When the Chef is not actually in the kitchen

[foodie52]

If I ever, EVER have the chance to pay $500 for a meal, the chef had better be standing at the door, ready to shake my hand and thank me for coming.

[Fat Guy]

All chefs are absentee chefs. The only variable is the extent of their absence.

At nearly any restaurant, the chef cooks a very small percentage of the plates, if any. He is essentially absent from the cooking process, even if he is in the kitchen. As a supervisor, he can only see so many things happening at once. Likewise, in most restaurants, chefs have days off.

When a chef ascends to the level where he has more than one restaurant, his level of absence increases. But it is simply an increase, not a fundamental theoretical shift in what he has been doing all along. The people who ran the kitchen on his days off now need to run the kitchen more often, and do more. The same cooks are cooking the food, however, and it is the same chef at the top of the organizational pyramid -- the pyramid is simply larger.

As Robert Brown explained in his short but comprehensive post, some chefs can pull it off and some can't. I'd like to add something to that: I believe that when Pierre Gagnaire says his kitchen slips if he's away from it for a couple of days, he is describing a personal failure as a chef.

There are a handful of very small restaurants in the world -- I've written at length about Sandor's in Seagrove Beach, Florida; John McPhee's account of chef "Otto" in New Jersey is legendary -- where the chef is the only cook or very much the head cook in a kitchen. Even in those cases, however, there are absences: at Sandor's, for example, the cold plates are prepared to order by the waitstaff while Sandor Zombori cooks the hot food. And of course Sandor didn't grow the vegetables, raise the animals, and mill the wheat or even bake the bread served at his restaurant. What is on your plate, even if cooked by Sandor, represents much that has happened in Sandor's absence.

[wesza]

All chefs are absentee chefs. The only variable is the extent of their absence.

At nearly any restaurant, the chef cooks a very small percentage of the plates, if any. He is essentially absent from the cooking process, even if he is in the kitchen. As a supervisor, he can only see so many things happening at once. Likewise, in most restaurants, chefs have days off.

When a chef ascends to the level where he has more than one restaurant, his level of absence increases. But it is simply an increase, not a fundamental theoretical shift in what he has been doing all along. The people who ran the kitchen on his days off now need to run the kitchen more often, and do more. The same cooks are cooking the food, however, and it is the same chef at the top of the organizational pyramid -- the pyramid is simply larger.

As Robert Brown explained in his short but comprehensive post, some chefs can pull it off and some can't. I'd like to add something to that: I believe that when Pierre Gagnaire says his kitchen slips if he's away from it for a couple of days, he is describing a personal failure as a chef.

There are a handful of very small restaurants in the world -- I've written at length about Sandor's in Seagrove Beach, Florida; John McPhee's account of chef "Otto" in New Jersey is legendary -- where the chef is the only cook or very much the head cook in a kitchen. Even in those cases, however, there are absences: at Sandor's, for example, the cold plates are prepared to order by the waitstaff while Sandor Zombori cooks the hot food. And of course Sandor didn't grow the vegetables, raise the animals, and mill the wheat or even bake the bread served at his restaurant. What is on your plate, even if cooked by Sandor, represents much that has happened in Sandor's absence.

I have been fortunate to have operated 2 Restaurants where I was able to actually take the customers orders and then return to the kitchen to prepare the Entrées.

In one of the Restaurants that was located in Honolulu, Hi. I actually had a Menu prepared that clearly stated " Menu for when the Chefs away," it listed dishes that my staff was capable of preparing that would be done up to the standards established. The majority of our patrons were regulars and had no problems with this when it occurred. It also helped that one of my partners was always on the floor and took everyones order. We served about 125/175 covers nightly almost all by reservation. This was at the "Lisboa Restaurant" where we featured Seafood, Spanish, Portuguese, South American and African specialties on Oahu.

The other Restaurant was in Northern California located in Fort Bragg it was smaller and we generally served 60/90 covers nightly. Almost all by reservation. I also took every order and prepared or set up every entrée. My wife was also in the Kitchen finishing and plating all dishes. We served Seafood, Some Spanish and Portuguese Dishes and Lamb, Poultry and Beef. It didn't take very long for our reputation to become established, but if I wasn't able to be there for my customers we couldn't open. Since our hours were limited this never caused any problem and we were able to operate on schedule.

This is very difficult to attempt, but if your the right person and know how to time your seatings, plus able to organize your order taking it's a exhilarating experience to accomplish pleasing so many customers every day. It does take some time to wind down and your staff is very important to continuing this type of operation. It was interesting that we were able to utilize and introduce in to the market place so many under utilized items that have now become well known.

Irwin

[jaypm51]

God, this is a slippery slope. I agree with jmayer. At what point does the number of locations become a chain associated with a celeb. chef's name. I think Emeril's is there, for example, and it shows.

