What's in a name?

Why is it that a lot of people want to be referred to as chefs? I remember it was important to me as well. As a line cook, I daydreamed about being an executive chef at a three-star restaurant, wearing an expensive chef coat, and barking out orders to my cooks. Now that I am a chef I could care less about the title. I do love it when people refer to themselves as “home chefs”. Would anyone ever refer to themselves as a “home lawyer” or “home electrician”? With all the food media in the world today it’s amazing to me how little is still known about actually being a chef. We are bombarded with chefs on reality shows, cooking shows, in social media, but most of these posts don’t really tell the true story. Sure there are chefs that post things about their day, or write an article here or there about what it’s like working in kitchens.

But when was the last time you saw anything about the daily things a chef does? Does anyone ever talk about ordering? Ordering produce, meat, fish, or supplies? Sometimes it feels like gambling, you guess how many people are coming to your restaurant the next day and order what you need based on those assumptions. Or maybe you have a private party with a different menu than your ala carte menu, how do you order exactly what you need? What if you have dishes that sell like crazy sometimes and then not at all? What if the produce company forgets something? What if the meat guy says he can’t be there until 5 pm and your private party is at 6 pm? What if your fish company sends 100lbs of salmon instead of 20lbs and one of your cooks signs for it without telling you and now you are stuck with it? Yes, all of these things have happened to me.

Ever try to make a schedule for a bunch of cooks? It’s like trying to hold water in your hand. Someone always has a request for a day off that you try hard to accommodate but when you have three requests for the same day how can you possibly make a fair decision? You’re probably shorthanded as well, almost everyone is nowadays, it’s difficult to create a schedule where people have adequate time off. Most of the time you figure you can cover a shift yourself, but then you neglect the two hundred other things that need to be done because you are busy working the line.

How about managing your costs? The two biggest costs in any restaurant are labor and food, something the chef controls. Your labor costs are based on a percentage of sales, so a busy night = low labor costs, a slow night = rotten labor costs. In theory, they should even out over the course of a week, but what if you have a slow month? A slow quarter? Do you let a cook go? Cut their hours? They need money too and cutting their hours can have a harmful effect on them, or do you continue to suck it up and listen to the restaurant owner complain and harass you about your labor costs? There is no right answer believe me. What about high food costs? To really understand food costs and how they affect the bottom line you really need to have a firm grasp of basic accounting. Do chefs ever get trained for this? Sure you might take a class or two in cooking school, but real life has much higher stakes and it’s much different than school. How much should you charge for that special? Do you just look at what other restaurants charge? A lot of fo chefs aren’t interested in financials and yet most restaurant owners would rather have a not-so-talented chef that understands financials than an uber-talented one that doesn’t know or care about his food costs.

What about expediting? Expediting means directing the flow of food through the kitchen so it gets to the customers on a timely basis. Every restaurant does this differently, but there are a lot of similarities. Some places hire an expeditor, for the sole purpose of making sure the food flows out of the kitchen without too much drama. Most often this is done by the chef or sous chef. Not everyone is great at it. You have to be vocal, observant, understand timing, and often will be called to make split-second decisions that can affect your customers and/or employees. For instance, if a cook puts something in the window you think is unacceptable do you make them redo it? Even though all the other food for the same table is in the window and will have to be remade as well? Are you going to make that call? What if that happens on a crazy busy night and the customers have already waited an hour for their main courses? Do you still send it out or remake it and have them wait even longer? Tough call. The better the restaurant the better the chance they will remake the food the way it should be and they rarely ease up on their standards. But things always slip through the cracks and ultimately it’s the chef’s fault.

What about hiring cooks? Most chefs I know have no training in human resources. How do you hire new people and more importantly how do you train them? There were places I worked where you received very thorough training and places where they gave you a menu and told you to wing it.

How about writing or designing a menu? Most chefs seem to get excited about this since allows them to express their creativity. But it’s very difficult to create something out of thin air and train your entire staff on how to recreate it night after night. This is the crux of what chefs do and rewarding and exhausting at the same time. Maybe there’s a dish your staff loves but never sells, do you take it off the menu? Or maybe there’s something on your menu that your customers adore but makes you ill because it’s been on your menu forever and you’d love to do something new? I’ve been there and changed something on my menu only to have to put it back on a month later because the customers revolted and threatened me and my staff. Not really in an overt way, just constantly asking “Hey what happened to that salad you guys used to have?” After hearing that every day, a few times a day I gave up.

When I first started cooking someone told me that being the chef was like being a general in the army, you command and delegate. But to me, it’s more like being a high school principal, you try to teach/mentor people the best you can and hope they don’t turn on you. Even though I’ve been working in kitchens a very long time, I still feel like there is still so much to learn and deep down still feel like that guy many years ago who first stepped on a kitchen line for the first time. No matter the title or position, I am a cook. No matter where I go or what I do, I am always a cook, first and foremost, I have come to understand that this is who I am. When I am in a supermarket, I say “behind you” to people, or I get annoyed because people don’t walk fast enough, or I eat standing up, or feel impending doom if preparing dinner and it’s not ready exactly at the agreed upon time. Chefs are cooks that happen to be in charge, that’s it.

There is a common trait I have observed in the best cooks I’ve worked with and that is humility. Most often we think of the streotypical egocentric chef who screams and yells and refuses to alter his food or menu in any way. But in reality most of the talented and exceptional cooks in my experience truly want to make people happy and care about their customer and coworkers. They strive to create experiences for them, delight them, pamper them, and yes sometimes make them think. One sous chef I worked with, who I considered to be an truly exceptional cook, made ranch dressing for someone during a very busy Saturday night rush and didn’t complain about it, he simply stepped off the line for a few minutes and made it from scratch, and gave it to the server with a smile, no judgements. That inspired me much more than someone sreaming at me to go faster or telling me I suck.