10 Things I Learned in the Kitchen
May 23rd, 2008 by brian
The things I’ve learned in the kitchen are things that I take to my every day life as well. Here are the top 10 things I’ve learned since starting my restaurant career.
- Patience is a virtue. I couldn’t even wait to write this one down. My lack of patience is famous; I’m all about the moment and if I can’t do it now then don’t ask me to do it. It’s a good trait in the kitchen but in life? Not so much. To tell you the truth, for me patience is a goal I’m still trying to achieve.
- Screaming only hurts my head. He is all over the TV these days. England’s most famous chef, Gordon Ramsey, is probably the epitome of that screaming chef. I started my career as a head chef at the age of 24 and most of the staff was my age or older so I had trouble getting their attention. In trying to bring the level of the food up from sub par to four-star I screamed. And screamed. But over the next couple of years, I developed a way of training my cooks to limit their mistakes and save my aching head. You have to write the menu to the ability of your cooks so my goal was to train them to be better cooks so I could write better menus I found the more I taught them and the better they became ,the less I had to yell. That being said I still yell just not as often. It can be an important tool if I use it more selectively.
- Knives cut and fire burns. Get used to it. All beginning cooks fear the stove; it’s impossible not to. I know it sounds crazy but you need to burn and cut yourself in order to get over the fear of it all. The kitchen is such a fast-paced environment and fear just slows you down.
- The customer is always right. My goal as a chef is to take care of the guest to the best of my ability. The worst thing a guest could ever say leaving my restaurant is that I didn’t honor his request and in doing so didn’t honor him.
- Don’t reinvent the wheel; make it spin faster. It’s important to be creative and be innovative but its equally important to realize that someone else has probably done exactly what you’re doing before. Without paying homage to the past how can we move forward? Learn from the past and look to it for inspiration.
- Foster a strong bond between waiters and cooks. A long time ago in a small restaurant, I worked the front of house. I was eighteen and the house manager. I was also one of the lead line cooks so it presented an interesting balance for me between the kitchen and floor staff. That’s where I learned how important it is to have the front of the house and the back of the house working together. We’re are all on the same team and we all have the same goal: make our customers happy with a terrific experience and fantastic food.
- Try hard. If that doesn’t work try harder. I’ve gotten to where I am by following in my father’s footsteps. One of the greatest things he taught me is that with hard work comes success. I’ve been the guy with three jobs in order to learn as much as I could to further my career. Without showing the chef supervising me that I was willing to do more, do it faster and do it for a longer time than anyone else, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Thanks, Dad!
- I can’t fix everything. Two electrocutions and a near death from a lawn mower blade has inspired me to keep the fix-it jobs to the pros. I’ll stick to what I do well and hire people who can help me with the things I don’t!
- I love Mexico, especially Oaxoax Though not fluent in Spanish, I’ve managed to learn how to train Mexican cooks who are struggling with their English. In the kitchen I have been blessed with some of the best OaxOaxan (pronounced wohaka) cooks whose work ethic inspires me.
- If you find yourself falling behind move faster. Speed is one of the most important tools a good cook has. I found my speed came from a stint as a breakfast cook. Let me tell you, there is nothing like trying to make an over-easy egg without breaking the yolk and doing it under breakfast-rush pressure. It takes speed and soft hands — both of which are invaluable skills in the kitchen.
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Good Layout and design. I like your blog. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. .
Jason Rakowski
Comment by Jason Rakowski — May 23, 2008 @ 7:30 pm