I don't believe an accomplished chef with a well trained and disciplined staff needs to always be present in the kitchen. If I want a sense of what his food is about I can probably get that without his presence.

If, in turn, the chef has a gifted chef-de-cuisine who, at some point needs to grow beyond his current responsibilities and make room for somebody else, a second location in a different place makes sense and doesn't necessarily mean sacrficing the essence or philosopy of the cuisine.

The important point for me is, that I know who is in the kitchen so I can make an informed choice. If its Keller, for example, and I want to go to the FL on a night when he's in the kitchen because I believe it makes a difference, then I expect I should be given that choice. Frankly speaking, I will be at Per Se next week and don't really give a hoot if Keller is in the kitchen or not.

On the other hand, I booked the Chef's Table in the restaurant of a luminary Chef not too long ago only to find, after we were seated and were served an amuse bouche, that the Chef was not in the restaurant. It took me a very long time to get past that one.

[aidensnd2]

Perhaps I am guilty of giving the head chef too much prominence in the actual day-to-day, and am not viewing him/her in the proper light and appreciating that.

I think that many people make a similar mistake. From talking to friends who aren't familiar with the restaurant world it seems that a lot of people think that the head chef actually cooks, or does the majority of cooking, of EVERY plate that goes out. I worked at a well known restaurant in Sydney for awhile which is home to a "celebrity" chef and on a day to day basis he was only in the kitchen for dinner service and then mainly worked the pass. I very rarely saw him actually do any form of cooking or prep, never saw him taste sauces, etc.. but of course it's him that is praised and not the line cooks who are actually churning out the food. I'm sure this is the same in many restaurants where the chef, or the chef's name, is one of the main attractions.

I don't think that many people consider the logistics of turning out meals in any sort of volume. It blows me away how many people I've seen surprised when they learn that the vegetables are cut, meat trimmed and the fish filleted in advance and not when the order comes in....

[slkinsey]

There are several issues here:

First is what I will call the romantic model: the idea that the presence of the chef somehow imbues the food with his creative essence, and that this essence is somehow missing when he is not in the kitchen. This outlook, I would suggest, reflects a misunderstanding of how this kind of creative effort works. The fact is that most of what makes a collaborative creative endeavor work is done in the rehearsal (e.g., by the chef training the kitchen staff). To return to my field... all the expressive mugging done by conductors like Bernstein is show-biz for the rubes in the audience and/or bullshit narcissistic posturing (it's not like the players are watching the conductor's face all that closely anyway). The greatest conductors, in my opinion, have often been those that trusted their orchestra, trusted their preparation and largely stayed out of the way in performances. I feel much the same about quasi-mystical chefs who claim to "connect with their food on a spiritual level" or feel that the food "just isn't the same" after a 2-3 day absence (which is totally insulting to the staff -- more on this later).

Second, it is certainly true that some chefs can spread themselves so thin that their restaurants begin to lose the chef's individual imprint and/or begin to slip in overall quality of execution. Of course, the same things can happen even when the chef has only one restaurant.

Third, the extent to which a restaurant will succeed in the chef's absence will largely depend on the chef's management style. Most of us have encountered situations in our working lives where a supervisor withheld useful information -- whether consciously or not. To make an example: the boss who won't take the time to explain how to get the special product your company needs from the difficult supplier and insists on making you go through him. The fact is that most managers would make themselves largely superfluous if they told their managees everything they needed to know to do their jobs. I can easily see how a chef could find himself in a situation where the sauces, etc. "just weren't his" after a 2-3 day absence: If the chef insists on personally adjusting each sauce, etc. as it is finished rather than explaining to the staff what the sauce, etc. should be like and teaching them how to make it right, that chef is unempowering his staff. He is making it impossible for the kitchen to succeed in his absence. I would consider it a great failure on the part of the chef if he was not able to leave his kitchen for at least a week without the food suffering appreciably.

[Fat Guy]

As the closest thing eGullet has to an executive chef, I've got to agree with that take on the management model. Most of what I do around here is figure out ways to get other people to do my work as well or better than I would, so I can just hang around and post on the message boards, injecting bits and pieces of my personality at the margins. I learned that lesson the hard way. Back in the early days of eGullet, I handled so much day-to-day management that when I would go away on a road trip things would get really fucked up around here. This past six weeks you all may not even have noticed that I've posted very little -- and what you've probably noticed less is that I've had zero involvement in management, which is now being quietly handled by people who are better at it than I am, albeit according to a framework Jason and I have worked to create over the past year -- as I've been working to finish my book manuscript. I hope eGullet has been the same for you either way. And I certainly hope nobody is coming here specifically to see me, Jason, or anybody else in particular, but rather I'd like to think what people care about is the eGullet we give them, regardless of the composition of that "we" at a given time.