chef jeff

I just have to add my 2 cents here. I freakin' love Duffins. Not for the doughnuts, not for the bubble tea, not for the truckstop gas station grade fried chicken, but for the tortas. They do have Vietnamese subs there as well, but it is the hot Machaca and chorizo and egg tortas that I love. They are a little small, so buy 2. For the price of one poor excuse for a panini, you can have two beautiful sandwiches. A good sandwich is defined by a few things: 1.Good bread/bun/bagel (no wraps) 2.Proportionate amount of filling to bread 3.Made fresh 4.Moist (juices dripping down your arm is a good thing) 5.Flavour!!!!!! 6.Value (not neccesary, but nice) Duffins meets all of these criterium. Not a lot of other sandwiches do. So if you see me driving down Main street with a sandwich in my face, it's Duffins, and I'm as happy as a pig in shit.

So, the threads on EG have been a little slow in the last few days. I assume it's because everyone is away/busy relaxing. So instead of complain about it, I figured I should start a thread. I am stuck in the kitchen all weekend (hoping to go fly fishing on Monday) while all my non-industry friends are barbecuing. I love to barbecue, so let me live vicariously(sp?) through all of you. What are you making? I want details; meats, marinates, methods, coal or gas, wines, beers, etc. Bring me some!!!! jeff s bbq

There are a couple of Italian butchers in town that rock my sausages. Columbus Meat Market on first and renfrew, and Cioffi's Meat Market on Hastings in Burnaby Hieghts a couple blocks past the Pear Tree. They both have great steaks, game and nice sausages and bacon. They both also have horse! And thier prices are very competitive.

Hey, a little self promotion here, but Aurora Bistro does catering off site. We have done parties of over 100 off site. www.aurorabistro.ca

I do the odd demo at Norht West, and have been nothing but impressed with that school. I also have hired two grads. One who is still with us. Both of them came to us with the skills needed for an entry to mid level position. I don't know the cost of tuition, but it seems like a good choice. I graduated from VCC, and have real mixed feelings about it. I still feel that they offer the oppurtunity to aquire a broader skill set than any of the other local schools. You get so much practical experience at producing larger amounts of food, in a restaurant-like setting. This is something none of the other schools offer. Unfortunately, half your classmates will never amount to more than line cooks at The Pantry or production cooks for airline food (probably making more money too!) My problem with VCC is this. Being origionally from the Niagara Region in Ontario, I visited the new tourism campus of Niagara College recently. The culinary departmnet is amazing. The facilities are gorgeous, the student run restaurant is top notch, and they are attached to the winery and vinyard which is another program available! The students are exposed to local farmers and suppliers, they go on field trips, and they are cooking food that is very relevant. At VCC they didn't even talk to us about the benefits of fresh wild local salmon! Now I realize that the Campbell government is never going to build a new facilty with an operating winery, but I think more emphasis needs to be put on ingredients, and current food "trends" (I hate that word, but sometimes you have to use it). Maybe things have changed, but I drop in thier once and a while, and they are still serving the same food in the student run caffeteria as when I was there in '92. I think making VCC more relevant would help to improve the base of quality cooks coming into the industry. Any other VCC grads that feel the same way?

I feel there is a responsibility of the chefs to make potential cooks aware of the rigours of this industry. Before I hire a cook, I always insist they spend a few days in the kitchen doing the dirty work. I ask them why they want to be a cook. I mention the long hours, the lousy wage, the end of thier social lives, the tired smelly feet etc.. If they do the grunt work happily and are aware of the conditions, then they are ready for the kitchen. Unfortunately, these people are one in a hundred. I don't want to sound like one of those people who says "back when I was fresh out of school", but I'm going to anyways. Back when I was fresh out of school, you worked hard, for little pay, and with the best chef you could, so that you could learn. You new your time would come, but for the time being, you would be humble, hard working and in your minimal spare time you would read a cookbook. Now I hope this isn't taken as ageist, but when you hear of all these great European chefs who started cooking at 13, it makes sense that there is a lot of unreal wage expectations. Starting out a career in a kitchen is very hard physically demanding work and the wage sucks. Period. If you have a mortgage on a house, don't become a cook!!!! If you are just out of high school, and are living with your parents, or in a shitty apartment, then 8-10 dollars an hour plus tips and dinner every night is not so bad. But age does not matter if you are the right type of personallity. Humility, hard work, long hours, mental agility and being able to work for rewards other than financial. These are the qualities of a good cook. Oh, and Neil, I had heard about the asshole thing as well.