ALSO...

I was featured in a local publication, that was pretty cool. I also did a dessert that will be on the next month's cover. I am in no way a pastry chef. I did a creme brulee napoleon with crispy won ton skins. I will post that picture later. I was also offered a job as executive chef of a Marriott resort, that I am kicking around. I would hate to move again, my resume is pretty shaky for this last year with the move from Vegas to Florida and now again to ? The US census bureau stated that chefs move from job to job more than any profession. I know this and they know this but prospective employers do not. Some see this a sign of flakiness. I see it as an opportunist who knows a good thing when he or she sees it. Only sometimes it may not pan out the way you want it to. Only recently that this profession of ours has started to employ normal people. Before cooks were the dregs of society, convicts, nomads, unsociables. Now we get college grads, second careers, housewives and anybody who watches the food network and says, "I want to play with food." I wish their were more shows that showed what it is like behind the line on a busy night.
Since, I have you here let me share my frustration with servers again. We have been going through some front of the house changes in systems, how things are being done. In my kitchen I like for each course to be fired through a ticket. When the diner is ready for the next course, the server or whoever will go to the computer and fire the table. We will get the ticket and act on it. For whatever unknown reason in the universe of food and beverage they can not get this one simple request. They will walk by my expo station and tell me they are sorbet(ing) table something. I want my guys to be quick so I might tell them to fire that table but I also want it to be correct. I look at my tickets and I do not have that table, so I ask the server what table and he tells me another fictional table. I ask him how many restaurants are you working in tonight? He looks at me like a deer in headlights and goes to check what table he has. (???????????) The next night we have only one person, the captain (who is 18yrs old) take the orders and enters them in, he takes his handwritten ticket to my expo and hangs it for the back servers to get salads and whatever. The problem here lies is this, they can't read his writing and he forgets the table number and gets their seats wrong. CLUSTERFUCK!!!! The two back servers, we will call them Clifford and Fonzi, start to get the salads and Clifford asks Fonzi if he got the salads for THIS table, to which Fonzi replies what table? CLifford says I don't know the number do you? How should I know the number your getting the salads. While this is going on my crew starts laughing out loud because you couldn't script this any better than Abbott and Costello, Who's on first?
This goes on all night long and I do mean long. Keep in mind that we do tableside cooking: salads, apps, entrees and desserts. The Manager wants to be the only one to cook tableside so he can get a cut of the tips. He can NOT cook for shit. So when the server fires the ticket and there is tableside cooking he backs us up by ten to fifteen minutes because he is not ready to cook or does not have his mise en place, or has several tables needing tableside and he wants to do ALL the cooking.

It has been a while....

Sorry to everybody and thanks to celebchef for unwilling me and motivating me to blog again.
Lets get you up to speed. I am used to working in large hotels, I have recently taken an Exec. Chef at a smaller hotel. I run three outlets, fine dining, casual dining and banquets. Recently my food and beverage director left and they replaced him with a former manager who they fired before. He and I do not see eye to eye, That is putting it lightly. Chef's in general are controlling, protective of their territory, and just can not stand people who do NOT understand our business. We have a low tolerance for stupidity. That said, my new boss tried to bulldoze his way the first day I met him. Saying we are changing the menu without even seeing my menu that I have been costing out for a few weeks. Saying we will use his purveyors and his only. He is an old school person and not really willing to try new things. I wanted to go with a seasonal menu and feature fresh Florida produce and seafood. He wants veal marsala. So you see my anguish. I tried to go head on with him and I just don't want the stress. I tried to compromise but that isn't really going so well. I am just letting him do his thing and finding it very amusing. He asked me to give him some menu items and he will price them. He didn't even have the invoices to find out what each portion costs, he was guesstimating. Hmmmm, lobster twelve dollars? Maybe, so I will charge $36.00. I try to help and offer that he needs to add the cost of bread and butter and the salad and the sorbet to his cost. He tells me, "Oh that is about two dollars. I went to Sam's Club and walked around with a calculator." WHAT THE FUCK?????????