slkinsey

I do.

It depends on the execution of the red herring. Let's say, for the sake of discussion, raw marinated red herring with sea beans and fleur de sel...

Notice the secondary definition. Eric, I don't think anyone is arguing that the word "chef hasn't taken on the the secondary connotation you cite in popular usage. The discussion is more around what people think is the correct application of that word. I, for instance, would take extreme exception to the secondary definition below, even though I have to acknowledge that it does have that meaning in popular usage.

Personally, and as I said before, for me I think the term has the most meaning if it is confined to the boss of the kitchen within the context of the "classical" restaurant kitchen concept. This would more or less rule out people who run fast food joints and diners, and put "chef" more in an elevated context I think you would appreciate. I am a little curious about one thing with respect to your "dues-paying" requirement, however... how would this account for extraordinary and precocious talent? Might one such person (a "Mozart of the kitchen," if you will) be able to jump up to being a "chef" in a relatively short period of time without necessarily investing a great deal of blood, sweat, toil and tears?

OK... but where and how? Do you think Alain Ducasse really does much professional cooking these days? Would a chef who had "paid his dues" on the line but who had stepped back from that activity for many years to run the kitchen and was perhaps physically unable to perform in that capacity due to the ravages of the aforementioned dues-paying not be a "chef" in your book? I mean, look... almost everyone can do some cooking. Is a chef who has not done any physical restaurant line-type cooking for many years but who can still come up with good dishes and occasionally whips up a perfect omelet when the kitchen isn't busy a chef or not a chef?

Does this mean that someone who runs a professional kitchen but who may not have the health to work the line is no longer a "Chef?" What about Joel Robuchon during his hiatus? I would suggest that when you "cease to exist as one who practices the transfer of heat to edible food products," you are no longer a cook. Edit = last para added.

This is one of the most reasonable things anyone has said yet on this thread. Thank you for that.

This is exactly the point I made earlier in the thread about the hypothetical possibility that one could be a "chef" without being a good cook. Since the person in charge of the kitchen is, by the very definitition of the word, the "chef," then it stands to reason that it is possible for one to be a chef and at the same time not a very good cook. As others have pointed out, some like Spencer want to endow the word "chef" with certain romantic notions... make it something special, something "earned," something spiritually meaningful to them. Quickly and predictably this has degenerated into a semantic argument similar to asking "what is a pianist? is it someone who plays the piano, or is it someone who earns a living playing the piano, or is it someone who creates music and Art at the piano?" with the latter definition requiring some kind of subjective judgment of artistic merit and perhaps the "paying of dues." There is no way to answer these questions and no way the two sides can ever be reconciled. Obviously, someone who has poured heart and soul into the piano or the professional kitchen is going to have a rather proprietary and personal view that will incline them more towards the romantic, spiritual and "earned" definition. But still, that does not change the fact that "chef" is French for "boss" and that the boss of a professional kitchen operation is de facto a chef. Maybe not a very good chef, but a chef nevertheless.

Legally use the title? Notwithstanding the possibility that some states may have silly regulations to the contrary... yes, legally.

If I understand his argument correctly, he is not saying that you can use the title and practice under the title without being licensed... just use the title. Much the same way that, AFAIK, a doctor who was not curently licensed may not be able to practice medicine, but may still call himself a doctor and may do things like testify in court as such. Edit = he beat me to it.

No. No, indeed. The English language, for all of its quirks, is a very precise one. Of course, this does not preclude the possibility that some people in the EL Bulli kitchen have training in chemistry, nor that they may be conducting chemical experiments. In a certain sense you could call some such people amateur chemists.

Please don't call yourself an engineer unless while in college you had to take: 2 years of Calculus 1 year of Physics 1 year of Chemistry Mechanics Circuits Thermodynamics and lots of other hard shit From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: Nothing in there about math, physics and chemistry as far as I can tell. I can't imagine that these guys take such formal education either: I would guess you're talking about meaning 3b whereas Invento is talking more about 3c.

