep me busy - I cant sit on my ass at home all week with no purpose. The Dining Room. It was one of the first rooms we tackled when we moved in here...and it showed in the plaster & patch work we were learning to do when we did it. Honestly that wasnt the main driving force behind my desire. When we did the room initially I did a sponge paint on the walls, we hung mahogany wainscoting & a chair rail and it was done in taupe & beige colors. This room is also in the back corner of the house so its kind of dark but I dug it for awhile. The more Ive looked at it over the last, oh I dont know, 5 years, the less Ive liked it. For some unknown reason that I do not understand at all I decided that I wanted the ceiling painted the same base color as the walls - a beige kind of color - and I hated it more the more I looked at it. Made the whole room look like a cave and it was just dark and felt oppressive......yeah for the 3 times a year we actually use that room. So dining room make over it is.
I painted all the wood a light sage color, the walls are a really light yellow, ceiling is white finally and we spent yesterday laying a laminate floor that I AM LOVING. The whole room just looks airy & bright and welcoming. Have a couple more floor pieces to lay today or tomorrow that involve some serious cutting around the radiator base...but overall I feel like we have a new house! So many hours of labor, a lot of swearing and most of a bottle of ibuprofen later and its looking good. Once its finished completely I will post some pics...at the moment it looks like a bomb went off somewhere around the center of the house and shit got flung everywhere.
My Mother-In-Law will be here Monday for a week - itll all be cleaned up & put away before she steps foot in my house!!
Have a whole nother post to write about this house....but I'll write that one later. I'm going to go sit on my new floor and bask in the glory that is our happy new dining room!
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