Chapter One – Into the Smoker
“If it’s not one thing it’s your mother!”, I said to Chris! Little did I know, yet was promptly informed thereafter, that Chris’ mom was dead. Oops! I had stuck my clog so far into my mouth that I’m sure you could see the tread through my eyeballs.
I was only slightly frustrated at Chris. His incompetence was always something I forgot in the kitchen. You see, I didn’t get to hire him. Although I was technically Chef of this catering company, the Boss-man, who died soon after, made it his last order of the day before leaving this world, to make me look like an ass by hiring this guy!
I liked Chris. I actually was pulling for him. But every time I left the kitchen, the food orders were screwed up or employees would beg me to come back into the kitchen. What kind of Souschef can’t hold down the fort while Chef is away?! The kind who can’t read the ten catering orders going out that day, at different times, because he’s dyslexic! He had skated all the way through culinary school and three previous jobs before he got to me. Now every other order that I wasn’t actually baby-sitting, was a flop! The Boss-lady was putting it all on me and I didn’t even hire the guy…but was stuck with this dude because he hadn’t messed up bad enough yet to where I couldn’t fix it. So here I am, “disrespecting his dead mother”, in front of the kitchen crew due to another accident.
We moved big numbers at this place. Catering coorporate lunches, parties, weddings, funerals, wakes, company events as large as 1500 people. My staff grew to seven or 8 cooks during the summer and shrunk to two people during the dead of winter. We even got bids from the un-named, high-profile, big, businessmen who invested in the companies in Reno. I got to meet the (at that time) 2nd richest man in America, on one such job. I thought I had hit the big pay-off.
That place was a blast to work at. Boss-man was a true-blue businessman with all kinds of cards up his chef coat-sleeves. He spoke in confidence to me after hours about running the place when he was gone. How he wanted to open a venue to work out of, and ditch the off-premise catering altogether except for the big coorporate accounts. He was tired of the head-aches from owning a fleet of cars that constantly needed repair and maintanance. The way out of all that, as Boss-man saw it, was to buy one last vehicle (a refrigerated big-rig) and work events any time and any place until our heads spun like a rotisserie! Then, when all was said and done with the year, buy up a place and settle down. He said that we were getting robbed blind by having to split profits with the people who owned the venues we were catering. I had to agree. Delivery was a pain in the ass and everyone knew it. Little did I know at the time, that he wasn’t speaking to his own wife about all this.
Then, he left us one day. It was a shocker even though everyone knew he was due for another stroke eventually…Me at the helm, his poor wife in the office, trying to pick up the pieces where we had left off the week before. We took a week off in Memory of him. Then I sat down in the cold leather chair in front of his big computer and dug through his address book for the next two weeks, trying to find all the codes to the programs he used. He had everything locked up tighter than a drum. What a crazy trip!
Three years into the kitchens and I found myself staring down a true executive chef’s position. I was sure I could do it. The butcher/mechanic of our outfit was a man of about 55 years old with a heart of gold and yet crusty as an old piece of brisket. He’d been with the company for over fifteen years. He could be meaner than a hornet if you caught him on a bad day! Smoked like a chimney with a grizzled, and liquidy cough. He would work the Smokers for the Barbecue (the best damn BBQ in the West Coast!), drive the Rigs if needed, wash the vehicles, do the repairs and maintenance, and even put my cooks in check if I wasn’t around. We had a hateful relationship. But we liked eachother. I just don’t know how to explain it really! I’d never met an “Old Coot” before. We made a pact when the Old Man died, that we would get along and work as a team.
But his wife saw it another way. Without support from her, I couldn’t stick around and keep things running. She wasn’t ready for anymore changes. I could see it in her eyes and in the conversations we had. It was getting to be time for me to move on, again. I stuck around for another six months until I felt it was the right time to leave.
Chapter Two – The Dynamic Duo
”All of my promotions have been by default.” I used to say that as kind of a disclaimer, to show people I wasn’t the typical cocky young chef, usually assumed by anyone who’d been in the business for fifteen years or more. But it was true! I knew I had alot to learn.
Unless he opens his own restaurant, a man can’t get much higher than Executive Chef without a college degree in my field. And God knows that wasn’t going to happen for me! I was already a father and husband, bringing in the paycheck as a chef who generally worked 55 hours minimum each week.
So off I went for a high paying Chef de Cuisine job with two guys, we’ll call them the “Dynamic Duo from Tahoe”, that were dumb enough to open upen up a restaurant in downtown Reno. I think I came in too late to be truly effective for them though. I should havebeen there a month sooner.
For the first three weeks, I was just working on the plating and photography for the food manual. It was so important for the guys to have this manual done to help the cooks maintain product consistency. I kept telling them how the cooks, if we hire the right ones, will have this stuff down in ther first week. And how the major stuff was getting the inventory forms prepared and the purveyors lined up to begin P & L as soon as the doors open. If we didn’t have it ready before we opened, I was afraid we’d not have the time after.
I was right. The first week was crazy! Hell! The first day we were seating numbers around 150 tickets per shift. We had so much product unchecked, and of course we were ordering more half-way through the week, that I was too busy with training cooks, cooking food, expediting, organizing, ordering, recieving orders and so forth. There was just no way to catch up with doing a proper inventory. The Bosses couldn’t understand why I was overwhelmed. I could have put in more hours, set up a cot to sleep on in the basement, or just started a methamphetamine habit (yah right!). Anyway, the demands on me at home were getting to be too much. My sweet wife was going through some stuff, anxiety. I was barely home as it was. I just couldn’t do more than 50 plus hours a week for these guys. Not a very good foot to start out on, in a new restaurant. They needed someone who could give them everything and I was beginning to realize that my priorities were changing. My family came first.
