Little Details Are The Difference

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The longer I’m in the business and the more I dine out it becomes clearer that the little details are really what makes the difference between average and great. The things I remember from a dining experience are rarely center of the plate dishes or components. You definitely need great ingredients, proper preparation, and presentation but for me a hostess that offers a kind word or understanding of my particular situation will be the thing that brings me back. An average family style dining restaurant that has consistent simple food that’s decided to fresh squeeze lemon-aid instead of a mix or powder will catch my attention. That simple elegant detail of fresh lemon-aid will be the thing I mention to others and that I’ll remember when choosing where to eat.

It seems like a simple rule, just do whatever your doing well. If you serve coffee make sure that you select the best your price point & cost will absorb. But then clean your urns and brewing equipment, brew it in the right amount and keep it fresh. I’d much rather have a great cup of coffee than to be sold a mediocre latte. Just do what ever your doing the best you can, rather than shooting for the moon and falling short. While living in Vermont there was a restaurant that baked fresh bread and sliced it for toast. We would drive 25 miles, past a dozen very good restaurants, just to eat that toast with our eggs on a Sunday morning. Everything else was well prepared, but more or less the same offerings as the competition, it was that toast that did it. That toast told a story that someone had passion and care. It showed me that if someone takes the time to bake on site and slice bread by hand there’s a good chance the eggs will be fresh, seasoned, and properly cooked. Be it fresh squeezed lemons, great bread, or mayo from scratch these types of products are a barometer for how your whole experience will be. It takes determination to provide a great experience and chances are better that a Chef that takes the time to do bread or mayo correctly will sear the snapper perfectly. They’re also much more likely to hire similar minded people and train them well. This is just as true in a local diner as it is in Michelin stared Dining.

So that’s what I look for when I dine and the reasons I love everything from street food to fine dining as long as I can find an approach that shows I’ve been considered in the whole process. I don’t expect or want all restaurants to be everything to everyone, some people find the speed of a drive through to be the “thing” their looking for. But for me I look for a connection to “me” rather than a market segment. I want to be exposed to new ideas and food, but to be considered in the process. Is there a vegetarian selection or chef who’s able to create for Kristine? If not, the best cassoulet or Sous-vide Lobster in the world may not be spectacular when I’m with my wife. That one detail will make or break a restaurant for “us”. If I’m with my brother, a Chef as well, the connection will be different. Different, but measured the same, is there the passion, quality, and consistency to deliver the details what ever the style and level of dining. That’s it, simple or complex this is a people business, not a food business. Look for the place that considers that, look for that simple fresh squeezed lemon-aid and you’ll find much more.

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So You Want To Be A Chef?

When I meet people for the first time I very often get comments about how they love to cook at home, are addicted to the Food Network, and have a secret desire to be a chef. I also get the opportunity to work with students who are going to school “to be a chef”. These people always ask for advice and tips on what they need to do to work in professional kitchens. I always have difficulty explaining what’s needed in a sentence or two of polite conversation. What most are expecting is that chefs cook food, just tell me how to cook, share a recipe, or what knives to buy. But to really offer advice on how to succeed as a chef I want to take them back many years to the start of my career. I had the great advantage of stepping into my first professional kitchen as a 13yr old dish washer. This early start in kitchens allowed me to test my like or dislike for the life before I really needed to “get my career going” or before spending tens of thousands on a culinary education. What I found was I loved the environment, the frank brutal honesty, the competition, the lifestyle, and passion driven crazy people who surrounded me. These diverse and quirky people working beside me were interesting, dynamic, and unlike anyone else I had ever met. I liked the work hard/play hard fanatical aspects of kitchens and the people who made restaurants come alive. However I can tell you most people do not find “the heat” of the kitchen to their liking. Despite what they see on the Food Network or if you own a set of great knives & a robot coup, this is not for most people.

Many people have tried to describe what you need to be a chef. The culinary schools dedicate chapters in books to the philosophy of being a chef and professional conduct and once you work in kitchens you see and hear incomplete conversations with new cooks about what they need to bring to the team. Though many before me have attempted to share knowledge of what it takes, and probably have done it better, here’s my attempt and addition to the conversation.

