The Enemy.

There are those nights where it's all clicking, and it all feels good. No one is in a bad mood, the food looks and tastes great, and the food is going out so quickly that you have extra time to work on projects and get ahead on the next days prep. Then Randy, the burnout server that has body odor and keeps forgetting to mention the fish special comes up to the pass and this happens:

Randy: This pasta was supposed to be a duck.
Expo: A duck?
Randy: Yeah, I swear that asshole said pasta.
Expo: Fire duck, on the fly. It's gonna be a minute.
Randy: Yeah, sorry.

Forty-five minutes go by. It was annoying enough having to drop everything to fly his duck out, but now the rhythm is back. Until:

Randy: I need you to hold desserts on table thirty.
Expo: What? Why? That souffle is coming out in two minutes.
Randy: They're still eating their mains.
Expo: You rang in that souffle almost thirty minutes ago.
Randy: Well they're eating slowly.
Expo: Hold that fucking souffle!
Pastry Cook: Hold it?
Grill Cook: I fucking hate Randy.
Sautee Cook: Yeah, and he fuckin stinks too.

Then the real trouble starts. The Expo, in the fog of rage does this:

Expo: Fuck him. Put that ticket in the back of the slide. He can wait.

You see, the thing is that when you punish a server for making a mistake, you punish the guest. Every cook has a story about a chef or cook that would do this. Tickets get pushed back, or the food is cooked without care--all in the name of hurting the server. The thing is, whether the server is having an off night, or if they're just a shithead, it doesnt matter. The job of the cook is to please the guest--to give them an extrordinary experience. Petty grudges can't get in the way of this. Sure, you can talk shit over a beer with the boys after service, but you have to stay focused on the dining room during service. The truth is, you and that server are tied together--without each other, you are both diminished. Think about this during your next service. FOH is not the enemy. They are on your side--despite any obnoxious tickets or bad timing. And in the rare instance that they're not on your side, you still have an obligation to the guests. After all, they do fund your paychecks...

notes:

• Seven days in a row feels strange. By day five you're tired. Midway through day six you get a strong second wind. On day seven your cold has gotten so bad that you take sudafed and go to funkytown.
• A tip to folks that want to talk to Alejandro: He speaks English.
• The ladies love these cooks: Mongoose, Paul, Nick. Not Corey.
• Your motivation can't come from an energy drink.
• Please don't mistake me trying to focus with me being angry with you.
• My rabbit enjoys sitting on her log, laying in front of the heater, and chewing wires.
• Watchmen. I don't see how the movie can work.
• Talking to Daniel Patterson about food is pretty cool.
• The Ting Tings live is kinda cool. On cd they suck ass.
• Ponder tied the burger record. Atta boy.
• This blog is going to be updating on Fridays or Saturdays instead of Thursdays. Just a heads up.
  

conversations and quotes.

Corey: Paulie, the secret word for when you need help is anchovy in my pants.
Paul: How about get the fuck over here Corey?
Corey: I like anchovy in my pants better. Less swear words.


Me: If you want to re-negotiate the terms of your pancetta contract, you better call your lawyer.
Amy: My pancetta lawyer? You mean Porky Goodman?

• "Dont kick a pint container." -Ponder
• "You wanna smell my downstairs beard?" -Corey
• "You want a tubesteak smothered in underwear?" -Corey
• "Dont you guys read anything other than Maxim?" -Me

From top: Corey's new bandana, Corey's merguez, Ponder doing chickens at 1:35am, Riley and Chef, cabbage, another of Nicks lists, perfect carrots, salt cod, Nick and Corey, guanciale and salt cod, cutting a burger 4 ways (fuckers), nopalito salsas, a cookie from Luis @ Orson, cold medicine, ass, Singapore TV, the burger record countdown, Ponder waits, more burgers, menu writing, short ribs, duck pasta, and sturgeon.

The most important thing.

photo by mark linthicum

What do you think is the most important thing for a restaurant to have? Great ingredients? A passionate staff? Nice cooking equipment? A great wine list? Caring but discreet service? Clean bathrooms?

