Mikeb19

Personally I dislike the title 'Chef'. Nowadays the term is over-used, and pretentious. We're all really just cooks... While I would call my old chef 'Chef', he'd call himself a cook. (and he was MORE than qualified to carry the title of Chef) As for waitstaff wearing cooks uniforms, I don't see the point. Cooks wear them out of necessity, not because they're stylish. Servers should be wearing black pants, a white dress shirt, optional tie and a white apron (IMO). Personally I think the whole pop culture idea of a 'Chef' is rediculous.

Lol. I used to do that all the time - intentionally mis-pronounce every French word we used... Made the chef especially mad since he knew I speak fluent and proper French. Then when the servers would come around I'd piss them off too by speaking in real French and they couldn't understand...

Why shouldn't owners and managers take tips? I've worked in fine dining restaurants where the servers are walking with more than the Executive Chef or the General Manager.... I've known servers pulling in 60 grand plus per year (per job) for 20 hours of work a week. ← and, i've known servers who make a whole lot more... but for the most part, the management (foh & boh) should be in it for the love of the job. yep, you've got to be pretty farking looped to leave a serving/bartending position for a mgmt one, but some of us indeed are and take on the extra responsibility in the hopes of gaining more knowledge about the biz to then take that information and go & open our own places. in all of my mgmt positions i've made well below what the servers & bt's made. and even when i received a side tip for something, i've handed it off to the bussers or hosts or whoever was the party more deserving of the tip. i hope to open my place next year. ← True. A server working 50 hours a week in a couple good restaurants can pull in 6 figures... The management should be in it for the love of the job... Is that a joke? Why not take it a step further and work for free? Why should a college student who doesn't give a @#$% be making more money than someone who's devoted their life to the business/art? And if you're not making money, how are you supposed to have the capital to open your own restaurant? I've cooked in some VERY good restaurants (ie. rated as the best in this region by local media as well as magazines and critics), and while it was fun serving up fresh white truffles, caspian sea caviar and goose foie gras, it gets old real quick when I'd go back home to the 'hood and could barely afford to put food on my own plate... I'd have a drink of a thousand dollar wine with my chef at work but when I was at home I was drinking malt liquor... The restaurant trade is probably the only business in the world where the most skilled workers get paid the least. (I actually felt bad when I was making more money than the sous-chef, and I was making garbage coin myself...) That's why I'll be opening my own place in the next couple years, and all I can say is I'll be damned if a server is going to be making more money than me...

Pectin or agar-agar > all....

I think you should give new restaurants your business. It's completely unfair to everyone involved in the opening of a new restaurant to wait a year before visiting... More often than not, it's been the older restaurants that have been disappointing to me, since they've made their name, and rest on their laurels without any ambition to put out a good product. New, ambitious restaurants can often times be the best to visit. There are exceptions to both these rules, nothing is certain in the restaurant business or life in general... It would be very disappointing for a very good new restaurant to go bankrupt in a year because no one gave them a chance....

Butter poaching makes complete sense. Butter is not just fat, it's an emulsion which also contains a water-based component. And Thomas Keller did not invent this method of cooking or the term, he merely popularized it in North America. While I'm at it I'll add that the term confit means "preserved", saying you're quick-preserving (quick confit) lobster makes absolutely no sense in this context... 'Emulsion' sauces, they've been around for a very long time. They're not going away. A few examples are hollandaise, beurre-blanc, and when you add that cube of butter or some truffle oil to your glace de viande guess what, you've got an emulsion. Not to mention salad dressings, mayonnaise and aioli, and chocolate itself is an emulsion... As for foams, I don't think they will maintain the place they've held of late, however they will never go away. We've been making crème chantilly for a very long time, foams are simply another form of a very old concept. And finally, 'stacking' food. A sandwich is nothing more than a stack of several components. Same for a napoleon, or a mille-feuille. Adding different layers of textures and flavours creates an exciting dish.

Pork loin is dry and unappetizing by itself as well. I can't stand beef unless it's aggressively seasoned and includes plenty of pepper. In fact, I've had terrible versions of just about every food you can think of, doesn't mean it's not good when done right. If I didn't eat things that I've had bad versions of, I wouldn't be able to eat anything... Anyhow, a chicken breast with the skin ON, seasoned and cooked PROPERLY, with lots of butter, is a great thing.

Why shouldn't owners and managers take tips? I've worked in fine dining restaurants where the servers are walking with more than the Executive Chef or the General Manager.... I've known servers pulling in 60 grand plus per year (per job) for 20 hours of work a week.

Yes, many restaurants are terrible. I don't think I've eaten a single good meal that someone else has made me in a very long time....(includes some highly rated restaurants - how they got their rating I'll never know, because the food sucked) That's why I'm opening my own restaurant in the next couple years (hopefully next year), but that's another story... Hypermodern food isn't taking off in NY because New Yorkers are not easily impressed. From what I've heard (from inside the kitchens) of 'hypermodern' places in NY, theres not much to be impressed about... And you're right when you say some people are good at it, and some aren't. Goes for anything in life. Most of the top places in NY and elsewhere are French, because most of the best chefs are French-trained (not my opinion, just my observations).