Too many acronyms... confused...D'oh! I get used to saying certain things and assume everyone understands me. We New Yorkers get that way sometimes (e.g., "the city" = Manhattan). Anyway... @SQC = name of restaurant. UWS = Upper West Side (in Manhattan).

Grits are the best! I have a hard time understanding how it could be that someone wouldn't like them. One thing I have never understood is where so many Northerners get the idea that grits should be eaten with sugar and milk... No wonder they don't like it. Anyway, one of my favorite dishes with grits comes from my neighborhood hangout, @SQC on the UWS. It was a salmon fillet of the "crispy skin" type sitting on some wild mushrooms and served with truffled grits (i.e., stone ground grits with some truffle paste and truffle oil folded in). I never would have thought of this, although it seems perfectly natural to me now. Delicious and easy to make at home. Great with fish or chicken.

If that happens, he can take a week or two off to rethink his priorities. So... if I understand correctly, you're saying, "wait until the big and potentially catastrophic fuckup happens and then make the guy take a couple of weeks off to think about it"?

Good point but different situation. If an employee is so fucked up on the job that they may endanger themselves or someone else, I would have that employee leave for that day/shift. No explanations. My call. Then I would talk with them later. I'm not sure it is a matter of being that fucked up on the job now... it's a matter of knowing that certain kinds of behavior (paranoia, violence, debilitating gastrointestinal issues, whatever) can be expected eventually from a person who habitually uses a particular drug. And the fact that it is not always easy to predict when those behaviors will be manifested. For example, you can certainly have a habitual cocaine user who is coping relatively well in the workplace and who suddenly goes apeshit with relatively little warning.

Again, I submit that the key is "it's impacting your work." Why not simply say, "Your work is not up to par. I don't know the cause of this. But your work *has* to come up to par. If there's any way in which I can help, let me know"? Thats great. Professional. Leave the drug hating conspiracy theory out of it. Good advice. Good idea... But there does come a point where the Chef has to decide if, based on the drug he thinks the guy is using, he really wants to wait until the big fuckup happens. Presumably this should be before the guy sticks his hand into the fryer or cuts another guy on the line for looking at his stuff funny or nods out in the middle of the Saturday rush.

I hear the sales suffered mostly due to competition from "The Virtuosi of the Chamberlain" released by Oxford University Press at around the same time. Clearly nothing Simon could have foreseen.

Definitely a good point. I suppose it is something to be worked out between the employer and the employee. I mean, as far as I know, a Chef could require an employee to take a drug test right now if performance-impacting drug use is suspected -- yes/no? Maybe not, now that I think about it. In any event, in terms of having a lower threshold of evidence than MI5 or the police, I would think that the threshold could be lower, given the fact that no one is going to jail based on the results of the test. I guess in my mind, I saw it more as something just between the Chef and the employee. In a way, this is not terribly different from saying "I know you're doing drugs and it's impacting your work... I'm in your shit and if you fuck up again you're out." It's just going about it a different, although not necessarily better way. In one case you have the Chef using his own personal judgment, in the other you have the Chef using his own personal judgment along with a chemical test. I mean, you can fire the guy no matter what, right? Giving it due consideration, however, I tend to agree with you that it would be too likely to be abused.

In my book, it's not OK to do across-the-board drug testing. But it does seem reasonable to me that an enmployer who has valid reasons to assume that an employee's work is suffering due to drug use may require that employee to take a drug test. And, if that employee is found to test valid for drugs, I think the employer may decide to periodically retest that individual and potentially terminate him/her given a reasonable number of subsequent positive tests. This comes down to more or less formalizing your "stern talking to" in a way that says "what do you want more... to work in my kitchen/office/orchestra/whatever or to smoke crack? You decide." Unfortunately it is a vanishing concept on both sides of the question. Employers have less and less reason to trust their employees and employees sure as hell have less and less reason to trust their employers. Think of your own management experience. Do you keep track of every drop of booze, every steak, every pot and pan because you are not afraid that your workers will help themselves to freebees and walk off with things? Think of your employee experience. Do you check your paychecks against the work you performed because you don't think you might be getting screwed?

I would like to second what others have said about this being a very interesting thread with points well made by many. I have found it interesting also to read several people condemning certain substances while claiming that nothing is wrong with their drug of choice. I wonder what Spencer would think about toking on the job if he were not a pot smoker himself. On a different but related level, one wonders what Tony B would think about the negative effect of habitual tobacco smoking on one's ability to taste and smell effectively in the kitchen were he not a dedicated cigarette smoker. I have tried a lot of different drugs over the years, coming close to having problems with a few and eventually becoming bored with most of them. The big problem that I have with most of the less-accepted drugs (marijuana, cocaine, LSD, etc.) as opposed to the more-accepted ones (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc.) is that, in my experience, you can't "just have a little" of the less-accepted ones. You can have a cup of coffee, a cigarette, a drink of beer and still be more or less unimpaired. You might be a tiny bit more relaxed or awake, but nothing that you would describe as a noticably altered state of consciousness. On the other hand, you can't do a bowl of marijuana, a rock of crack, a hit of acid and not find yourself in a noticably altered state of consciousness. Indeed, if these drugs did not produce a noticably altered state of consciousness, people wouldn't take them. I always found it strange that some people think it's perfectly okay to smoke up some pot every day before work when these very same people would be concerned to learn that a friend was drinking to inebriation every day before work. I find it strange because these are fundamentally the same thing. My experience is that people just don't tend to produce great art while under the influence of consciousness-altering drugs (and this would include alcohol when enough is consumed). Sometimes they produce the great art after experimenting with a consciousness-altering drug, and sometimes during lucid periods over a long period of habitual use... but almost never while under the influence of the drug. Largely what we get are monumental piles of shit that the artist thought were profound while on his/her drug of the moment. I have to wonder how this could fail to also be the case in the context of a high-level professional kitchen. I've been high plenty of times, and can't imagine exercising sound judgment and doing good work in that condition. It is also my general observation that most of the people who aren't bothered by working around people on a certain drug are those who also like to use that drug. This is echoed in Spencer's tolerance/acceptance/promotion of working on THC but not alcohol (I don't mean to single you out, Spencer, but you are the strongest advocate I've read here). All this said, I am absolutely not anti-drug, and indeed I am strongly for the legalization of many drugs. Certainly there is no reason marijuana shouldn't be legal. But, to echo what I think was one of the best comments so far, it is a matter of controlling the quantities and the frequencies.

If you're a Chef, you are also a good cook. It's a requirement. You don't need to be a great cook, but you do need to be a good cook. Perhaps more importantly, you need to be an experienced and professional cook... I tend to agree... I just thought it was an interesting digression to explore for people who were inclined to think about it beyond their initial knee-jerk reaction. More hypothetical than anything else. For whatever its worth, one generally has to be at least a good dancer to be a good choreographer as well. That said, many great choreographers were well beyond their best days as dancers when they did their best choreography, and I would agree that one need not be a great cook to be a great chef. Likewise, I would imagine that some chefs of long standing may lose their chops for working on the line. Your point about being an experienced and professional cook goes directly to my hypothetical requirements of "understands the workings of the professional kitchen" and "understands cooking." I did not mean to imply an underdstanding of these things from reading books.

Does a person have to be literate and coherent to be President? To be a good one, yea.

I wonder, in some ways, whether it is absolutely necessary that a chef needs to be a good cook, so long as he/she understands the workings of the professional kitchen, understands cooking, is a capable manager, can recognize well-cooked food, has good taste and has a good creative mind. Does one have to be a good dancer in order to be a good choreographer? Certainly I think that one could be a great chef and a mediocre cook, and I can see where someone could understand intimately what a perfectly cooked piece of meat is without being able to produce it him/herself on a consistent basis. That's what cooking staffs are for. Now, that said, I would imagine that most decent chefs are good cooks, or were good cooks at one time. As a related side note... I remember seeing a "documentary" on young chefs that was produced back before Emeril Lagasse hit the big time. There was an interview with a woman who had hired him for one of his first big gigs down in New Orleans, and she said something to the effect that he had the reputation as a guy who couldn't cook but who really worked well with people, and that his kitchens turned out great food.

I googled and found this article with the Keller recipe.