The answer is yes. And no. Of course you need all these components to make things work. But what a restaurant, and more specifically, a kitchen needs is great communication--on all levels. Let me explain:

(I'm not very good at math, so please excuse my poor algebra.) 90db noise + hot, cramped kitchen + a group of people that don't speak
the same language + intense pressure = a perfect storm of poor
communication. The Chef needs to be communicating with the sous chef who needs to be communicating with all of the cooks and prep cooks and dishwashers who in turn need to communicate among each other so they can go back and communicate with the sous chef who will communicate with the Chef. It's a whirlpool of nouns and verbs and lines like "so like fuckin, the fuckin peppers are fuckin from yesterday, and fuckin, they like, look, like, fuckin kinda beat." Decoding the essential information takes more brainpower than a chess match.

The thing that makes communication so important (and difficult) is that rarely is one piece of information more important than the other. How much fish you ordered--the AM shift needs to know about that. The nozzle on the hose in the dish pit is leaking--the sous chef needs to know about that. There are only 9 chicken left--the front of house needs to know about that. But wait! The am sous chef ordered squab, and its already been prepped--the Chef and the sous chef and the front of house need to know that. And that fish special has been coming back to the dish pit with plates almost full all night--the whole kitchen needs to know about that. Add to this the constant chatter between stations during service, the Chefs critiques on the plates coming out, or the GM letting you know that a food critic just sat upstairs, and you've got a lot of information flying around.

What serves us in the Nopa kitchen is that we all speak the same language--and I dont mean English or Spanish. We all understand the timing on the food, and what exactly "five minutes!" means. (in my experience, a minute in a kitchen is never actually a minute) The sautee cook knows what I mean when I say "watch your color" and the grill cook know what i mean when I point at his grill while he's plating. When it's all clicking, it's a special thing to watch.

photo by mark linthicum

HOMEWORK.
i used to give new cooks homework. culinary terms to look up. articles to read. places to eat. it's interesting, how many cooks think the job ends when they leave the kitchen. sure, cooks like to look at (not read) cookbooks, and sure, they like to eat out...but how much information is being absorbed there? there is no way to grow if you're only focused on whats going on where you work. having said that, there is really no way to grow if you're only focused on the type of cuisine you cook. (i had a duck dish at slanted door that would probably have been more at home on chez panisse's menu, and it was inspiring.) get together with your fellow cooks, trade books and articles, and eat out as much as you can. just dont drink too much.

notes:

• im trying to write, but this vice-presidential debate is making me want to stab myself in my eyeballs
• sundays. they're never, ever fun.
• "she looks like a cross between maggie gyllenhall and john goodman." "she looks like she's spent a lot of time in tents."
• moleskine. why did i not have one before?
• my wife sings bad country music while she cooks
• two quarts of asahi might be too much
• bloodsugarsexmagik on rock band. hells yes.
• what the hell is a shlada?

the flat top at dotties. yum

you've been warned

al's got links.

the trainer.

Teaching someone how to sautee is very, very difficult.  Working quickly, flipping pans, searing fish--these are the easy parts.  Controlling your heat, working efficiently, communicating--these are the hard parts.  Strangely, as I came up as a sautee cook, none of these lessons were being taught to me.  After a summer of working the five AM pastry shift, I was being brought back to the hot line.  Being in pastry had been good for me--after curdling creme anglaise and burning profiteroles enough times, I had honed my technique down to a point where little time was wasted, and no detail was overlooked.  My chef either saw talent in me, or was desperate for new blood on the line.  He paired me with T, a 40 something journeywoman cook with a gruff demeanor and a hot temper.  Most of the other cooks showed her a good deal of respect--not just because she was older, but because she had been holding down the busiest station on the line since the restaurant opened.  Now it was my turn.

"Hold your pan like this, and you've kinda got a deep fryer."  I was watching T cook crab cakes--a huge seller on that menu.  They were gently cooked in a beautiful new all-clad pan, in grapseed oil, then warmed through in the oven.  Getting them right was hard--too much breading and they burned, too wet and they wouldnt brown, too loosely packed and they fell apart.  T was showing me shortcuts--but in her mind this was just the way it was done.

"You can sear off five orders of crab cakes at a time, then just heat them up when an order comes in."
"But chef doesn't want us to..."
"Well if you want your station to go down, then I dont give a fuck."  She stormed down the line, then back, then down to the walk-in, then back. 
"Can you help me with the scallop..."
"Get out of the way."  She shoved me aside and cooked a couple of orders, saying nothing to me.
"There, now its your turn."

