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Cronker

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Everything posted by Cronker

  1. In Australia, we pay between $1-3 dollars each. That's about parity.
  2. Hello so, I have made a very nice chocolate mint ice cream, and it's now in my freezer. im wondering what kind of "zing" I might bring to it for it's garnish? i looked at most of the photos online and they all look like a sprig of mint and some shaved chocolate. Umm we have chocolate and mint already. i don't want to confuse the flavours, though. suggestions?
  3. I mean, I'm not a professional chef by any stretch- but I've worked with some very great ones, and they always instill the idea of "clean as you go." even when you are cooking at home for a few friends, or a larger party, do you follow this practice? does your significant other clean up after you? do you just throw it all in the dishwasher for later? do you have a butler's pantry? so, I guess, the question is - does cleaning up become part of your plan for a meal, or can you enjoy with everyone else? discuss
  4. You see, an avocado divider is absolutely necessary.
  5. And yet, I've had customers order steak who would love that final product.
  6. I volunteer at an op-shop, and am in charge of "bric-a-brac" - basically anything that isn't toys, jewellery or clothing. some of the cooking toys from the last thirty or so years are great fun. We often get an "instant pasta cooker" the box tells me that it's revolutionary. Never has cooking pasta been so easy! its a plastic, tall jar that you insert your pasta into, fill with boiling water and wait. I can feel the revolution every time one of these crosses my path.
  7. Cronker

    Dinner 2017 (Part 3)

