andrewB

...you will sell the most of whatever you have the least of...

i'm 3 months INTO having opened a restaurant plus having 3 others which need to be maintained. i don't remember what a day off is!!!

kitchen labor should come from food sales. i don't understand paying a waiter or manager from the salmon i sell nor do i understand paying a cook from selling liquor etc. i can maintain a yearly average of 15% labor costs and 35% food but only because i live in an area where labor is cheap and goods pricey. it should work as a quarterly or yearly average because not every month will you have the same sales, yet your labor costs are quite constant in the kitchen. the average allows months like december to make up for months like feburary...

as i know it, its called a maracuia...

The reason stock spoils if you put it directly into the fridge is that the heat from the stock raises the temperature in the fridge, causing it to cool too slowly and spoil. The best thing to do is to divide the stock into smaller containers and cool those to room temperature before refrigerating. This isn't a problem with smaller amounts. Alton Brown also had a pretty ingenious solution which is to freeze some bottles of water and float those in your stock to cool it. ← but then if the stock sours because it cools too slowly, why would it also not sour being left out(which it doesn't)? this only happens with chicken stocks for me and i have never had an answer for it...

That may kill the bacteria, but it won't kill the toxins the bacteria produce as waste, which is many times more dangerous than the bacteria themselves. ← so here's a question on the opposite end of the spectrum: why is it that when a hot pot of stock is placed directly into the fridge, it turns sour? reason i asked is because of an age old 'catch-22.' if you leave it out, it will harbor bacteria. if you put it in, it will sour...

in May we are doing the VIP for one leg of the Gumball race which is coming through Bratislava so who's ever in that (ludakris, guy from 'pimp my ride', bam mangera...) and also in May i am catering 2 parties for the Queen of Denmark (who knew they had a queen??) at the meeting yesterday, i told her secretary that we have more queens back in SF than they do in Denmark. he didn't laugh as much as i did though...

touche, don't forget the sharpie!! here's an odd one on the wristwatch topic: none of my cooks wear a wristwatch in the kitchen because they are told in school they SHOULDN'T wear one in the kitchen because it might get caught on something and of harboring bacteria...

touche, don't forget the sharpie!! here's an odd one on the wristwatch topic: none of my cooks wear a wristwatch in the kitchen because they are told in school they SHOULDN'T wear one in the kitchen because it might get caught on something and of harboring bacteria...

what is the website? i found a bovine myology page with 3-D views but no videos...

if i remember correctly, the process of making pop rocks is making a sugar syrup and then jamming carbon dioxide into at at 200lbs per square inch. i don't recommend tryin this at home. before we figured it out we tried with a pneumatic compressor. the result were nasty nasty sugar burns!!!

do you want a standing rib roast or a boneless? boneless is a no muss no fuss filet it off the bone. for a standing rib roast, you need a super sharp knife to cut through the rib bone and cartiledge connected to the back bone. i scalp the meat off slightly around it and use a cleaver to remove the back bone... good luck...

dude, you are sooooo right!! i find Zen in soap bubbles and the smell of bleach...

diana ross kurt russel/ goldie hawn danny devito martha stewart chevy chase mickey hart and bob weir (grateful dead) ben harper bill cosby robert redford condoleeza rice rumsfeld sharon stone thats all i can remember from restaurants.. best one though was when i was a dreadlocked hippie and we parked our RV backstage for a music festival. we were woken up by a dude named Bruce who told us to move our van and talk to some woman about our work passes. we then spent the morning cooking breakfast for Willie Nelson, Toots, and the Maytals, and Pato Banton (because we had a stove on our ride). good times...

the following might help: knife roll complete with: 8/10" chef's knife pairing knife tournet knife microplane joyce chen scissors kuhn peeler oyster shucker (it is new orleans...) diamond steel chefwear pants, neutral black is a good choice comfortable, durable, black, antislip sole shoes jackets and aprons they should provide... walk in with confidence, tell them you are willing to do anything regardless of your experience, someone should give you a shot...