Any questions about technique, or the whys of cooking were met with a short, angry response--like I was stupid for even asking.  I struggled through my shifts in the following weeks, and when the chef caught me searing off more crab cake orders than I had on fire, he went crazy. 

"Since when do we sear off more orders than we have on fire?!?"
"Um, that's the way I was trained Chef."

As soon as those words crossed my lips, I came the realization that my training up to this point had been a bit of a waste.  All of those questions I had been asking had been ignored because T didnt know the answers.  All of the short cuts came because she didnt know any other way to keep up.  Such an epiphany is great for a cook, but it doesnt get them out of the weeds in that moment.  It would mean many hard nights with my Chef literally standing over my shoulder, watching every movement, screaming at me to re-fire the second I did something wrong. (despite the yelling, at least he was telling me where I was making mistakes)  I scoured cookbooks, trying to gather as much information on technique as I could.  T glared at me every night from then on--after all, I was the culinary school punk who had outed her as a bad trainer.  Eventually she left, and not long after that I moved into her old lead cook position.


Training a cook has greater ramifications than just running a good or bad service.  You're passing on hundreds of years of culinary tradition when you teach someone.  You're leaving a part of yourself with that cook.  If you do it right, the cook will remember the lessons you taught them.  If you do it wrongly, the cook will only remember you.  As the teacher, its not enough to just show technique--you have to teach how to communicate--and how to be aware in every moment.  When you start to get good, its like time and space slow down for you.  You're no longer frantic.  You are in control.  And its your duty to pass the right lessons on.


notes:

• out the door spring rolls are worth the extra money
• pizzaria delfina opened on California street--a quick bike ride from my apartment.  eating there was fun--there was so much nervous energy in the room they probably couldve powered the whole block with it.  the food was exceptional (best. tripe. ever.)  so was the espresso from the e61.
  

• most of you were wrong.  the correct answer was Heart.
• when your adrenaline rush meets your caffiene rush, it will either be beautiful, or you will want to throw up.  sometimes both.
• whats worse--mental or physical fatigue?  does one lead to the other?
• san francisco, I love you. 
  

Hazing.

My early cooking career was peppered by two constants:  poor training, and being hazed.  They rarely overlapped one another, but thankfully the distrust that stemmed from being hazed led to me questioning the poor technique I was being taught. 

My first real hazing was at Sushi Ran.  I had been working for a catering company in the morning before school, and I was learning some good stuff--knife skills, making vinaigrettes, sauteeing and grilling.  That I was learning these skills without the stress of a dinner service was a good thing--hours of cooking that would become muscle memory...instinct.  As my skill set grew, so did my ego.  I started to challenge my instructors at school--finding ways to use their own lectures against them.  One teacher, out of either admiration or disgust for this rebellious streak set me up with a job at SR.  I was about to change to morning classes, so my job at the catering company was more or less over at this point. 

Upon showing up for my first day at work, I was given a twenty five pound bag of carrots.  The sous chef had been extolling the virutes of smoking weed while drinking espresso when I arrived--he called it the poor mans speedball.  I was simply an annoyance, so he led me to my corner, carrots in tow.  

"Small dice this bag."
"The whole bag?"
"Yeah."
"Whats it going in?"
"Dont worry about it.  Just do it."

Twenty five pounds of brunoised carrot is going to end up being around 15-18 quarts.  If it's going in mirepoix (something rarely used in a Japanese restaurant) youre talking about almost eighteen gallons of veg.  Baffled, I started peeling and cutting.  Around the second hour of this my vision started to blur a bit, my neck tightening.  Around the third hour my knife callous started to become raw, an excruciating little jolt everytime I pushed my knife down.  I cant remember how long it ended up taking me, but by the time I was done the resturant was well into service.  The stomach area of my coat was stained orange, as were my fingers and side towel.  I felt gaunt, like I had entered the culinary equivalant of a sweat lodge.  The only difference was that instead of an epiphany, I saw only a hollow future of being this restaurants vegatable bitch.  The sous stepped off the line and ran his hands through the large mixing bowl mounded with carrots.

"Good."
"Thanks."

Then he dumped the entire bowl in the garbage.  The whole line, Chef included laughed. 

"You can go home now."

Up until this point I had never considered that I was making a mistake by choosing to cook for a living.  Now I was retracing my steps until this point, trying to figure out where I had this mental lapse that landed me here.  I went home, furious.  I mean really, throwing away a bag of carrots?  Just to humiliate me?  Even to this day, it seems excessive.  When I came back the next day I was given real tasks--plating for a cocktail party, making ponzu, and grilling burgers for family meal.  That I even came back was enough for these guys;  I was still the culinary school asshole, but at least I was persistant. 

I like to think that my brand of hazing was more creative.  The VDV crew, being the cocky alpha male jerks that we were hazed everyone.  New cooks, food runners, servers, hosts--it didnt matter.  Everyone got fucked with.  Some of our favorites: 

• the aioli creme brulee, complete with garnish
• wasabi filled profiteroles
• duck fat ice cream, perfectly quenelled into a chilled glass
• the classics:  wooden sautee pan, left handed sautee pan, spaghetti batter, chopping flour, jet wash...

The thing about hazing is it has to lead you somewhere--it cant be done just to be mean.  If youre going to be 90% poison, then your 10% of sugar has to be really, really sweet.  Hazing should be to break the ice--a twisted way of saying welcome to the family.  It has to be coupled with strong training, and it has to be done very, very carefully--the chances of it turning into bullying are far too great.  One has to think back to their own experiences with it, and remember the feelings it left them with.   


a quick guide for new cooks:

• read everything ruhlman has written about cooking.  not just the laundry cookbook--start with the making of a chef and work your way through.  man cannot survive on bourdain alone.
• cook on your days off.  start with breakfast, even if it's at 1 in the afternoon.  hit up a market, a produce stand, whatever.  spend all your money on food. (and a little on whiskey, beer, and wine.)  make something simple, but re-work the recipe to challenge your own technique.  if your dirty bowls, pots and pans stack up faster than you can wash them, you're probably doing it right.  invite your friends over for added stress.
• sharpen. your. fucking. knives.
• please, im begging you--do not try to learn recipes by watching the food network.  let's keep the molto mario watching to once a month.
• go back and re-read soul of a chef.  yes, i know you just finished it.  you missed stuff--trust me.  also read the fourth star, the perfectionist, heat, letters to a young chef, cooking for kings, larousse gastronomique, and on food and cooking.  on second thought, read on food and cooking twice also.
• use the internet.  it's your most important resource.

NOTES:
-"I like to think I put the taint in sustain(t)able"  -corey
-if you can't accept blame for your own actions, you should not cook
-salt cod.  it should be salty.
-rotating my matress got rid of the knot in my shoulder. 
-out the door imperial rolls + lunch with dan at the berkeley marina = awesome
-cooking successfully is just a never ending cycle of contradictions.  more on this later.

Four Star Coffee (Blue Bottle Cafe, San Francisco)

I'm on my week off right now...having wrapped things up at PAV on Sunday. There was a lot of goodbyes, and hugs, and booze. I'll be following up on all this madness tomorrow, but today is all about Blue Bottle Cafe, which today turned one week old.

I love Blue Bottle. I'm addicted to Blue Bottle. I drink a full press pot, to the head, every morning. My days off are planned around trips to either their Linden kiosk or the farmers market. A restaurant having Blue Bottle on the menu will become a reason in it's own for a visit. I've been known to drink a small press pot at 1:30 am with dessert at Nopa. The farmers market(s) and kiosk are great. They bring with them a certain indie cool opting out special trip kinda vibe. Linden especially has a cool feeling, with bike messengers, tech folks, and restaurant industry all mingling over lattes and drip coffees.

The cafe does not feel like this at all. Don't get me wrong--there are plenty of young, hip, in the know people hanging out. Alot of familiar Blue Bottle folks man the counter, and the $20,000 Japanese siphon bar. They menu looks the same, although yesterday there was a guy in chef coat making sandwiches, which sit pretty in a case next to the register.

The whole operation, with everyone in black dress shirts and aprons, and the immaculate shelves and counters, looks like a fine dining (drinking?) spot. There are newspapers to read, and no one is in the corner chair using their laptop. Yet. Still, simply said, it's a stunner.

There has already been plenty of coverage and buzz....here, here, and here. You need to go...if only for the theatre of that crazy machine.

They give you candy with your coffee. What more could you want?

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