    What are you doing for dinner tonight? me:. Grilled chicken breast with prosciutto, basil and pine nuts. Mash taters, carrot and tarragon jus. not sure about how the tarragon and basil might clash, but meh.
  8. You know those kitchen tools, whereby you just put your veggies, onions etc into the lower bowl, then put the top things on and push the handle at the top and it choppy chop chops all your veggies like magic? i got an expensive one from an op-shop very cheap. dont work.
  9. In one place that I worked, we had a $10 daily special. it was the same portion as always, say a schnitzel at 300gm with all the sides (salad, chips, sauce etc), just that the boss thought that a daily $10 special would work. And it did. what ground the chefs gears would be when customers ordered the daily $10 special and asked for it to be cut in two and shared. i never got him to agree to do it, and in many ways, I agree with his call.
  10. I was managing the catering department at our cities big theatre and art centre. It was tough, because I was juggling the expectations of both my employer and the arts centre client- each of which had a very different idea of how things should be done. The arts centre had all control over asset management, so if anything broke down, or needed fixing, it was their maintenance team who had to be called in. Truth be known, the maintenance guys were hopeless. one morning, about four AM, I got a call. I was dead asleep after yet another fourteen hour shift. But, as always, I answered. There was a problem. i got to my venue to find the carpet outside the bar soaked, sticky and a steady stream of syrup leaking from the front of the bar wall. a sheepish maintenance guy pointed it out to me. "Yes, Gary, I can see the problem." I said. "What happened?" "well, we were going to attach this artwork to the front of the bar, and when we drilled into it, all of a sudden..." "Why didn't you talk to me first about this? This is news to me!" "But the boss lady said to do it " he whined. "But why are you doing this at four in the fucking morning?" he shrugged. as I had suspected, they had drilled directly into the post-mix line and now had a wonderful stream of pure sugar flavoured crap spilling into the bar and into the carpet outside. A real mess. my biggest concern, considering that this venue was very old and under a heritage listing, was that I was quite sure that there were no electrical trip switches. what if they had drilled directly into a power cable?
  11. Hello im new here, and I'm sure this topic has been done previously, but in the seventeen pages I've read, haven't seen it quite this way. im not asking about douchebag customers, although that might comprise some responses, and poor service has been touched upon too. more so I'm asking about funny, bizarre, head scratching stories that C.A Pinkham would kill to publish. i'll share just one of mine, to start. I had a lovely girl working for me, in her first job. She was pretty (a requisite in the hotel chain I worked for) but not really bright. She had a warm personality and the guests were always patient with her, despite her denseness. anyway, one day we were setting up a huge function for the Wheelchair Athletes Awards ceremony. About 600 people. The client had sent through the floor plan, and my diligent staff had set up the room beautifully. Everything in place, I was walking through doing my checks. with floor plan in hand, I called (let's call her) Linda over to help me. "So, Linda, what I need you to do is follow me around to each table, and just pull out the chairs where I say. Okay?" "Sure, I can do that!" she responded. so, table one - "Position three, and position six, please pull out those chairs, Linda" I asked. Done. table three - "Position one, four, seven, chairs out please" and so on, all the way to table sixty. Me reading off my floor plan, Linda pulling out the chairs as asked (and even right hand man Danny stacking them as we went along) as as we finished up this process, Linda looked confused. Not unusual for her, but I asked "What's wrong?" "well, boss, why are we pulling up all these chairs?" I smiled. "well, because these place settings are where the wheelchair athletes will be sitting." "oh, okay" then, a cloud of confusion came over her again. "but boss...?" "Yes, Linda?" "where do we get the wheelchairs from?"
  12. Agreed. But who is the teacher? and can the behaviour be re-trained out? i worked with a chef who yelled and screamed at his staff constantly. They were scared of him to the point where they would ask me to take some blame. Unlikely. The massive problem was that we had an open kitchen, where the guests were about three metres from the pass, so they got to listen to all the bile spewing from his venomous mouth. He made the FOH staff cut the bread for service, even when I explained that they had not been trained for this and I wasn't comfortable asking them to do it. so, guess what? One of my staff cut off the top of her finger and had to be taken to hospital. chef response? "Hire some competent staff" I quit that job not long after, and told the boss my reason (umm, chef, chef, and umm, chef) Chef got fired some weeks later - perhaps the upper management had heard me?.
  13. Hints for servers: learn the coffee/tea preference for everyone in the kitchen. Turn up for work ten minutes early and make a round of warm beverages for the kitchen. Trust me, the next time you screw up an order, the kitchen just might be a little nicer about it. KNOW YOUR MENU!!! Even I, as FOH manager gets annoyed when waitstaff doesn't know if the dish is gluten free, or contains nuts. The menu is your sales product. You wouldn't accept buying a new car if the salesperson said "I'm sorry, I'm not sure if the tyres come with that...". Never, ever ever make a promise to your guest expecting the kitchen to play along. "Sure, we can make the risotto without the rice!" will get you stabbed. And I would probably not call for an ambulance. Always treat the dishy with utmost respect. It's a fucking tough job. Try it. I had some staff who would treat the dish guy disgracefully. I took the three of them aside and told them I was one step away from firing them for their disrespect. I pointed out to them that without clean plates, cutlery, pots and pans, our business simply doesn't open. The perceived smallest cog in the wheel is as important as the big wig.
  14. Not sure about "phenomenal" @Thanks for the Crepes, but communication is certainly the key in my mind. Even though the chef is clearly going to descend into apoplexy if a server forgets to ask for extra chopped chilli on the side, the said condiment will still appear. I've often counselled chefs, after service, and asked: "Why all the fuss, screaming and yelling and making tension? You, and I both know that we will make it happen regardless of how frustrating the situation. Sure, the beautiful medium rare got sent back twice and that would piss me off too, but none of us are going to be hauled over the coals for it. We fix it and move on"
  15. Be kind, I'm new. "Waiter Rant" is one of the worst books I've ever read. A friend bought it for me because she knew how much I loved "Kitchen Confidential" and the waiter book was promoted as the FOH version. How wrong. It's a series of moaning and bitching about how punishing it is to be a waiter. Really? Although I have spent most of my career as a FOH manager, I'm under no illusion that it isn't really a glorified waiter. On shift, I'm serving and clearing and cleaning and getting in as many weeds as anyone else. The only difference is I have to deal when asked for the manager, I have to keep the kitchen from wanting to kill the wait staff and I'm there three hours after everyone else counting tills, submitting paperwork and finishing off the reset for tomorrow's operations because I don't have the budget to keep people on to get it all finished. I would be the first to say that chefs are of a different breed, perhaps alien. Their brains are very different. One way of seeing this would be to get them to swap jobs with me for a day. I would likely fall over doing their jobs too. I chuckle inside thinking of any of the chefs I know being able to smile as they take the order for gluten free, Ovo-lacto, vego steak tartare, well done. strangely, perhaps, I've always been able to generate a very inclusive feeling between back and front of house, even though I've walked into jobs where all out war is being waged. I try to get my front staff to see the view from back staff and vice versa.
  16. It seems very much so! As a new member to any forum that I join, I always troll through the old discussions first, just to see the tone of the place. i have been reading some very funny, insightful and educational threads. And I have found myself chuckling, nodding in agreement, and ready to post a reply to six year old threads! thank you for the warm welcome, now back to you regular viewing (well done steak?)
  17. Hello members I found this forum from a link on ChefTalk. I'm not a chef myself, but a very keen amateur with over twenty years in the industry as FOH management. For about fifteen of those years, I worked in the big chains - Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott. At one point I was with Compass in the mobilisation team. I more recently decided to get out of that system and explore pubs, wine bars and restaurants- many of which I also helped open. i look forward to discussing with you all aspects of cooking and restaurant life.
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