Chefs Bite Back

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

i see nothing contradictory about taking pride in your craft and working to please your customers.

Well step into my shoes for a minute and behold the paradoxical.

I'm haute...my customers are hate.

[WHT]

I think it all comes down to interference. In the crafting of the food or the flow of the kitchen work. Anything that throws it off becomes a problem. A good deal of people think that they are the only ones asking for something different and what harm could that be? The slippery slope is one you do something you have to keep doing it. Not bad in an independent place, murder in a chain. Too many rules already apply in the chain scenario. Such as the veg. For the stir-fry may be proportioned and removing the carrots throws it off even if they can find and add a little more of another item. It isn’t so bad if the vegetables are done in mass and kept in a Bain but that is seldom the case. Funny that getting things added is often easier than getting things removed. Just because the do it at Jack’s down the block does not assure you that they will at Jack’s in the next city.

When items are made to order there seems to be a bit more slack. The chances are better that the mushrooms in burgundy sauce are made rather than bought in 5# tubs. In the later case they may not even have mushrooms any other way.

Even if we keep the idea that the request is reasonable too many at one time can slow down the operation to a crawl. If the cooks are trained to do things one-way and have to refer back to the ticket to check on the variations. This is not even taking into account servers grabbing the wrong item. The more changes, the more chances to make a mistake. I always have loved the people that tweak an item then after tasting it decide they don’t like it. Maintaining a balance is hard in this situation. SOS is not that big a deal but some of the things we have seen would make even the most seasoned cook wince.

[Busboy]

Even if we keep the idea that the request is reasonable too many at one time can slow down the operation to a crawl. If the cooks are trained to do things one-way and have to refer back to the ticket to check on the variations. This is not even taking into account servers grabbing the wrong item. The more changes, the more chances to make a mistake. I

Curious if people are pickier now than in my days on the floor. It was rare to get more than a single request for a significant change -- more than "sauce on the side -- in a single shift back in my day. I doubt kitchens got more than one or two a night most nights. Are line cooks today dealing with five or six special requests at a time, at rush?

[Pan]

My thoughts on this aren't fully formed, but this question of how much cooking may be an art causes me to think a lot about the recitals I present as a classical musician. I'm playing for a paying audience most of the time, but who chooses the program? Me (though I sometimes need to discuss it with the concert presenter, when that isn't yours truly). Who writes the program notes? Me (unless the concert presenter prefers that I speak, in which case I choose what to say). Who chooses how to play the music? Me and my assisting artists. I am a musician and not an accountant or something else because I get pleasure and fulfillment from playing, not because my audience does. I choose to present to them things I want to play, I believe in, and I believe I can transmit well to the audience as an advocate, as well as a storyteller spinning the sounds through time. Once I've done that, if the audience is happy and some of them tell me they've learned something from my performance and program notes, I'm very happy. When those who have a close enough relationship with me to feel confident in criticizing me do so, I listen to their comments and think them over with an eye toward future performances. I learn from scheduling problems; consider the effects of ticket prices; rethink the totality of the program, based on how strenuous or musically successful combinations of pieces on each half were; and take mental notes about the acoustics and all sorts of aspects of the indoor environment of a venue, the quality of the piano my accompanist used, and whether anything (e.g. a climate control system) made a disturbing noise.

Now, when I'm playing a wedding reception, I'm more apt to include show tunes and jazz and may take requests, but not in a classical recital, where even my encores are chosen by me.

So what about a chef? Surely, most serious chefs choose the profession because it fulfills them, not their customers. They make dishes they want to make and believe they can be good advocates for. Now, rather like I ask audience members how they reacted to a piece and consider their reaction in future programming, chefs are interested in how their dishes are selling and how many people are sending them back because they're too "odd" or something. What about the menus? Who is most responsible for them? I'm going to quit here, except to observe that there are often musicians but always food at a wedding reception, and Mozart wrote differently when he was writing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for dinner entertainment than when he was writing a symphony. It's an inexact analogy, but without question to me, cooking at a high level is an art, and the question of the degree and type of interaction between the audience and the artist is somewhat separate from whether it's an art or not. Musicians depend on a much larger audience than painters and sculptors do, generally. Does that make painting and sculpting more of an art than music? I don't think so.

[Busboy]

Pan -- the difference betwen what you do and what a chef does, whether or not it is "art," is that it is impossible for you to custimize your work. You cannot stop, go back and replay a portion of a sonata differently for a single audience member and the go on. You cannot play something "wrong" for the picky customer in the back, and simultaneously play it "right" for everyone else. A chef can.

And, since you present only one "meal" a night, you can't really make changes on the fly -- swiching from Sibelius to Beethoven, say, in mid-piece -- because the crowd is slipping away. A chef can change on the fly, though, if the veal is coming back uneaten.

Your music is has a certain rigidity in the way it is presented, because it has to.

On the other hand, there are many types of music in which the interaction between the audience and the musicians is critical -- they draw energy from one another and a jazz musician or good jam band will play songs differently every night, alter the set list, feature different musicians and instruments all based on immediate feedback from the crowd. Maybe they'll play the same refrain over and over again, in a dozen variations that touch different people and build to a frenzy. Maybe they'll get intellectual and play with rhythm and transform the melody. Maybe they'll just rock out. They're artists, too, but they understand that great art can accomodate both the genius of the artists and the visceral response of the audience. (Not to imply that "classical" musicians should adopt this approach, mind you).

[russ parsons]

i couldn't help but think of this thread just now when i was asked to rewrite the end of my story.

[Jinmyo]

i couldn't help but think of this thread just now when i was asked to rewrite the end of my story.

[TPO]

Good points on both sides. I think accomodating the customer is good, but the customer can get carried away. Personally, if I am going to pay $30 or more for dinner, I want it to be exactly as the chef intended it to be. I feel as though I am paying for his or her talent. If I want something more specific to my desires, I'll eat at a less expensive place where the meals are more plain and easier to customize, or I will cook it myself.

Curious if people are pickier now than in my days on the floor. It was rare to get more than a single request for a significant change -- more than "sauce on the side -- in a single shift back in my day.

I think people are pickier now. I know many parents who complain of the burder of cooking different meals for each of their children every night, because none of them like the same things. When I was a kid, we only had two choices for dinner each night: eat it or don't.

So that could be the bigger problem, that customers are out for more than accomodating allergies or special diets, they are out for a customized meal exactly the way they want it, even if they don't like the end result.

[WHT]

Are line cooks today dealing with five or six special requests at a time, at rush?

15 years ago when I was in the game depending on the station you might. We had a second string run on sauté because of all the memo line stuff. The sad thing is most of the servers where not coherent in the directions they gave. Part of this I blame on the POS system the other was that it was never standardized.

As an example some waitrons would take an item memo in what was to be taken off and then memo in what the customer wanted. So if you had a Xburger that came with Lettuce, tomato, raw onion, Swiss cheese, bacon and special sauce. The might have the ticket read:

Xburger

Med. Rare

-Sauce

-Onion

-Bacon

-Swiss

+Can. Bac.

+Mayo

+Mustard

+Provolone

Rather than:

Cheese Burger

Med Rare

-Onion

+Provolone

+Can. Bac.

+Mustard

+Mayo

An over simplification but you get the idea. The later of the two (assuming no cost difference.) is easier to understand and work from. Less to read and if you are weeded. Also you don’t get some PHB trying to tell you “That’s not how to make The Xburger.) and having to explain it on top of cooking it.

[Basildog]

All depends what your cooking for i guess.Personally i cook to give people a good time, a memory of some time spent with us.If i considered my self an "artiste", cooking for my own pleasure,then i could see why chefs get pissed off by people changing their "creations".My only proviso is that if i,m eating the food of an artist chef, it had better be fucking good.

[Fat Guy]

Mind if I respond to this?

    People already have ways to critique the critics or their work: they can write letters to the editor or (in my case) follow published restaurant reviews that appear online with mini-reviews of their own. The latter option doesn't thrill me,  because posters get to remain anonymous (and who KNOWS who they might be?)

    Equal time for chefs and others sounds like a good idea in theory, but it could also turn out to be this back and forth ping pong game of write/rebutt, write/rebutt. Where would it all end? Newspapers have limited space, after all. (The same is obviously not true of this medium, where discussions can go on for, well, miles.)

    Just my two cents.

This reminds me of when Microsoft Sidewalk, back in the day, did these "He Said, She Said" restaurant reviews by Kelly Alexander (an editor at Saveur and someone who likes fine dining) and some cro-magnon named Dirk something-or-other (who thought fancy restaurants were about small portions and snooty waiters in penguin suits). It was a good idea in theory but the end result was usually stupid. Likewise, on CitySearch and various other cityguide sites, you often have a formal review followed by various user comments -- and the user comments are almost always nonsensical. You don't have the community and repeated, recognizable usernames that you have for example on eGullet -- it's mostly just like, "We went there and it was awesome. This reviewer is fucked in the head. Fuck him." And as I said, having chefs respond is bound to be a failure because most of them can't write and therefore the game would be given over to publicists -- and that would be a disaster.

So certainly the solutions that have been thrown at the problem of the one-sided nature of a reviewer's podium have been failures. But the problem is still there. More specifically in terms of the story being discussed here, I think it's a step in the right direction. Because it's not so much about any particular reviewer or writer; it's more about the deeper anti-industry bias of most newspaper food sections -- something that is reinforced by so many newspaper stories about restaurants. So while answering specific reviews may be nonsensical, it's good for editors to give industry people a podium on occasion in order to balance out the overall tone of the coverage. That's just good journalism.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

[

So while answering specific reviews may be nonsensical, it's good for editors to give industry people a podium on occasion in order to balance out the overall tone of the coverage. That's just good journalism.

Fuckin' word.

[tan319]

Wouldn't it be interesting if chefs and restaurateurs were always given the opportunity to respond to restaurant reviews?

But in this case it was not a chef responding to a review, but a chef bashing the behavior of her customers that started the whole thing.

I have to admit that I don't care for customers requesting changes all the time.

And the crutch is always "in these troubled economic times" we are supposed to kiss the customers ass, no matter how stupid the request.

I handle the dessert menu and I don't get hassled about things much at all. But, in a restaurant I was pastry chef at a few years ago, I was running a shortcake type of thing and a waiter would come up and ask if I could plate it with a shortcake and the cream and sauce only on one plate and a shortcake and just the berries on the other.And I told them never to ask for that again.Cause it you let that go, then the sky is the limit. You'll never sell something the way it was intended to be tasted.

Look at Craft.

As was mentioned, the menu was designed to accomodate all this type of stuff and it was just too hard .

I ate there. I thought it was great. Nice way to arrange a menu.'You decide'.

Well done steaks, sauce on the side, that's a different thing.

Rearranging dinners is another.

[speidec]

Busboy you have changed my perspective and I thank you.

The reason I got into the field of cooking was to release my inner "art" and perhaps make a living doing so. I entered the field from a diferent angle, I chose it willingly, I didn't start as a dishwasher and move to prep, etc... I knew exactly what I wanted to do and why and all I had to learn was how. Many years later I am able to practice my craft in a successful restaurant and take great pride and great legnths to create exciting, different, and tasty menus on a weekly and often daily basis. I have a throng of purveyors I rely on to get me the best raw ingredients and a hard-trained staff who have worked many hours to prepare and expedite a fine product. So much thought, care, precision, and sweat have gone into these dishes.

So please, glorious diner, don't fuck with them.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

Speidic.

You're going to have to allow your inner "artist" to bend over the hot line and take it in the petooty once in a while or you'll eventually find yourself at the local wal-mart in the gun section asking the clerk what rifle does the most damage to a human head. Just a plain fact. You cannot exist within the profession without giving in once in a while. Most customers don't look at you as an artist in search of the perfect bite, nor do I. You're a glorified tie-dye salesman, hawking your wares to who ever is bold enough to want to wear your designs. You're not Michelangelo commissioned to paint the Sistine.

[Fat Guy]

The whole artist-versus-craftsman dichotomy doesn't really make sense when applied to a category: no medium is necessarily always art or always craft. Some photographers are just taking pictures, others are creating art. Some painters are painting "your portrait in 15 minutes!" and others are creating art. Not to mention, the line can be hard to draw, and is often re-drawn in retrospect. Cooking is like that too.

It occurs to me that my line of work, writing, is also one where craft and art coexist (the art in this case being literature) . And thinking about how chefs must feel when their creations are bastardized, I can't help but think of how a writer feels when his work is poorly edited.

[Steve Klc]

Speidec--I wouldn't take too much stock in any "plain fact" spouted off by anyone. In plain fact, thread topics which revolve around plain facts usually evolve into several thousand page views.

If there's anything to come out of this thread--like most good threads on eGullet--it is that there are no absolutes. Take Shaw's last post about how craft and art co-exist in writing--it's very clear to me it's up to each individual writer to define his own metier, distinctiveness and merit within the marketplace. Same with chefs and chef/owners. There's the rub Spencer, I don't know if you've ever been a "chef and owner" of anything--certainly as a chef or pastry chef employee you take it up the patootie--but as an owner or partner like an Adria or Keller or countless other chefs and pastry chefs--you do get to define how you interact with the media, and how you form your relationships with your customers and your relationship with your cooking down to the very last drop. And every chef (or writer) "owner" does get to define for himself how he gives in and if he gives in--if he is a chef/owner as a writer owns his work before he turns it in or signs his contract--because he's answerable to himself and for himself.

Yes every chef is answerable to the diner--but for me that relationship seems mostly defined by the chef's skills and personality--good or bad. It's up to each chef to deliver the message as to why he can or cannot, will or will not, accomodate an individual diner's wishes. And I can envision this happening in vastly different ways--some more reassuring and satisfying than others. Some chefs can pull it off, some can't. This is both Basildog's version of "if I'm eating the food of some artiste/chef it had better be damn good" and Russ Parsons' version of Keller worked long and hard to get to the point that he could say no if he felt like it.

Spencer is certainly correct in that customers will not instantly, magically view you the way you want to be viewed or the way you view yourself, however--and this is the key lesson to take from a Keller or an Adria and which I think Spencer almost predictably misses out on: as a "chef/owner" you can shape how customers look at you, through your food, personality, savvy, actions, words, interviews, networking, relationships with media and other colleagues--you are paying the bills not cashing a paycheck--you're free to shape it through active creation of your persona--and all you have to do, like either the Keller or Adria example--is reach enough customers who don't view you as a tie-dye salesman as they come through the door, enough customers to keep your restaurant full and/or profitable. As Russ Parsons chimed in, that's what Keller has been building up to for his 30 years. That doesn't mean his is the only route to take or necessarily the route other chefs should model themselves on. Ironically, Gillian Clark just might be on her way to doing just that--creating a more distinctive persona for herself, gaining name recognition and keeping her restaurant more full! She's just re-drawn her line, as Shaw astutely realizes; she's a young chef and may re-draw it yet again in hindsight.

Spencer has certainly shaped with his words how the rest of eGullet looks at him--now expand that out in the real world using an Adria or Keller as an example. Be they glorified tie-dye salesman? And where Adria has transcended Keller on the world stage, I think, is he has found a way to provoke extreme criticism of hmself and his cooking and still profit by those who misunderstand his food or his methods--all the while selling out his restaurant for the season within hours and being recognized in many lay and professional circles as the best chef in the world.

Personally, I do think the most talented chefs bend over backwards to be accomodating or bend over backwards equally to explain why they can't accomodate a request. Either way, the chef and customer wins.

[Busboy]

You're not Michelangelo commissioned to paint the Sistine.

Of course Michelangelo, like most great and near-great artists, had to kiss a little ass, too, in his time. Popes, partrons, Nings, gallery owners, critics -- artists have been known to accomodate the whims and demands of the less talented because they don't find the starving artist image as romantic as non-starving, non-artists. Nothing like a flattering portrait of an industrialist's wife to pay the rent on the studio, and free you up to do what you really want. And that bourgeois commission can be art, too.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

Spencer has certainly shaped with his words how the rest of eGullet looks at him--now expand that out in the real world using an Adria or Keller as an example.  Be they glorified tie-dye salesman?  And where Adria has transcended Keller on the world stage, I think, is he has found a way to provoke extreme criticism of hmself and his cooking and still profit by those who misunderstand his food or his methods--all the while selling out his restaurant for the season within hours and being recognized in many lay and professional circles as the best chef in the world.

Personally, I do think the most talented chefs bend over backwards to be accomodating or bend over backwards equally to explain why they can't accomodate a request.  Either way, the chef and customer wins.

I think it's admirable to stick a fork in a fan, which is what analogy I'm going to draw from Steve-o's Keller/Adria world domination theory but as a culinarian I can't agree with you that bad press is good press when it comes to thinking about food. If I curse the establishment of eGullet, call the founding fathers butt pirates, liars and condemn them to a cubicle in a cold room without a computer for eternity and then get expelled, never to return, banished to The Repulician Guard of foodsites, chowhound, and then simultaneously get four offers from big time publishers because my idiot rant attracted the right attention.....that would be an example of bad press is good press. Agree?

Now if a chef creates a menu for a whole season and it sucks, causing devotees to shit slam the guy (while still holding out hope that he's just having a bad day), and the media questions his sanity? If more than one of his clone army of press preachers fall upon the same unfortunate conclusion on two or three separate visits, I assert that, this is not good press. It may draws some on lookers at first, but if the guy doesn't have a Bobby Flay revival (3 star crazy) and continues to drool his mania on the plate he can't be more qualified for a stall at the Culinary Hall of Fame than a guy like Thomas Keller.

To me Steve, you think it's more admirable to pull the pyrotechnic thing out than to cook quality, close to perfect food or at least it's more respectable to test the outer limits of respectability with the sparkler/pine cone/atomizer of lavender mist/lozenge eating first mentality than a tasteful approach to elevating classics to the sublime. Or perhaps I'm just searching for a Tony Award winning subject to use as a platform to hurl hateful filth into the psyches of the American culinary dreamers. That's always a possibility.

Edited June 7, 2003 by Chef/Writer Spencer (log)

[Mark Sommelier]

Steve -

Maybe Carole Greenwood could do a Q&A here to clear all this up for us.

[Steve Klc]

This thread has little to do with who or what is admirable Spencer--it's about whether chefs "have" to do things a certain way, any way, whether they "should" do things a certain way, any way and how we all can understand the chef/customer dynamic a little better--and this is an outgrowth of one letter a chef wrote to one restaurant critic, who saw some inherent sparks in using that letter, which was then expanded upon in a very good Washington Post article and led to this--a typically interesting and thought provoking eGullet thread. My personal opinion and assessment of Adria or Keller is really beside the point and you, typically, have no clue as to what I find admirable in the work of others. But that's also beside the point of this thread, I think. That's a distraction.

What I think most people are trying to talk about, and why I tried to expand upon the Keller and Adria examples, since they were brought up already by you and others on this thread, is that there is a maturation process, a career arc and the perception of a chef which often collides with and creates ramifications for a diner's interpretation, expectation and assessment of a meal at the hand of said chef in his restaurant. This is a much larger discussion than a Gillian Clark or Carole Greenwood. It gets directly to the heart of the chef/diner relationship.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

Well Steve-o you're right, I did get off topic. But whatever, it happens all the time in this place. I was not partial to a weird construct you drew.

And my perspective is, of course, the chef's perspective. I've been customer massaging for a while now. So I may actually know a few things.

[mags]

It seems to me that many -- though not all -- of the respondants to this thread are assuming that "artist" and "pleaser of people who sign the paychecks" are somehow mutually exclusive. Sure, there have been artists throughout history who managed to make a living by working only to please themselves, but there haven't been a lot of them. Shakespeare had patrons. Mozart had patrons. And they wrote in response to specific requests/demands from those patrons.

As a writer, I have to please my editors. As an actor, I had to please my directors. And in both careers, I have/had to please my audience, or I don't/wouldn't have a job. If you want to refer only to your own tastes, please only your own muse, that's fine so long as you're content to write/paint/cook/sing only for yourself. But when other people get involved, their tastes must be taken into account, or they aren't going to be involved for very long.

Furthermore -- and forgive me -- but the "I am an artist, and I must create my art my way!" argument strikes me as just spectacularly adolescent. I can't help thinking of some 14-year-old pill who insists on expressing himself by wearing a Megadeth tee shirt to Grandma's funeral, and to hell with how uncomfortable it makes anyone else. Making a meal for someone is a social interaction. And all social interactions involve a degree of compromise, whether it's telling boring Aunt Mamie that you're happy to see her, or (graciously) allowing somebody to eat your meatloaf sans mushrooms. If your sense of self is so fragile that you can't bear that kind of compromise, either start a punk band or go live in the woods.

Edited June 9, 2003 by mags (log)

[Mark Sommelier]

We are talking here about where to draw the line. My boss, Michel Richard told me a story a few years ago about his restaurant Citrus in LA. Famous Film director comes in and demands Peking Duck. Demands it! This is a French restaurant. What do you say? Obviously, they told him no.

[Bux]

Of course Michelangelo had to kiss ass and every professional -- that is everyone who expects some income and not just those in it solely for the money -- needs to accommodate himself to his audience as much as he can't accommodate his audience to his food. Restaurants are about food and hospitality. The compromises all of us have to make are both internal and external.

At some point you have to please those who pay, whether they pay your salary or patronize your restaurant and allow you to come away with a profit at the end of the year. The trick is to attract those who want what you do best and to do well that which will please those who you get. If you don't need the diner, employer, publisher, etc. who wants you to do that which doesn't appeal to you, you don't do it unless you need that patronage and then you do it with a smile.

Fortunately different people get different pleasures and for every chef who needs to express his artistry in the kitchen, there's a restaurateur who gets his kicks from being the consummate host. I remember reading an article in the NY Times a good time ago. It dealt with the most expensive luxury restaurants in NYC. In some the diner is king. If he wants a ham sandwich or a hamburger, his whims are the pleasure of the owner and chef. In others, the chef wonders why anyone who wants a hamburger would come to his restaurant where what he has to offer is his skill and talent that is not represented by a hamburger.

I don't think the customer is always right. The first thing a diner can do wrong is chose the wrong place to eat.