turkeybone

The problem with this for me is that the printed bill was 145.87, and you paid less. Simple as that. It was printed on the bill -- if you didn't agree, go to the manager. If it was on the bill "it is suggested that large parties add an additional 20%, and this is what the bill would be with 20% extra", then sure you can be the one who leaves nothing extra. And jackal, once I read through those other threads about your ideas on tipping, I just figured it would be best to ignore your posts altogether.

I just read through this and I think that yes, it might have been excessive, but the correct response would have been to call over a manager and complain about it, or just pay up and then never go back again. How much control does the server really have over the restaurant policy? And no I dont think youre getting too much flak.. each time you *use* *stars* and *try* to *rebuke* what "people" are "saying, , it just lends creedence to the appearance that youre looking down your nose at the server. And stop with the "I tipped 40%".. nobody forced you to pay up for your friends, the real question is why you didnt go down the line and itemize it for each person.. be mad at your friends for being cheap, or the restaurant for having poor policies, but not at the server.

BPS = the bachelor's (4 year) program B&P = Baking and Pastry (the 2yr associates)

I have to say in various threads (this one too) that people here scoff at all kinds of things the server says when they come back to check -- I'm honestly curious as to what is an acceptable thing to say, because all I've ever heard is giggling and eye rolling. Also, I want to say again that you can order Nueske's and Niiman Ranch stuff from Sysco, so blame the restauranteur.

I havent heard anything from Harry since I talked to the CIA.. I hope everything is alright...

At a few mexican places Ive been to, the first bowl of chips is free but you have to pay if you want more -- Im sure something similar could work out for restaurant bread. And the "oh well why dont we charge for warm food and renting the chair oh and how about breathing?!?!" arent really helpful because the price of air hasn't increased by 400% in the past few years. I follow the commodities pretty well and it is going up across the board, rice is the new "oh its so expensive" grain. And no.. while the farmer does see some more profit, the real money goes to the seed and fertilizer companies, who see the disparity between cost to plant and profit from harvest, and just raise their prices accordingly.

Well, using my CIA degree powers (normally reserved for impressing nobody and the occasional 10% discount), I talked to the externship office on Harry91s behalf and gave them info to exchange; they said they would be very happy to help an interested party in obtaining required experience. Ideally, they're going to hook him up with some of the extern sites local to his area, who would be most likely to also accept him for pre-entrance experience. Hopefully it all works out, but it sounded like the school was very interested in helping him find something.

I read through the thread and for all the people who said "Im sick of surcharges and whats next, fuel cost, warm water cost?", I dont think those really apply in this case. You can't make an emotional case for fuel. You don't feel bad if Exxon doesn't get its extra couple cents. Have you historically felt that CPAs were underpaid, and really need an extra 8%? I think that this is akin to people donating to NPR or public television. When you read that little note on the menu, either you say "yes, I feel good about helping this underprivelidged class!" and come back, or you say "well, I'm just taking 5% off my usual tip". You're making it mandatory for the customer to pay this 5%, but that doesnt make the customer responsible for paying a full tip -- they still have a choice in paying 5% more on top of their bill. Any arguments about surcharges and "what's next, fork cleaning charge??" don't apply. The restaurant is specifically giving you an "opportunity" to feel good about helping a typically beat-down workforce. Whether you believe that the kitchen/dishwashers are worthy of your aid depends on your background. But I think (now this is the opinion of a random east coaster) the San Fransisco "foodies" know all about the culinary world and what shit pay they get and don't get -- Im sure plenty of people go to restaurants that are sustainable, that dont use bottled water, that dont serve foie gras -- isnt looking out for the well being of their dishwashers go into this category? Again -- either you agree and feel good about helping out, or if you're skeptical, you just decrease your tip. Yeah I think it's gimmicky, and I don't know how well something like this would fly on the east coast. At the CIA, they throw on 15% service charge and kick it back to 'scholarships', and anything on top of that goes to the students' pockets. Now, you don't have to pay this, but you have to call over the manager and sign something and I mean, do you really want to be the person to say "No, I dont support education". Whether it's right or wrong, even if it is the restaurants responsibility anyway, do you want to be the one who says "no, I dont support healthcare for the dishwashers" ? Lots of money can be made off guilt. edit: and if youre skeptical about where the money goes, just make a mention to the server -- Im sure if it was BS, they would be very quick and vocal about it.

When I was at CIA a few years ago there were probably 5 of us out of 100 that didnt smoke.

Been awhile since this thread has been touched, but Id definitely dust it off for Woodberry Kitchen. A warm space in the Clipper Mill area, this is another of Spike's places. All the food is local and they are very into sustainability, even making and bottling their own sparkling water. Mexican sugar-cane coca cola, a treat. The food is utterly fantastic, makes sense, well seasoned (something I am picky about), their home made ice creams are fantastic.. since these are the artifact coffee people, the coffee (french press) is amazing.. the best part is the price! Enjoy it while you can.. you can definitely have your fill for about $50 pp. It was hard to get a reservation on a random January Thursday night!

Ive found much success with the above mentioned items -- at school we would soak in the tub for a few days in an oxyclean/cascade solution, with spot treating using anything from zout to pens to my favorite -- ivory soap and a spoon (works well on the horrible sheet-pan stains, but it does wear down the coat). We could always tell the bleachers because they would be EXTREMELY yellow, especially compared to the rest of us, who were almost blue-white. Then there were the days when we worked the US Open and got the jackets sent out. I bet I could've painting the Sistine Chapel in sharpies and blood on my back and it would have been perfectly done.

