knuckles76

I have been cooking for almost 10 years, and in my experience when the restaurant is owned by the chef it usually has better pay. There is a very old unwritten rule in the kitchen and that if you dont like working for free or not getiing paid for overtime, we can find someone who will. I have seen cooks try to do things about this and ben labled as "troublesome". These days, people tend not to go out to a restaurnt for a "show". They go out to eat. People base which restaurant they want to go to because of the food not because of service. As much as waiters would like to think they come for the service, people come back to restaurant for the food. I am in no way trying to minimize the waiters role in a good meal but the money aspect of the situation is completely unbalanced. As an industry, how can we attract the best and brightest to the kitchen if they know the labour practices are so unfair.

You have to go to Villa Corona. It some of the bet mexican food in the Bay area.

I have been using blue steel pans for over a year now. We cook all of our sauted fish in them. Nothing works as well to for a perfect golden brown crust. The one thing is that these pans are of a very heavy gauge. They will not warp. We clean them by "burning them", put them on a burner going full blast, when its smoking we hit the pan with coarse salt and use the salt as an abrasive and scrub with and old kitchen towel and tongs. When clean, we rub the inside with a little vegetable oil. We have never let them go near water. Do not try this cleaning technique at home. The amount of smoke generated is way too much for the home hood fan.

Futaba and Izumi are both very good restaurants.