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alligande

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Everything posted by alligande

  1. There is an assistant White House pastry chef, she worked for Roland and will continue to work with the new chef, I would have thought that would help the transition.
  2. This is for sinclair, at my restauraunt I bought artisan style bread almost daily for sandwiches mostly, being english it was normal for me to keep the bread out of the walkin, but my American kitchen staff, had a very hard time with this concept. Everynew cook put the bread in the cooler. and basically ruined it! The dry air in the cooler dries the bread out. We got 2 days only from the breadas it was, My policy was to Day dot the bread when it came in and at the end of the day the fresh bread went in the freezer. We used the frozen bread as back up. When the bread came out of the freezer it was marked and at the end of the day set aside for croutons etc. The second day the bread was not as good, but still better than your average sandwich. Unfourantly bead management becomes a real pain, but serving stale bread was always one of my fears.
  3. As a former restauraunt and bar owner, the subject of comps still makes my hair stand on end. As a former partner said does the supermarket give you freebies just because you shop there! I had customers ( not regulars ) who complained they did not like their meal after eating it, now if your food was not cooked right, or their was a problem I would make that right. Wait to long for your meal, a free round of drinks, comp the apps whatever it took to make the customer happy. Trying to get a free Guiness by complaining that the 20oz Imperial pint glass with the Guiness logo and provided by Guiness was not an Imperial Pint drove me to distraction ( my Irish Bar manager was already have a sense of humor faliure) These are the things that owning a restauraunt get you. Then there is the bar crowd, occasionaly my bar staff bought a drink for someone, this was always recorded and used as an expense, but those that asked never got. Remember all food and booze costs the restauraunt money, and in the case of an independant that would be the owner, if you want that neighbourhood establishment to thrive support, do not look for freebies. Over tipping the staff for freebies does not help the bottom line as the staff did not pay for those items, in fact it only encourages the giving away of stuff so they get bigger tips, a great way to insure that place wont surrive. But you say the place will be busy, but being busy with partial paying customers does not make payroll, rent , loan and of course buying replacement product for the freebies. Sorry about the rant but when you have faced this subject day in and day out ypu have a lot to grumble about
  4. I worked at an inn doing Pastry work for breakfast and afternoon tea! and had 2 KA's, one day I was having problems with one, and so found a local service guy, and on collection and a bill for $30.00 he told me that the machine was 27 years old. The machine went back into service and continued to work hard ( i used them for everthing, pastry, bread dough you name it.) Consequently I have only used Kitchen Aids.
  5. As a former restaurant owner, and a pastry chef I feel my need to add my 2 cents. I ran a casual dining restaurant in a tourist town with HUGE overheads, in the begining I tried to do my own desserts, as I thought it would be to embrassing to have lousy stuff, but I could not handle the load and run a restaurant. SO...... I ended up buying in, and did I sample some crap in fact my dessert list was down to about 3 items and one of those was key lime pie we made our selves. I would loved to have had a reliable source for good wholsale dessarts that was not Sysco. So to all you pastry chefs look at the market there is from small casual restaurants that take their food seriously but will never have the budget or the space ( which was another thing my place did not have) to make in house. Another point is the space, rent is expensive and restaurants need to have as much up front as possible and I know when I designed my own kitchen, it had to be all about the line and maximising production, and in the end I did not have station that I could even due justice to dessert at! But I would love to have been able to buy from a small pastry wholsesaler with the same food philosphy as my own.
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