Mike, I must say i am glad you are getting out of the industry. You sound bitter and disillusioned as to the career path i believe you were NOT forced into. It is like becoming a priest and then complaining to others around you that you can't have sex!! All of us working in this industry should have hopefully known what we were getting into when we started. This is not the industry to make alot of money in. this is not the industry where you work 36 hours a week and have weekends off. this is not the industry which gives you paid holidays and 'sick' days. This industry is rifled with passion, emotion, and adrenaline. This industry is what keeps you up late at night thinking about your stocks slowly cooking in an unwatched kitchen. this industry is what wakes you up in the morning with the thought of all that could go wrong and the solutions for them. this industry is responisble for our highest highs and our lowest lows. there is no karma in the kitchen. for everytime we cut and burn ourselves we don't get a 'warm fuzzy' pat on the back, you get more stress, more cuts, and more burns. this industry is not for the weak of heart or the weak of will and maybe, just maybe that's what's wrong with the industry these days and it is a problem we see in our culture in general: people are weak, soft and lazy, people expect to make $90k a year 5 yeasr after school without having to work for it, people close their eyes, sit on their behinds, and expect someone to give them something for nothing!!! I am damn proud to be a cook. i wear my cuts, scraps, and burns with pride. what this industry lacks in economic compensation, it more than makes up for in pride, passion, creativity, self expression, and the most bareboned human emotions... If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.... it couldn't be said more simply i work in a country in europe which has no history of gastronomy. my job is to teach and train these young kids and give them the spark of interest and passion which will grow inside them. all of us in this industry were not so much taught how to hold a knife or peel a carrot, but we were taught something more about ourselves, about the world around us, what it meant to have passion and drive. the greatest thing you can instill in any cook is this passion and drive. if you don't have it, it will never transcend...

pierre gagnaire has one which is spectacular, well photographed and more an anthology of the spirit of cooking than a cookbook...

try sprinkling the basket with flour before you overlap your taters. i used to make 100+ a day with this method...

CIA and Greystone: Yeah, bigger facilities at Hyde Park. To me, though, Napa would be such a wonderful place to learn, in and out of the school kitchen. ← greystone is only for further education and classes. beautiful facility filled with bed wetters... Seriously, the best school i have gotten my cooks from has been the military! Great work ethics and hard workers. to be honest, most of the kids coming out of cooking schools these days are not cut from the same mold they were in my days...

i went an easier way on making my own smoker. i used an electric hot plate and a 3ft high metal trash can with a wire rack stuck in 1ft from the top. it works beautifully...

we do an oxtail and foie gras ravioli with black truffle emulsion at the restaurant now and i can tell you 1.6kg of precooked tail results in about 600g of braised meat, cleaned from the bone with sinew and cartiledge discarded...

i sweat it out on the line 6 days a week, 15 hours a day! I think if there were any resentment about me not wearing a hat, that can get over it pretty damn quickly... There becomes a sub issue to this 'sanitary' topic which becomes the over all appearence of the staff, kitchen, etc. kitchen for sure has to be spotless and the cooks well presented (no piercings or facial hair for my cooks). The reason i have them wear their beanies if more for the appearence it gives to the customers, the uniformity AND cleanliness of it. I'm not sure if customers expect to see the exec wearing a hat. anybody? And to boot, the only hair which has been found in my food in the last year was as long as my forearm, coming from none of my cooks. As i was starring at the top of a backwaiter's head this afternoon reaching under me for a plate as i was plating, i know now how it got there. i think i am settled on this issue and my thoughts of shaving my head are done. I will continue to not wear a hat dispite company policy. what are they gonna do anyway, fire me????

i feel the same way!! unfortunately the company policy doesn't see it as such...

I think this would be the point for my topic. An open kitchen is about a sort of presentation to the clients. What would you think if you came into a upscale restaurant with an open kitchen and saw the chef walking around with a do rag on his head or a baseball hat flipped backwards? to me, and maybe only because of my professional background, this just has a bad flavor to it. I have never worked under a chef who wore a hat and there was no animosity or resentment for that. it just was how it was. Nobody wanted to see him go out in the dining room and greet the guests rocking his detroit tigers (sorry had to throw that one in there) hat backwards....

was wondering if anyone out there is working in an open kitchen and how is the idea of wearing hats treated. i believe there is a law in the states about it but i haven't worked there for some time... I was asked today to wear one and refused, but not sure why really. i do make all my cooks wear one but don't feel i should be wearing one... Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated...