Malaclypse

best food mag in AGES. It seems more slanted for restaurant professionals more than a lot of others. Can't wait for the next issue

As long as your station is prepped on time, clean during service, your food is out on time, it looks the way I want it, and is properly seasoned you can be whatever the hell you want...male, female, space alien, cthulhu, etc....

In my kitchen when we get an order fire entree we call it out 'order in, 2 amuse, OFMF....and the entrees'. OFMF or course stands for Order Fire Mother F*cker. Since it's an open kitchen we have to shorten it a tad.

I don't drink near as many of these as I used to but there was a point when I pretty much used to mainline these on the line. My favorites were the sugar free Sobe Adrenaline Rush, the Tab energy drink, and the Jolt energy drinks in those giant cans.

I'm saddened to say I've never had Munchos, this will be remedied today.

Everyone who has had em and boy did I get a pair last night. A few days ago we rolled out our summer menu and one of the items I decided to put on there was a Nicoise Salad with tuna confit cause well, it's my favorite salad. This lady and her husband inquired about it and the lady asked what salad greens came with the salad. The waiter informed her that there were no salad greens and that the salad had an assortment of vegetables. She then proceeded to cuss out the waiter and she and her husband got up and walked out because our Nicoise salad was not like the one she had 'in the south of France'. Apparently they also felt that their Grey Goose on the rocks was unacceptable too. So what's your worst customer?

between what I have at the restaurant and at home I'd say I have about a hundred.

On the rare occasion I do get off for an evening (like tonight, huzzah!) I not looking, like most other chefs I know, for anything fancy. I wish people would just not be afraid I'm going to critique. I was rather refreshing about a month ago and I was at a dinner party at a good friends house and the guests commented 'oh, I'd be so scared to cook for a chef'. My friend, god bless her, responded 'well once you've been through the drive through at Wendy's at 2am with someone it kinda erases that.'

caveat imperator, there ya go

At the risk of sounding like a bit of a arse I'm loathe these days to even let culinary school externs do their externships in my kitchen. It seems to me that a large majority of the folks I see coming out of school are emotionally unprepared for kitchen work and across the board lack any kind of sense or urgency. I attribute this to school not being allowed to really show students what it's like in a kitchen (Rhulman covers this in "The Making of A Chef").

I've got a few folks atm that are looking to do stages at my restaurant and I'm just wondering if there is some sort of special insurance covers this? I'm just a little worried about the possible liability (hey, having a dad work for the federal government teaches you to care about liability). I've never had anyone do stages here before (besides culinary externs) so any info would be helpful.

1) your reach ins will never go down on a day the restaurant is open but rather on Sunday the one day you are closed (this has happend to me 5 times now) 2) On a busy prep day the one thing that you thought you had enough of and did not prep ahead will be the one thing that everyone orders.

I love the kitchen people I work with. I love seeing people enjoy the food I have made. I love the fact that I can be having the worst day ever and the second I hear that micros chatter it all goes away. I love cooking, I love the rush of service.

if the food is good I don't care what meal I'm eating it. Actually my favorite breakfasts (aside from biscuits and gravy) have been things like leftover Korean food and leftover Indian food. Americans tend to be far too serious about the whole 'these foods are just for breakfast!' mindset.

Vella Dry Jack. Hands down down my favorite cheese.