TIME – In North America we often start too late in life for kitchen work. Our parents cook less and expose us less to food culture. We rarely got a job at an early age and so we washed too few dishes, never unloaded produce trucks into coolers, peeled too few potatoes, and prepped under few, if any, tough cooks before heading off to Culinary School. We think we can trade money for experience and this is simply not true. If you don’t spend time in kitchens and food culture it’ll cost you and those you need to support, time is a key to success in professional kitchens. Despite what todays culinary schools will promote and “sell”, you can’t learn and practice even close to what you’ll need to know in two or four years. In fact, you’ll spend a life time learning and refining your skills in a kitchen, two or four years is nothing. But many people come out of school or work a couple years on a line and think they’ll be a chef and unfortunately some will even get hired into the job well before they have the skills, patience, and poise to fill the role. The truth is in school they learned a bit about food, but never learned how to make a mistake in an unforgiving environment. They made a few sauces and produced a couple dinners, but never executed a set of skills repeatedly over time in various conditions. They were taught, but did very little teaching and now don’t know how to develop a pot washer into a prep cook. They were given time lines and resources, but rarely have had to make things happen with no time left, few resources, and come back in a few hours to face the same challenges again. My advice is worry less about the title stitched on your jacket and more about whats in your head. Take the time to develop skills and be honest with yourself about where you really are. But time is a contradiction in kitchens… you need to be patient, but driven… Practice skills until perfected, but be ambitious enough to take a leap at the right moment… Stay and learn all a chef has to offer, but move on to new kitchens & ideas. There is no set formula other than honest self assessment and the ability to glean the truth from criticism and advice from people you trust.

IMMERSION – This isn’t a job, it’s a life. You’ll need to wade in over your head and soak up everything you can from the industry. If your not wanting to think about kitchens, food, and restaurants outside of “work” then you better get out now. The best people I’ve ever worked with were immersed in a culture of food. To do this you’ll need to make friends and talk shop with cooks, chefs, servers, and sommeliers. You need to cook at home for yourself & others. Read everything you can, collect cook books & recipes, subscribe to magazines, and stay current with trends. Travel to various countries and regions and eat what their eating. Go out to eat where you live and really look at the operation rather than just dine. Visit farms, fish mongers, and markets and learn about products and production. After working a 14 hour shift if you find yourself making fresh pasta for Carbonara and working on new menus over a 1am dinner your getting close. Now just read a few pages from the Larousse Gastronomique thats sitting on your night stand as you kill the last of the wine in your glass. Don’t forget to set your alarm, your back in the kitchen in a couple of hours…. Now repeat.

WILLINGNESS TO SERVE – Despite what you think this isn’t a food business, it’s a people business, food is just the canvass. Serving people and wanting to please is a necessary perspective to move forward in kitchens and deal with all the personalities you’ll meet. Guests who are paying for perfection while trying to close the deal with their date or business client. Servers who will be demanding and test your patience. Owners/investor who are making too little or no profit squeezing the margins. Purveyors who need your order phoned in and a check sent out. Cooks who claim “They want to learn, are ready for a promotion, and are the best in your kitchen…by the way I need Saturday night off it’s my girlfriends birthday”. These are the people you’ll serve, each and everyone the “most important person” in your restaurant. Oh yea, make sure you call back that Sous Chef applicant who’s not qualified, they left three messages in the office just today.

PATIENCE FOR GENTLE ABUSE – Working in a kitchen isn’t the “toughest” job in the world. Chefs & cooks aren’t special forces or smoke jumpers. We don’t take a beating in the “Ultimate Fighting Challenge” or make life & death calls in emergency rooms. The stress isn’t like choosing to buy a hundred million dollars of stock on Wall Street with one push of a button. No, kitchens are a more subtle “death by a thousand cuts” type of deal. It’s constantly hot standing over open flames or wet & freezing carving ice sculptures in a walk-in freezer. You’ll spend long hours on your feet often many days in a row to get through a Summer season or holiday constantly being pushed, stressed, and pressed to drive results one service at a time. The team is unconcerned with your back pain, burned arm, or bad nights sleep and will tell you so if asked. They’ll share insightful comments like “You only had 3hrs sleep and your feet hurt? Why don’t you pull up your panties and FIRE THAT SALMON PRINCESS! or can I get you a warm glass of shut the hell up?” You need to understand this is just them expressing Esprit de Corps and understanding of your plight while maintaining an I don’t give a shit perspective. But to show they love you they will buy the first round at the pub in a couple hours and you’ll realize theres no one you’d rather have beside you on a busy Saturday night. This is the crucible that great Chefs are forged in, if it sounds strange perhaps the kitchen isn’t the place for you.

FOOD – There it is, the food, the culinary art, the creativity. There’s no doubt that you’ll need to be passionate about food and creating with food. This is what’ll sustain you through everything else, the chance to make wonderful flavors, compose dishes, and design something beautiful to be consumed by adoring guests. You’ll be challenged though, as this is an ever changing “art”. You’ll have guests with food preferences, allergies, and dietary concerns and you’ll need to change your art to meet their needs. You’ll not just make what you want, you’ll craft dishes to meet food cost, labor cost, and guests demands. Hopefully you’ll find you love the challenge and are able to meet at a cross roads of skill, knowledge, and expectations to produce food that your proud of. If your really lucky you’ll be on the cutting edge, setting trends, the one to be followed. This will bring new expectations and demands like sourcing and enhancing the best products, constantly improving and developing ideas, and mentoring a team to support the vision. In the end the food isn’t yours, it’s what you share with others, it’s changed by feedback, experience, and financial drivers which requires you to be creative in ways you never expected. That’s food, that’s the art.

SACRIFICE – The sacrifices will not be world shaping or life altering on the level of joining the Priesthood. Again it’s far more subtle and sneaks up on you. But you soon realize you don’t go out on New Years because it’s amateur hour and you need to be back to start brunch in a couple hours. Valentine’s day is just the night you run out of two tops causing a wait at the door and long service so you can get home late to watch your girlfriend sleeping. You’ll see your mother on Mother’s Day for two minutes when you leave the kitchen to check her table. You work when everyone else plays and you’ll lose touch with friends that have regular jobs along the way. You’ll slug it out in multi-year apprenticeships or have thousands in student loans to get a pantry job to prove yourself in a new kitchen before getting a promotion.

So why do it? I have a hard time expressing what I love so much about being a chef. It’s something that’s in your blood as the Jimmy Buffet song says “I found a life to suit my style”. I don’t wear a tie, I stay up late, closed more bars than I can count, traveled, and don’t ride a desk. I’m rewarded for hard work and get immediate praise for a job well done. It’s constant change and challenge and I’m doing what I love… if asked theres nothing else I’d rather do, but I ask you… so you want to be a chef?

The Importance Of Salt

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As I draw up several gallons of cool clear sea water from a North Western shore of the Big Island, I laugh at myself for feeling a connection to the history of salt. But I can’t help but think about Cod fishermen driving a world economy on salted cod over 300 years ago or Gandhi leading the Salt Revolt in India. I didn’t start harvesting salt out economic need or as a social revolution. It was simply a thought that all around me are the two things I need to harvest this chemical miracle, the sea and the Sun. It struck me all I needed was some sea water, a pan, and some time.

I started with a measured gallon of sea water wondering how much salt might come forth and how much time it would take. Favoring clean white salt, I started with a glass pan, a simple rectangular 5qt glass baking dish. I also knew I wanted to gather as much heat as possible so I painted the outside surface of the pan black. That was it and so I added the sea water and waited. A day later there was a noticeable reduction in the water level, but no sign of salt. The next day over half the water volume was gone, but still not one crystal. I wonder to myself maybe one gallon isn’t enough water to get a concentration? How much water needs to evaporate before I see signs of salt?

On the third day under the South Kohala Sun I started to get my answers, on the sides of the pan a crust of salt was forming, on the bottom of the pan small crystal shaped white spots appeared. As a breeze blew over the warm brine small “flowers” of salt formed and then disappeared seconds later. But soon those same crystals stayed on the surface and grew. On the fourth day of my new found salt production I had several ounces of flaked white salt. Still wet I pushed the salt into one corner of the pan allowing extra water to run out. I skimmed up the salt into a new clean pan. As if by magic clear water had turned into pure white flakes of salt that glistened and refracted light.

I’ve now repeated this process many times and learned that if I concentrate and mix the brine from several pans into one that I can get the fine flakes like Flour de Sal more consistently. But other than that little advance and making a few more of my salt pans that was the whole evolution of my salt harvest. I found I get a little under four ounces per gallon and depending on the weather it’s four to six days start to finish. I can now easily supply myself and a few others with all the salt we could possibly use. I’ve also been able to barter some salt for pink pepper corns and some avocados. I’ve always loved reading and learning history so my ability to barter my salt for other goods is another connection to the history of salt and how Roman Soldiers once got paid with salt or at least had a portion of their wage set aside for salt, the exact truth seems to be lost in translation and time. However it’s a fact that “salt” is the root of the word salary and has spent most of human history as one of the most valuable substances known. A fact now lost in grocery stores where it can be found for pennies an ounce. So why go to the trouble to harvest your own?

As a Chef salt has a special value and just like all music is played on the same scale, all food is prepared on a scale of salt. A simple base that when applied different ways produces diverse results. Simply adding a little in the cooking process, in a brine, or curing, to remove excess moisture from pickles or the bitter from eggplant and endive it could be argued salt is the most important ingredient in every kitchen. From croutons & crackers to a sprinkle on a finished dish salt enhances flavor, preserves, and is necessary for life it’s self. So I find that when it’s “my salt” I have a connection to the food and to the world that I didn’t before. Like the first time I made my own pasta or caught and cooked a fish, a dish made with my salt is more “mine”. I’ve heard of a bakery in Oregon that bakes with wheat grown on their own family farm and the thought made me smile and sit in wonder. I’ve seen friends make their own soap, keep bees, and brew beer. In each example it could be asked why? With a pinch of hard white crystals between my index finger and thumb as I watch them fall into the soup pot, I know why….

My Argument For Sustainable Food & Living

Recently I’m hearing and reading arguments against “going green”. But when I really listen and think about what’s being said, these arguments are as shallow and unthinking as the term “green”. In my mind this is all bumper sticker politics intended to serve up simple one dimensional arguments, for or against, without speaking the complete truth or supporting critical thought. My case for sustainable foods and systems will require participation, thought, and even some sacrifice. These are dangerous arguments to make in a “I work hard for what I have”, do my own thing, “freedom” loving America. So allow me to start here: I politely ask everyone to consider that they’re also “free” to choose a better system for themselves. I urge each of you to look at how hard you work to provide foods that aren’t nutritious, often dangerous, and wasteful to yourself and your family. Think about needing less money and less hours at work, instead develop new resources so you can enjoy more. Lastly, know that your free to use any product or system available, but you can make choices that are cheaper, sustainable, high quality, and healthier. You simply don’t need to view sustainability as limits or take aways, it’s choice.

I recently read an article that stated that buying organic hot house tomatoes in New England in the dead of Winter uses more energy than shipping tomatoes from Southern Mexico by truck and rail to the same New England town. Though I haven’t done the energy calculation myself, allow me to concede that argument. But this was offered as a reason not to source and shop locally. In a sneaky round about way it was a reason to reject sustainability and continue with business as usual. It made the case that “organics” raised prices of food and hurt the poor, it claimed the system is inefficient and couldn’t replace our food supply. It was rejecting sustainability based on one product swop in a temperate zone during Winter, tomato for tomato. Rejecting a sustainable model on those points….. I strongly disagree!

The fact is this is an example of the “sacrifice” I mentioned earlier. No one in New England should be buying Hot House Tomatoes in February, they should be using the jarred tomatoes they put up from their garden last Summer. But people act as if they couldn’t eat if they can’t eat those waxed in petroleum paraffin, shipped thousands of miles and stocked in the local grocery tomatoes or if they can’t get their “grown with loving care” hot house tomatoes that used huge amounts of energy to produce. They speak as if there’s no choice but bad, worst, or starvation. I would argue, not only can you eat, but you can eat well in a New England February using a sustainable model. In that February snow covered New England town there’s abundance! Preserved vegetables, pickles, jams & jellies, honey, beans, polenta, oats, tree nuts, & dried fruits. There’s hundreds of artisan cheeses in the area, beef, poultry, and game. Perch being ice fished from thousands of lakes and ponds, fresh bread and local eggs. With all this, keep a couple things in mind, February is the month with the least sustainable options in New England and we’ve still not looked in a freezer to find the broccoli, cauliflower, and pumpkin that could’ve been frozen from the fall or that in this climate you can have a root cellar with potato, onions, beets, parsnips and garlic. Did I mention Beer? Is this a region on the verge of starvation and having a lack of resources or have we selected and maintained the wrong system?

But we also hear we can’t feed the Earth’s population without large industrial farming in distant places. This I fear is only partly true, it’s not an argument against sustainable methods or organic farms. It’s an argument to put a band aid on for a few years. The truth is more like this, as the world consumes and eats the way we do in the U.S., no system that exists, except starvation, slavery, and death, can take care of the planets population much less our future population. But if we used our resources to produce a little food in our homes and community, we stop consuming unneeded amounts of meat based protein and we reduce the waste in our consumption and production methods, we can feed the world from local sources. I’m not saying we need to be Vegans and eat “tofu” all day. In fact the production of tofu is it’s self a wasteful process. What I’m saying is we can eat the meat we need and feed the world. I’m saying there are systems we can use to produce livestock more humanely and sustainably as long as we’re not consuming hundreds of times more than we need. We don’t need to fish every fish from the oceans, but we do need more plants on our plates and we need to eat a few eggs before we make chicken vegetable soup with that chicken. We need a bowl of steel cut oats and not a grand slam breakfast.

I don’t think I can make the ironclad scientifically supported case for a globally sustainable food system in 2000 words or less, I wouldn’t try. I only seek to create some critical thought and point out we could all be eating locally and in season rather than sourcing from thousands of miles away. We all need to pay attention to the sources of the foods we eat. We can’t just step into Costco, Whole Foods, or our local natural foods co-op and fill our carts with tomatoes in February. I fear “green” is the new “yuppy” movement, with people buying designer recycle bins, trading in their 3 year old SUV for a Prius and buying out the Whole Foods market of products from far flung places without any consideration of what it took to make and ship those products. I think we need to sacrifice a little and think much more. Rather than buying those designer recycle bins with the fancy logo and color coding, just use a humble box from your local market, that’s recycling! More importantly, buy and make less trash, then compost what you can. If you checked, you’d find running your old car until it won’t run any longer is far “greener” than buying any new car. Then when your vehicle finally can’t go any farther, buy the most sustainable vehicle that meets your needs. As for Whole Foods shopping sprees, plant a garden instead. A window box, a 3′x5′ plot on a roof or in a yard. Use everything your garden yields, eat fresh, then dry, can, preserve, and pickle everything else. Barter and trade or just share your abundance rather than throwing away. So feel free to grab one sentence or limited thought and argue against. But I think that’s a plan for sustainability, less BS and a little more common sense.

We need to stop trying to replace apples with apples. People seem to want to trade the brand name disposable razors for “recycled plastic” disposable razors. They want to replace Costco with Whole Foods, but this is replacing one wasteful consumer based system with another wasteful consumer based system. Instead buy an old school straight razor that lasts a lifetime, just stop buying tomatoes when their not growing in your region, and reduce what you buy at any market and plant that garden. I can accept not everyone can do all the things I’m suggesting, hell I’ve not done all the things I’m suggesting. But I am thinking and working towards it every day. I’ve started with things I can do now, I stopped buying bottled water and have a re-usable container. In the Hawaii Sun, and near the sea, I produce salt. A small thing but maybe I can give some away and share my abundance. I’ve started buying everything I can within 75 miles of my home; fruits, vegetables, fish, and even tea. We have a solar hot water heater instead of burning fuels and electricity. I’ve vowed to change my “car trade in history” for better utilization and maintenance instead. Why have I owned 7 cars in the last 27 years? Surely the life of a car is more than 3.85 years! We’ve started a Chef’s garden at work, we’re working hard to buy more locally grown/produced products, and we’re making better choices on menus.

So those are the types of things I’m advocating. Just think more and use less, make changes and not replacements. These changes may be different from person to person and place to place, just get started. Don’t buy into being “yuppy green”, try not to “buy” into anything. Opt for something new instead and make choices that’ll impact you, your family, community, and the world. Eat better, make less trash, use the things you have fully and recycle things when you can’t use them any longer. Do this at home, work, and in the community, then look for a bigger change like getting all the food you need from your land and hard work, great! Go to a solar hot water system rather than burning fuels, excellent. But don’t let this be an argument that says you have less choice, but an argument that your free to choose a smarter system. Think, read, listen, and question…. then act.

A New Image Of Kitchens Inspired By Larry Czerwonka

I recently had the opportunity to view the first TEDx Waiakea presentation in Hilo. Being a fan of TED (Technology, Entertainment, & Design), the idea of a community based version of TED in the form of TEDx, caught my attention. As the date drew near I wondered if any of the speakers would connect with my role as a Chef? Would anyone share ideas that would impact my passion for restaurants? As it turns out I wasn’t disappointed, but some of the ideas that made me think the most touched on subjects that were surprising to me. My ideas of how work gets done and who does the work,were turned upside down in 15 minutes.

