The darker side

The Chicago Tribune has this piece about the uglier side of the restaurant business.

I’m not sure I go along with the line of thought that drug addiction is the industry’s fault – personal responsibility has a place and people do make their own choices – but there’s no denying that if you work in a restaurant you’re going to see some pretty self-destructive behavior.

At any rate, it’s an interesting and cautionary tale.

This week’s menu & some latest news about where I just left

Not working has brought out the inner housewife in me. Aside from the cleaning and laundry duties though, I’ve been able to focus on cooking what I want to cook.

This week’s menu is as follows:

Monday (and leftovers Tuesday) – I’m making the crispy braised chicken thigh recipe from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc. The thighs get braised with fennel, Cerignola olives and lemon (along with the usual suspects of white wine, chicken stock, onion & garlic). I’m thinking of making potato pancakes to have with it because we need some starch and we have a lot of potatoes we need to get rid of.

Wednesday I’m making duck breasts that will be pan roasted a top butter braised brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and radish (another Ad Hoc recipe). I’ve got a black currant duck jus in my freezer which will likely be the sauce to have with this.

Thursday we’re having stuffed peppers – no fuss, easy and delicious – and we’ll probably have the leftovers on Saturday.

And Friday I’m making crispy duck confit with a mushroom ragout with frisee (the awkward lettuce) and polenta. I’m thinking of making a brandy (or whiskey) beurre blanc to serve over top of this.

——————–

On a different note I found out last night that the Chef I just worked for was fired on Friday night. Part of me was surprised but a large part of me wasn’t so much. I kind of saw it coming but am surprised at how quickly it came. The whole situtation is too bad because he’s a hell of a cook and a decent guy, just the situation at the end (see the posts regarding my resignation as evidence) was well, just not good.

He and I had several discussions in my last weeks about the state of the restaurant and the situation with the owners and I know how hard everything had been on him. Last night he called me up and we had a nice (if brief) chat about it all. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again – hell, maybe we’ll go have brunch together at our now former restaurant.

Substitutions – why even have a menu?

Here’s a thread on Chowhound that Erin sent me a link to this morning, maybe knowing just how pissed off I’d get.

Yet another reason I left my recent job was the amount of substitutions that our customers requested. The only reason to me to request a substitution is if you’re allergic. An attitude of “I don’t like it” is not a justifiable reason – either order a different menu item or eat at another restaurant.

Chefs, sous chefs and line cooks have gone through a painstaking process to create a menu and many of these folks have years of experience. And presumably the more you pay on a meal the more care has gone into the food you’re eating. The customer attitude of “I pay your wage” is totally passe and total bullshit. Go eat at fucking McDonald’s then.

My favorite line in the above thread is “if the customer wants a wedge with another dressing in your cheffy repertoire, give it to him; what’s it to you?”. Condescending attitude and lack of capital letters aside, it is something to me. The customer has no right to the chef’s work except in a fair exchange – you pay me I and I allow you to taste the fruits of my labor. Until this exchange has taken place there is no understanding, and even after that, it’s the fruit of my labor, so don’t ask me to do something I don’t believe in.

If as a customer you don’t like it, then find a restaurant that lists all the ingredients it uses and allows the customer to design their own dishes. Good luck.

Maybe I was lucky in Chicago where I had my first restaurant job, where the dining public is pretty easy going and fairly adventurous. We didn’t take temps on meats, we never substituted anything, and any time someone requested meat to be well done, they were instructed to order something else.

I’ve noticed people in Raleigh have a totally different attitude, which is the attitude of most of the posters on the Chowhound thread. If you think you know better, then by all means step back into the kitchen and show me how it’s done.

Last days and then some

My last days as a sous chef were some of the strangest days I’ve spent at a job, period.

I’d upped my last day by a week and a half after my shift on Sunday (the 13th), before I had two days off.  My last day was supposed to be the 31st, it was now the 20th.  Beyond just not enjoying my job at that point, it just seemed silly to me to hang on until the end of the year, especially when I could spend the week of Christmas with Erin, Nate and the rest of our family (who only live 4 1/2 hours away).

So I got into work on my last Wednesday, did some prep work, lineup, expo’d then eventually had to step on the line to assist because the lunch service that day was really busy and they were getting weeded.  I stepped in to assist the grill and fish cooks (more on the fish cook later).  At this point the pastry chef (who is my replacement as sous chef) helped expo and pretty much just yelled, screamed and swore at the line cooks. 

I looked over at Greg who was working grill and asked if him if it was always like this at brunch (the pastry chef expo’d brunch most Sundays because the chef couldn’t be bothered and both sous chefs would have quit if we had to work a brunch) and he replied “Yep”.  Blown away I responded back “If he even swears at me I’m walking”.