Strait up, you're gonna get nailed for serving food out of a non-inspected kitchen, tax evasion, selling liquor without a license (unless it's strictly BYO)... It's also shady to be operating a business out of a university campus, that's grounds to get kicked out at the very least, the university would also likely be able to take other legal actions against you. What you're doing is very illegal, especially since you're advertising it to the public. That being said, I have experience in these kinds of matters, the #1 rule is that when you're doing something illegal, don't get caught. This means don't advertise it, make sure only trusted people know what you're doing, make sure your clients have references so you know they're trustworthy - especially since you're bringing them to your house. Ideally when doing something illegal, you don't want anyone to know who you are or where you stay, but since you've already broke those rules you need to have 100% trust in everyone else... If I were you I'd stick to schoolwork, do a few dinner parties for you friends, cook your date dinner, and don't make a profit off any of it. Illegal activities never lead to anything good, it's best to stay legit... (too many people I grew up around learned this the hard way - thankfully I managed to avoid jailtime and for the most part stay out of trouble) If you REALLY want a career as a chef, start up a legitimate restaurant in a mini-mall in the suburbs or something.... If you advertise right (keep the website, re-work it a bit, try to get on TV or into newspapers, make friends with industry people) you can get a decent foodie following that's willing to travel to eat unique food - and the rent is lower in the suburbs making it a good place for a first-time business. I know down here there's plenty of niche-businesses that seem to be doing pretty well.

Taste always will win the day. Simply put, creative food is not always good. I've seen alot of impressive looking food, both in technique behind it as well as presentation and ingredients, that just doesn't taste good. In a way I'm glad that this 'hypermodern' cuisine isn't becoming the norm - theres far too many chefs than can't make a simple, home cooked meal taste good yet they still try to pull off some crazy shit.... Anyone can grab some agar, some juice and a CO2 canister and make a foam. But making one that tastes good is a whole other story... Anyone can grab some CaCl, sodium alginate and make 'caviar' or 'ravioli'. How many cooks can even make a perfect traditional ravioli? You need to be able to walk before you can run... Too many young chefs forget this. Novelty means nothing if your food doesn't taste good. Reminds me of something I was told recently by another chef. He said that making borshch (beet soup - yes that peasant soup that is often ridiculed) is an excellent judge of a cook's character. Borshches range from 3 or 4 ingredients to 15 plus. It's very easy to make one that tastes decent, but very tough to make one that is truly outstanding. Another example is potato purée (aka mashed potatoes). It's easy to make, yet tough to make well. It's just potatoes, salt and butter, yet it's much more than just the sum of those ingredients. Novelty might be impressive to some, but strait up good taste is what really matters. I just don't see it in most 'avant-garde' places.

Hopefully it will happen.

Well, after a month and a half search for a job that's been fruitless despite getting MANY offers (I've checked out 5 restaurants in that time, none are worth me working at - either un-professional workplaces, terrible food and incompetant cooks, or all of the above), I'm going to start looking into my financial options for starting up this restaurant. I know that I can create food as good as ANY restaurant in Calgary (I've got experience in multiple types of cuisine, pastry as well as savoury, not to mention cooking at a high level, I've always been the one cooking for critics and journalists - got a good review every single time BTW), jumping into the role of businessman/owner is going to be a new experience however. I have the financial means to do this myself (if I keep it relatively small), however I'm going to look at all my options. Any restaurant I do will for sure be a blend of Russian/Ukrainian and French cuisines. The next year should be interesting for sure. BTW, thanks for all the input, I've also floated this idea around in the real world and everyone I've talked to is excited about it.

Make a very light syrup, infuse it with your flavours, thicken with agar-agar. (200g water, 40g sugar, 1g agar-agar, flavours)

Well, alot of French recipes/techniques are based on East European dishes. Sturgeon caviar and buckwheat blini, crêpes, now that people are more interested in health foods and alternative grains I've seen alot of French restaurants serving kasha in various forms. I remember an old chef of mine (french guy) being absolutely against serving borshch as the soup of the day, so we called it 'Beet soup' and puréed it, then served it with crème fraîche and dill - he loved it (and so did the customers). Thomas Keller has aubergine (eggplant) caviar in his book, Michel Bras has buckwheat kasha and pampushkas in his (although he doesn't call it that). Much of Carême's cooking was influenced by his time spent cooking for the Tsar. Chicken Kyiv - a chicken supreme stuffed with herb butter would make any gourmet salivate. Wine pairings? Pretty easy. I'm no sommelier, but Ukrainian dishes do share similarities with many French dishes, making wine pairings easy. Vareniky (with potato/cheese filling) for instance would go well with chardonnay. With cabbage and pork filling a Riesling. There is a new Russian restaurant in C-town (Skazka), but unfortunately I haven't had the time to try it out...

The first thing that comes to mind is pastries. Handmade chocolates can be pretty difficult even for some experienced cooks. Millefeuille - pastry cream, ganache, pâte à fruit, etc..., layered between pieces of caramelized puff pastry. Honestly though, once you reach a certain level of understanding of the basics of cooking, nothing is hard. Just takes time.

You know, I was just thinking, why isn't there more Ukrainian restaurants around here? In Alberta some 10 percent of residents have Ukrainian ancestry (including me), yet I don't really see the food represented much. By contrast, theres a much smaller Italian population (about 2 percent), yet you take a look in the phonebook and theres more Italian restaurants than every other type combined. Not only that, but what little Ukrainian food I have had in Calgary has been garbage compared to what my grandmother made, or what I can make. So, anyone know any good Ukrainian restaurants in Calgary? I'm sure theres got to be at least 1... And the final part to my post. I'm a professional cook, I've got a pretty high-powered résumé and also have quite a bit of experience with Ukrainian food, in addition to my French training (the chefs I apprenticed under came from Michelin starred restaurants in France and Switzerland). I am seriously considering opening up a restaurant, but am a little worried about the viability of such a business. Is there a market? I would like to think that simply making great food (the easy part) would lead to success, but I know that's not always the case. And seeing as eGulleters are pretty knowledgeable about food, would you eat fine dining level Ukrainian-inspired food? I'm very confident the food itself would be as high a level as any French restaurant, but theres a certain 'stigma' associated with 'ethnic' foods. To the mods, if you want to move this post to a different folder feel free, however I thought that since the topic deals with regional cuisine it would be suited to this folder.

Well, soupe du pêcheur IS soup of the fisherman. It's the proper translation. And although avocat obviously means avocado on the menu, it IS also the word for lawyer. The soup translation is correct (except for the rust - although rouille does also mean rust - obviously in a different context), and the salad translation isn't wrong, it's just out of context. Edit - French menu items have pretty wierd names, even in their own language. Alot of items are named for their colour, what they look like, who cooked it first, where it's from, etc... Just about everything except what it actually is. Some very wierd translations technically ARE correct, often leading to confusion. Keep this in mind when you go to France. It gets even more confusing when you keep in mind that in French often verbs, subjects and descriptors are backwards from the English. Trying to translate word by word is pointless, you need to translate the entire sentence in it's context.

Well, my unscientific experience with both gas ranges as well as induction in a restaurant kitchen supports the conclusion that induction does indeed come to temperature quicker. It brought water to a boil at an alarming rate, much quicker than any gas range I've seen (only exception is a chinese wok burner - but as far as regular sized burners go the induction was much quicker).

No, I don't haggle at the farmers market. I've yet to see them offer an unfair price for a product. Besides, I want to see farmers make as much money as they can, it's not exactly the most lucrative career, yet such an important one. When growing up I would hang out on my grandparents' farm every summer, they worked so hard just to scrape out a living (most city folk would be appalled at how they lived). I'll gladly sacrifice a bit of my own money for these guys. I have recieved discounts before for buying in quantity, but have never once asked for a discount.

Today it's a Wild Rose Brewery Brown Ale. I hate to sound like some sort of advertising campaign, but so far their entire lineup has been amazing. Same price as any import. My new everyday drinking beer... Plus it's nice to support the local guys.

I don't see what the deal is. I would think people would have grown up enough to be able to cope with language used in the real world. I hear 5 year old kids dropping f-bombs all the time, I mean when I was in elementary school I had a pretty colorful vocabulary... I still do, often when I talk I'll use 'profane' vocabulary without even realising what I'm saying, it just comes from hearing the same talk since I was a little boy growing up in the neighborhood. Chefs have turned into celebrities, more and more people want to see inside their kitchens and lives, but when this 'dream world' of fancy food and whatnot turns out to be false and they're presented with harsh reality now suddenly they're shocked... And finally, I know when I'm quoted I sure don't want anyone editing what I say. You just present the REAL you, who gives a fuck if people like it or not.

A REAL professional restaurant will be able to provide the same quality of food at any time of the night. Servers should be able to provide the same level of service as well. Of course this often isn't the case. Often cooks still don't have their MEP ready at 5, often they count on not having customers until 6 or later and then when someone does come in early they're not ready to go. Often servers are eating their own staff meals at 5, or talking on their phones, and otherwise not paying attention to the customer. Shouldn't happen, but it does, even in top restaurants.

My beer of choice is Wild Rose Brewery's Industrial Park Ale. Brewed right here in Calgary. Also happens to be one of the best tasting beers I've had (ever), if not the best. Very tasty, lots of flavour, and still very drinkable. I find myself drinking it at an alarming rate Since the liquor stores around here have started stocking it, I haven't bought anything else.

Usually I try not to bag on a place, but I will since this post is an obvious advertising ploy. I know a few people who are, let's say close to those who are in charge of Opus, as well as industry people who have eaten there. So far no good reviews. Apparently the food leaves much to be desired. More of a drink lounge than a serious restaurant.