This. This. This. Realize that youre committing yourself to struggling for a long time, with your health, sanity, and addictions. That your loved ones will have to deal with the 50 hour weeks and you not eating dinner with them for a loong time. If your love for food can go through that, then you can probably make it through the tough times. Get some real restaurant experience, I cant stress it enough. I dont want to paint a bleak picture, and it certainly is always, but as a fresh piece of coal, youre going to get chewed up and roughed around for awhile before that diamond starts to form.

Not picking on you, but this brings up a question. What is an acceptable way to say "hey Im back to check and make sure theres no rusty nails in your food"? It seems like many ways of presenting oneself for the "check up" are either too narrow or too broad, or somehow too informal. There has to be some universal standard that we can all agree on?

I'm in the camp of short and sweet. I generally find the "X with y and z", "x, served with y, over z" "x, on a bed of y, with z" gets old fast. As far as whimsy, that depends on your clientèle. I was reading a thread about another restaurant on another food forum.. they had tuna that came with "snap berries"... which were actually POP ROCKS. Also, when I see spelling/grammar mistakes, it always makes me skittish even before I see the food.. though thats a bit extreme, I know. I see one menu that had fish with "tarter" sauce in one descrition, and "tater" sauce on THE SAME PAGE.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. Firstly, we've been dating for 3 1/2 years, and I have a few friends down in Baltimore, so it's not just for her, but I hear that . Secondly, I worked for this exec for a year before CIA and now, a year after; he valued me highly and said he would recommend me in a heartbeat. That was my worry, basically, that having to explain everything I did would make it sound very BS-ish. I'm sure I could get this across to him, and he'd sign off on letting me use the title. This last job was stressful only because it was a one-man job for so long. Only in April did a new kid come up, seemingly right on cue. Its pointless to wave the big wang around and say I did xyz covers. But as far as the stressors in moving up, I think I'm ready for that. Besides, I've been on "vacation" painting the parents garage for 2 weeks now, my knife callous is starting to disappear!

Im a lurker but not often a poster. I'm 27, Ive been out of the CIA one year, but Ive been cooking for about 7 years now (off and on, starting with zero zero experience). My gf is moving to Baltimore, and so I will be too, with a clean slate pretty much. My last job was.. complicated.. I "ran" the bar & grill satellite of a small inn in upstate NY (think bouchon as compared to TFL... but on a much less exciting level). When I got there, the place was a hole and people feared eating there -- a real Sysco-rama. Anyway, by the time I left, we changed things around for the better, cut food costs, actually made some money, etc. My official title was line cook, I guess, but the kitchen was basically me doing dinner, an equal doing lunch, and two underlings and a dishwasher. We reported directly to the exec of the whole operation, and we split the inventory and ordering and receiving and all that stuff pretty much right down the middle. Anyway, that backgrounds there because I dont really know where to place myself in the food chain when I talk to future employers -- work is more important than title, but how do I compact that whole above paragraph into something that makes me not sound like a whackjob? Also, I guess I'm looking for some words of wisdom in general for making that transition from line cook to more.. even though I feel like Ive already done it, in part. This place wasnt white tablecloth, so do I have to bump down in a finer dining setting, and work myself up (not that theres anything wrong with that). Or should I just follow my boss' advice and hand deliver a resume to the 5 best restaurants in the city, and start from there. Sorry for the rambling.. if anything it shows you how jumbled this all is in my head. Luckily I have a small nestegg so I dont need to rush into a less than stellar job, this next move is real important, I think, so I /need/ to do it right.

I'm a cook who's moving down to the area and I'm wondering where I should poke around for work. My gf is going to Johns Hopkins, and I'm going to be living in Pasadena. I'm still relatively novice (3 years, then CIA, then a year lead-line/sous'ing (its complicated) at a 35 seat bar & grill in upstate NY. I know Cindy Wolf and Charleston/etc. seems to be the go-to, but are there other fine dining spots I should look into.. or maybe I need to suck it up and consider commuting to DC?

Someone a few posts up said that sushi is the rolls of fish and rice, and that sashimi is the fish by itself; Chef Pardus taught us that sushi is the rice, and sashimi is the raw fish, in whatever form it may be. This thought goes against the "do you like sushi? 'no, I dont eat raw fish' " mentality.

Why can't she just fire/reprimand this cook who's getting the inflated head?

When I was on my externship in Palm Beach, one of the garde manger cooks told me about her little lychee operation -- I think she said a dozen or so trees, and that yeah, she could sell them for $5 a pound and her trees would produce a few hundred pounds with very little work! I think one of the hurricanes damaged her trees though -- but it made me wish theyd grow in upstate NY

The premiere was 75 minutes long, and the repeat 60, so they cut various things.

What other tricks do restaurants use when putting together a menu? And is there some reason that no one wants to print dollar signs next to prices? ← Well, all these tricks sound straight out of the CIA Menus class.. right down to "star" items. The high/low profit/popularity, and how to address each. It goes further about drawing the eyes for each kind of menu setup.. and when to use .95s and whatnot. Using consistent grammar is important, and yeah not just creating a price list for people to read down. You can even go and not put all the starters on one side and the entrees on the other.. people will tend to order one from each page, even if you intent is to have 3 or 4 courses.

I've had success with the grey sheet-pan stains by rubbing them liberally with ivory soap, and scraping them out with the back of a spoon.. granted, too much of this will just wear down the fabric, but it does a good job of getting out the grey.

Well, after reading about ions and glutamates and the intricacies of salting stock, I feel this would be a good time to add that when I make stock at my restaurant, I use the "goo" at the bottom of the fish tubs that comes from my blanched chicken wings -- pure gelatinous goodness.

I've only been to WD, but I have to say it was an amazing experience. The wine pairing was kinda eh, but hey if there's no booze for you, thats fine. The food was truly innovate and eye opening, even the "bread" was fascinating to me.