Lunch eventually tapered off and around 3 p.m. one of the p.m. line cooks arrived and asked me what I thought of my paycheck (seems the other sous chef had already gone through what I was about to).  I hadn’t even looked at it yet, so I headed back to the office where I discovered that my paycheck was less, presumably because I’d missed a couple of days while I was out sick.  Thanks for the heads up, dickwads, not to mention this begs all sorts of questions, like how was a rate of pay determined  prior to deducting any amount from my paycheck, seeing as I was on a salary.  At this point I’d been with the company for over a year and it just seemed to me like a dick move.  Like, “Hey, thanks for all your hard work, and even though you came in and we sent you home, we’re going to fuck you over anyway, to our benefit (of course)”.

I was close, very close to walking out the door forever without informing anyone, but after some consideration I realized this wasn’t going to hurt the owners; it would just hurt the line cooks I actually enjoyed cooking with. 

The rest of the night pretty much went without incident:  I worked the line when I was supposed to expo, mainly because I enjoy cooking and at this point had no more interest in certain facets of my job.  My attitude quickly became that of “You choose not to pay me, I choose what functions I’ll perform for and which ones I won’t”.  Out the window went expo and paperwork and pretty much all functions of being a manager.

Thursday I showed up to what appeared to be a pretty busy lunch.  The new kid hired to work the ‘fish’ station at lunch was in the weeds yet again.  I can’t recall a shift that guy wasn’t in the weeds, but then again, his experience entirely consisted of working at a McDonald’s.  I had nothing against the kid, but I wasn’t going to teach him how to cook, because I didn’t hire him and never would have.  As far as I saw it, he was put in a terrible situation and was sinking because the chef made a ridiculous decision even hiring him.  There was no mentor for him, just the outrageous expectation that he would somehow figure it out. 

Naturally he didn’t and couldn’t, and that Thursday afternoon Chef threw him off the station by sending him home in a very public and disagreeable manner and worked fish himself.  And this is where shit got really strange, because chef crashed and burned.  Hard. 

Sure, the station was in a shambles, but in the midst of butchering hanger steaks I stepped over to reorganize things and restock the station after McDonald’s kid had been sent home.  There was a 30+ minute ticket time on a croque monsieur – a sandwich for fuck’s sake.  And guess who was at expo – the crazy ass pastry chef who all of a sudden wasn’t swearing and yelling because the chef was in the building (and working/failing on a station).

I can’t say that part of me wasn’t enjoying any of this though and there may have even been a faint hint of a smile on my face if anyone had cared to look closely enough.

Lunch eventually ended and the p.m. line cooks showed up – ok all two of them who weren’t already there.  I was scheduled to work salads but switched with Greg so that I could work the hot line for the last time with one of the other cooks who had the weekend off (he had every other weekend off, one of the thousand or so reasons I ended up leaving to begin with).

I don’t remember it being all that busy but Danny, who was working on hot apps, hadn’t been doing a spectacular job, though he wasn’t doing all that badly though (in the previous 6 months he’d worked that station maybe 3 times, so how much could you really expect?).  All of a sudden Chef lays into him using some choice swear words, and Danny finally just had enough, and I can’t say I blame him.  I knew how much Danny hated to be sworn at, and all he said was “Don’t talk to me that way”, which was apparently cause enough to be sent home – 2 line cooks in a day!

So Chef came over to work hot apps, and then immediately turns onto me, saying I’ve got a “short time attitude”.  Gee, do you fucking think so?  But that day I’d done a remarkable amount of prep work for the weekend, far more so than the other sous chef.  Instead of letting it drop (what did I care at this point?) I said back to him “You’ve got to be kidding me, I busted my fass all fucking day”. 

At this point you could hear crickets in the kitchen, and I said, much quieter (but still loud enough that chef could hear) to the guy who gets the weekends off  that “I can walk out that door just like everyone else”.

And that was pretty much my intention at that moment – I’d stick around for the remainder of the night and never come back.  I really didn’t need the aggravation.  But then chef did something I’d never seen him do, and that was apologize to me, not once but three times, claiming that he mispoke, blah blah blah.

Nothing much after that happened for the other three days, other than that the sous chef who I was led to believe was getting the axe was transferred to another restaurant in the group, to which he was ecstatic about (I believe this past Monday ]was his last day in that lunacy).

Then last Tuesday I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize while I was folding laundry and watching soccer.  I decided to answer, and couldn’t believe that it was the executive chef for the restaurant group I’d just left.  He queried me as to the real reason I’d left the restaurant, then offered me one of two jobs that recently became available in (presumably) a different restaurant (one was no doubt at their Italian restaurant as I’ve seen a sous chef position listed on craigslist since we spoke ).

I politely declined.  He then offered himself to be a reference and wished me luck in my job search.

So that’s that.  I went back to pick up my last paycheck and heard how bad things were getting, but I didn’t care.  Things always get bad, people leave, new people come in and that’s that. 

I am interested to see if that restaurant stays in business, seeing as we weren’t making money and the holiday season wasn’t that busy for us.  I’m not hoping that it closes, unless they completely bastardize the menu as I’d heard the owners were considering.  All the attempts to get me to stay made mention of how “easy” things were going to be, plainly something I’m not interested in.

I’m not sure why restaurant owners won’t or can’t learn, but when the place first open it was packed for months, with a pretty authentic menu, no American beers or wines.  And then business started tapering as the economy went south and they started to water things down, introducing some American beer and not allowing the kitchen to do some really cool shit.  But that’s another post about various things I’ve learned while in the restaurant industry, which I plan on writing soon.

Plans

I have three days of work left and getting to the finish line has been an arduous task.  Both Wednesday (my pay was tinkered with) and yesterday (yesterday was th oddest day I’ve worked yet, I may go into it later) I almost said “Fuck it” and walked out the door.  But I think I can make it at this point, maybe. 

The temptation to come home to play with Nate and Erin is enormous, especially as the bullshit mounts.  But after Sunday I’ll be able to hang out with them for a little while.

Next week we’re travelling to Virginia to spend Christmas with our families (both our families live half a mile apart).  After that we’ll be coming back for a low key New Year’s Eve for which I’ve already bought a pheasant and made the sauce (I reduced a pot of chicken stock and added an apply brandy reduction along with more apple scraps, thyme and mustard seed, which yielded about a cup of sauce).

And during this time I’ll be looking for a new job at a restaurant that’s both closer to home and closed on Sundays (or at least lets me have Sundays off).  But until then I’m going to simply try to enjoy my time at home, cooking for both Erin and Nate and keeping the house clean.

Donkeys

Both sous chefs at work are both on their way out.  I gave notice a couple of weeks ago while the other guy has no idea he’s going to be fired.  I’ve tried hinting to him, but he seems unable to detect that I’m trying to do him a favor.

So our short-term status has turned us into bitches (or donkeys if you prefer).  Yesterday my day began at 10 a.m. and didn’t conclude until 10:30 last night.  Not unheard of in the world of cooking, but each of my 5 days is essentially that, and for really no reason.  It’s not like there’s that much shit to do.  Yesterday I had everything done by 4, and that included being expo during lunch.

And  then tonight the chef has the balls to come up to me to try to get me to stay, when one (of several, mind you) of my complaints is that I just don’t get to see my family enough.  Fuck off.

There’s clearly much more going on at work than I care to go into in any amount of detail, but stations are being closed by people who haven’t worked them because the chef has favorites and has sent them home.  All pretense of our line being a team has been thrown out the window, and it’s basically 2 or 3 other cooks and the two sous chefs who pick up all the slack, especially closing (where I’m a firm believer in everybody sharing in it, even if that means a fair rotation in the schedule).  Some people never close, ever, and that’s complete bullshit.

If there were a real reason for me to have such shit hours all of a sudden I wouldn’t have any problem with it.  It’s the holidays and it’s to be expected.  But when I see so many other people having it easy, it’s hard (really hard) to give a shit, especially when I’ve already given notice.

I don’t want to come across as bitching, because I’m really not.  I’m just calling out terrible managerial practices.  I’d initially told my chef that I’d be willing to work for or with him somewhere else, but the last couple of weeks have been eye opening, and I seriously doubt that I would be willing to do either of those things at any point in the future.  Which is too bad, because I’ve tried to end this amicably.  Unfortunately the other party just doesn’t want it to be that way.

Done

After some lengthy consideration I informed my chef that I’ll be working through to the end of the year and then I’m done, with my last day being New Years’ Eve (not a bad last day if you ask me).

I currently have nothing lined up but am not too worried about it.  There are certainly options closer to home that I’ll be visiting in the next few weeks to drop off my resume at.

My breaking point came last week with the unilateral decision by the owner to water down the menu while also informing us that we have to cut all the line cooks down to 4 shifts per week.  For October we ran a 26% food cost and a labor cost in the 10-13% range, both of which are well below the industry standard (especially the labor cost, and we’re being asked to cut it even further?).