Besides all that, in the first few weeks I was with them, the Dynamic Duo had it in their heads that I was supposed to magically whip out an inventory spreadsheet in my sleep. They had promised me they would get to it before we opened. Suddenly they ran the numbers and decided to open up shop before the date. I had never opened a restaurant before. I would just have to deal with it. I knew I was in way over my head but it’s every chef’s dream to be in those shoes. So I plugged along for about a month dealing with a new pressure.
One of the Dynamic Duo decided he had nothing better to do than get in the kitchen and learn the menu…”Just in Case”. How insane are you?, I thought. I’m just trying to keep my feeble crew together and push out the food! So he was busy in the walk-in during rush hour, or micro-managing my cooks while they plate-up, or asking me questions about a stupid order receipt while we’re serving big digits. I had been through all this before, I thought. I had a Boss-lady who used to do the same thing at my first Exec. job. (an Interim Position due to a Chef getting himself fired) So I tried the same tactic on him thatI had done with her. “Boss-man, take a pencil and a pocket notebook, write down any question you want to in there, and after hours we’ll go over all that stuff!”, I said. He was pissed off! He thought I was given him the brush-off but I was being genuine. I didn’t have the time to be farting around with him while I’m trying to plate-up all that food plus sautee on only four burners in a kitchen I had only been in for less than a month.
You see, maybe some Chefs can jump right into the groove, but it takes me about three months with a new kitchen crew to get them to shut up and work as a team. My voice was hoarse from calling out orders to my cooks everyday. Until I had them trained, I wasn’t going to be off the line working on any paperwork. I tried to explain all this to them. Like I said, I was in over my head and I knew it.
One day Boss-man (the micro-manager) got in my face from morning ’til night. The next day he was reorganizing my walk-in, going through the prep-fridges before I could and asking me why product wasn’t dated…then he found the Big-One. One of my Pantry Cooks ( not working that day ) had been stuffing product back in her fridge, so far that I just missed it. Boss-man found a nasty old food bin full of rotten cooked shrimp! I was asked immediately why I would let something like that slip. I had no answer. If I had seen it, I would have been all over her about it. I took him outside. It made me so mad every time he had a complaint. He would take it up with me in front of my staff, even get them involved. He had no sense of tact. Grinding my teeth, I told him, ” If you have a beef, talk to me directly…outside, away from my staff…and we’ll deal with it.” Then it went to, “Otherwise, I’m not going to put up with your B.S. anymore! I’m sick of being treated like you don’t have my back. Do you get it?”
He said yes after every lecture, but everyday after our first talk, it was the same story. It was in his personality to stir things up. He was bored. The other Boss-man was happy as a briny clam, playing bar-tender and host out front. This guy had no better idea than to go in the kitchen and play around. I couldn’t take it. I asked him once…” Why don’t you go home and be happy? You just accomplished your dream, man. Sit back, count the money and let everything fall into place. You’ve hired all the right people. We’ve just got to get them all trained. Don’t sweat all the small stuff, that’s my job. Are you going to let me do my job now?” He said yes again, but I could see his eyes glazed over while I was on my “Don’t worry, Be Happy”, speech.
About a week later, things had escalated to where our talks were becoming more like shouting matches. I kept having visions of punching this guy in his nose. I just couldn’t be diplomatic anymore. Inside I was a time-bomb. I had screamed in the walk-in too many times. I knew if it got worse, my dreams of popularity in Reno as the next big chef was going to go as stale as yesterday’s crostini. So I left.
I had never walked out on a crew before. It wasn’t their fault, but they paid the price. From what I heard, they worked great that night. No mistakes and the guy I was training to be the Lead Cook really stepped up. I was proud of them. I had been in their position before. Having a chef walk out on you…it really tests the metal of the cooks. Some want to leave with the chef out of loyalty or fear. Some cooks look around to see what the others are going to do first. And then, some cooks naturally take the lead. They start grabbing the tickets, kick everyone into over-drive and push out plates ’til the food runs out. That’s me. But I had just walked out.
Chapter Three – Podunk Town with an Upscale Bistro
( jumped ahead two years)
My wife, God bless her, she got a promotion and her job became promising. They offered her a two-year fast-track to run her own store. All she had to do was say yes to relocation anywhere in the Northwest and Bam! She would be making almost as much as I had two years ago. I said yes. How could I not. I’d do anything for her, to be happy. I’d do anything for us to have steady medical coverage and a steady pay-check. We were living in a town that had no idea what good food was and I’m the type to take a gamble with life.
You couldn’t break out of the mold or “talk over a customer’s head” as a boss once told me, in that sleepy Oregon town. Which basically meant I would have to tone down my speach about “au-poivre” this and “saltimbocca” that, on the nightly specials. God-forbid I mention a “Beurre Blanc”!
This is a chef’s worst case scenario…as follows,
. A menopausal, unpredictable owner who has no idea what your talking about when it comes to food, yet still needs to feel in charge of the kitchen.
. In a non-foodie town with very limited tourism,
. And under-trained staff that can’t cook or serve or wash dishes to save their lives.
But I picked it. I was hoping I could change it all around and make them see that I was their dream come true. Why is it that I can be so bloody optomistic towards a new job?
(continued)
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