One of the speakers at the event that impacted me was Larry Czerwonka. Larry had a back ground in technology and business, however what he shared was how a business might run if it was approached in a new way. His thought model for this new approach to “regular” business was to make business’ run like a professional sports team, not by using sports cliche and bravado, but by looking at the strategies these organizations use to get measured success. For example, in business, we seem to value the “Jack of all trades” approach to delegating responsibility to colleagues. But what if the Patriots running back was kicking field goals as well and then selling hot dogs in the stands during the game?  A stupid question, right? But this is exactly what can happen in many business’ each day.  We’ve all seen very talented & well paid people performing tasks their not specialized in because “it needs to get done”, but often these needed tasks get done poorly and it takes longer because the bar tender is fixing the plumbing rather than mixing drinks. This was the type of question Larry Czerwonka was putting out that has me thinking about new ideas on how my industry runs. The motto of TED is “Ideas Worth Spreading”, Larry Czerwonka was offering ideas that live up to exactly that.

Another question that Larry put forward was about goals in an organization. In Business the goal is all too often focused on a financial outcome, but this doesn’t offer a tangible set of actions or a connection for each person and their roles. If you were to ask a pro player(s) what their goal was this year, you’d hear “win the World Series” then they may offer steps they each would need to meet that goal. Bat 425, limit unforced errors, or increase on base percentage. Would they ever say; sell out the Sky Box or increase cable revenue? So in the kitchen how would a saucier, butcher, or pot washer who never settle a bill or even see the guest relate to EBITDA? Of course we could discuss “trim yield” with the butcher, “recipe cost” with a saucier, or “supply costs” with the pot washer but are these really tangible goals for these people? What we need is to make goals that are connected, shared, and meaningful for everyone in the restaurant. We need to create goals everyone can communicate and act on directly each day.

Durring Larry’s presentation a question was asked that hit me like a wild pitch; “Do the dodgers post help wanted adds in the news paper when they need a new catcher?”. Of course not, they recruit and develop catchers. They don’t wait for anyone to come to them, they seek out the needed players, build relationships, and develop people in their organization. But in the kitchen I’m far too often waiting to see if talent will walk through the door and lament the fact that high caliber people arn’t “appearing”. Counting on “help wanted” adds, Craig’s list, or head hunter web sites simply hasn’t yielded results. How do we foster relationships with potential talent? Where are the “talent pools”? How can I support these talent pools, offer positive views of the operation and create a real “recruiting program”? Just as important what are the traits & measures for who we want to recruit?

As Larry spoke the hits kept coming, “would a professional team encourage their star quarterback to move to management so they could win the Superbowl?” Tom Brady threw for 500+ yards on the Monday night opening game. How could this result be replaced if he was moved to offensive co-ordinator instead? But that’s often the approach in restaurants, the best talent move into management at the height of their ability in a key role. It’s an opposite  approach to development on the pro team, they reward the star productive player not promote them to management. The highest praise and best rewards in any sport don’t come to the coaches, but to the play makers. How is it we can reward talent in the kitchen & on the dining room floor? Why do we hold up management as the pinnacle achievement?

What else do sports teams do to promote success? An “off season” was an interesting example. Now this seemed crazy to me for a restaurant, but Larry offered a solid example and one that hit home. El Bulli was by any measure one of the worlds most successful restaurants in Spain, but El Bulli had an off season. A long seasonal closure created demand and allowed the restaurant to sell out their reservations a year in advance. This made it so they never needed to worry about capture or forecast, then while closed the team could work on development and training. When I thought more I realized that Alice Waters’ Chez Pannise also had a system to do a similar thing. At Chez Pannise their open year around, but positions are shared. A Chef works for 6 months, but is paid for the year, while another Chef takes the helm. In both cases this isn’t a vacation, nor was Larry advocating for this to be a discussion of leisure time as we know it. At Chez Pannise or El Bulli this was time to develop, create, learn & discover. Chefs traveled & dined, they met farmers or even work on farms, they develop recipes, ideas, and concepts for their next cycle. Imagine a wine program created by a Sommelier that had this type of time to discover and learn or the recruitment and ideas that a restaurant manager could develop given this resource? Is this crazy, or am I?

I have more questions than answers, but I want to thank Larry Czerwonka for offering me a new perspective. As a Chef, one the reasons for not changing offered is “we’ve always done it this way”, an answer I don’t value to say the least. Now I can agree a time tested idea that yields quality results for all stake holders makes perfect sense. But what actions in the kitchen are these time tested ideas and which things am I doing “because they’ve alway been done like that”? What’s counter productive? Do all stake holders get value from each practice? What just plain doesn’t work? Perhaps it’s time to rethink how kitchens run and what really best for a restaurant. It would seen we’ve got some examples of how to think about this change right in front of us, Batter up!