There’s not much left to cut other than the soul out of the restaurant, which is clearly happening already and is a sad thing indeed.  I can’t be part of purchasing pate from D’Artagnan because we don’t have the time (or staff) to make our own.  Not that it’s happened yet, but chef has threatened to do so as a big ‘fuck you’ to the owners.  And I can’t fight his battle, no matter how noble it is, because I have to devote my energy to being a better husband and dad.

But right now I’m still focused on my job, finding a new one as well as enjoying Thanksgiving and trying to enjoy the Christmas season for all the right reasons (instead of the consumerism that has taken over our culture).

A bad sign

The owner of the restaurant I work at is about to dumb down the menu. 

Pommes puree is about to become mashed potatoes, lentils de puy will just be lentils, sauce bordelaise will interestingly become veal reduction (despite the fact it isn’t, but I guess that’s beside the point).  No more beurre blanc, beurre noir or maitre d’hotel butter.  And the most laughable is the deletion of the the phrase “du jour”.  Really?

I know business is a little slow but it’s not like we’re bleeding money.  And if they hadn’t noticed, this country is still in the midst of a deep recession, despite what adminstration officials may crow.

I can only think these changes will alienate our core customers, as they already alienated most of the kitchen tonight.

And finally, it’s not as if I needed another reason to leave, but this is the final straw. 

It’s unfortunate really, but ultimately it’s the owner’s money and he can have the menu say whatever it is he wants, no matter how wrong he is.

The worst decision I made this year

Back in the late spring/early summer period Erin asked me if I was interested in the sous chef job that was open at that time, or if I would ever be interested.  At the time I replied no for a couple of reasons, the first being that the structure of the company is more corporate, with layers of management – a scenario I know hasn’t worked out for me in the past.

A few later I was approached about the sous chef job after I’d already had a discussion with the chef about it.  I was tired and worn down at the time - Erin was still in the hospital with postpartum depression at the time, we clearly had mounting medical bills and I’d already missed a couple of weeks of work while on an hourly rate.  So I agreed to do it.

After two and a half months of being a sous chef I can say firmly I just don’t like my job, for all of the reasons I thought I wouldn’t.  It’s not that I don’t want to be a sous chef or more, it’s just not for this company or at this restaurant.

I recognize the fact that bullshit is going to exist wherever I end up, but I’m done with the fact that I get reprimanded for shit that happens on days when I’m off, or for shit well out of my control, especially when the other sous chef hears none of it.

Another thing well out of their control is that I’m tired of the commute which has turned into a 30 minute drive of dread.  All I can wonder is what am I going to walk into, what didn’t somebody do or what has someone fucked up.  Or are 150 people all going to be sat at once while I’m on expo (which happened to me this past Friday without any warning). 

There’s plenty of restaurants considerably closer to our home that are just as good (and in some cases better), and honestly I just want to see more of Erin and Nate right now.

Fortunately the situation isn’t anything like it was a year ago for me when I had to escape the asylum I was working at that then.  The food is good and the line cooks I get to work with are, for the most part, good people.  If I was still at the line cook level I could stay for a while longer, but as a sous chef I’ve gotta go.

Playing Dad at work

I’m slowly beginning to dislike Wednesdays.  They’re my first day back after two days off, and my day starts at 10:45 and ends about the same time 12 hours later.  And for both shifts I’m expo.

But yesterday may have been the most annoying, until I crossed over and worked the line because we had some big parties.  For a while during the evening service I was dealt the usual barrage of inane bullshit questions.  Like “I have a customer who wants a quiche Lorraine, can we do that?”. 

“No”, with a shake of the head without even looking up was my response.  After dealing with shit like that for an hour or so I was then informed that the bartender had cut herself and was told/requested to go deal with it.  She was in the office and cut herself with a serrated knife.  At first it looked pretty bad, really bad in fact.  But I got her to wash her hand off and as it turned out she cut through two of her fingernails.  No doubt extremely painful, but that’s what nails are for.  I made her sit down in the office so she wouldn’t pass out while I wrapped her fingers in bandaids and then gave her some finger cots for the rest of her shift (from my own supply since the restaurant I work at doesn’t have a first-aid kit – what the fuck is that by the way?)

After dealing with the bartender’s fingers, we fortunately got busy enough that I had to jump over and assist on the line.  Thank god, I was so sick of hearing my own name at this point and was all too happy just to work the line.  So that’s what I did for a while, until it died down some and then I was fortunate enough to place orders and do some adminstrative stuff so that I didn’t have to stand around and handle bullshit questions.

And now I’m gearing up to expo tomorrow night, only this time we have a full line and there’s no way out of it.