Local Food, the Farmer's Market This Week.

When someone has a passion for something, it really shows through in their work. Such was the case today at the Farmer's Market. I bought some absolutely gorgeous chocolates from Chocolates by Abrielle. This girl is a complete artisan. She studied at the prestigious Ecole Chocolat in Vancouver, and it looks like she absorbed every detail of the craft.
This is why I love going to the Farmer's Market. Discovering amazing, hidden treasures and talents like this, at a completely accessible price.
The chocolate pictured with this blog is a strawberry balsamic, described as strawberry preserves paired with balsamic vinegar from Modena, Italy in a white chocolate butter ganache and enrobed in dark chocolate. I bought a package of 6 chocolates, and chose 2 of these strawberry balsamics, since there really is no greater pleasure than a good Balsamic used properly.
In addition to this we picked up a Hazelnut Maple Gianduja, a dark chocolate cone filled with milk chocolate and maple candied hazelnut gianduja, an Orange Spice dark chocolate ganache infused with mixed spices and natural orange flavour in dark chocolate and a Maple Sugar Caramel, consisting of maple sugar caramel in dark chocolate topped with a maple candied Ceylon cinnamon pecan.
At a cost of $1.50 per chocolate, you're getting the kind of decadence usually reserved for the most elite.

Drinkin' the Blues Away...Unfortunately They're Doing It At Home.

Well, it's not so bad for me.
We were just looking at our P&L for this month. My food sales are responsible for more of the mix these days. We saw it long before this report. The casual drinker is less eager to let go of their extra dollars these days.

My new sous chef.

My new sous chef has worked for my present company before in the capacity of sous chef. At that time he walked off the job. Reliable sources tell me it was a rational choice that showed good judgement, given that the Chef at the time didn't delegate, so much as abdicate.
I was hesitant to bring this guy into my circle of trust. He's the room mate of my boss, and I've been under pressure since my first day with this company to lose the sous chefs I had and promote the current one, whom we'll call Kevin from here on in.
Kevin is capable. But he's too close to the boss for my comfort. I feel sandwiched, and it's not a good feeling.
There is no getting around hiring him as sous chef however. He has the qualifications, the experience, and he's the only one that does in my kitchen. It's just that my gut is telling me that now that he's in line for the throne, I'm about to be assassinated.
People tell me that I'm being paranoid, completely ridiculous. But here's the thing.
Hitler killed 6 million jews. The only reason that he managed to kill 6 million jews without them rising up in a fight to the death, was that the majority of them were hoping for the best. Human optimism, and faith in the goodness of man, is as much a liability as it is a benefit.
Knowing this, I tend to give my voice of terror, panic and distrust more credibility than perhaps I should. However, at this point, I don't have much choice in the matter. Kevin is my sous chef, like it or not. I have to trust him. And after that...I guess I have to hope for the best.

So You'd Like to Own a Restaurant?

So many people tell me they'd love to own a restaurant. They ask me questions about how to do it, what they need.
I always tell them that what they'll need more than anything is a desire to live and work in the restaurant, foregoing any and all family and social life for at least the first 5 years.
My nephew had come into some money at one point in his life, and was grilling me about running a successful restaurant. Finally I said to him "Look, maybe you should go work in a restaurant for a few months first, so you'll know if it's what you really want or not."
Do you know what that hapless fuck said to me?! "Oh, I don't want to work in a restaurant, I just want to own one."
Jesus Christ! He'd own one alright. For about 3 months before it went completely fucking bankrupt because he was spending all his profit paying others to run it for him.
Here's the deal. Restaurant work is one of the most difficult and thankless jobs there is. You have to have a passion for the fire and the flame and the noise and the buzz. You have to be willing to go through your garbages to find out which one of your cooks is tossing out that extra .5% of food cost that you can't seem to find. You have to be willing to send everyone home and work the last 10 hours by yourself to make sure you stay within your labour budget. And at the end of it all, if you're like most independents, you'll take home about 10% of sales in profit. If you're really slick you might even squeeze out 20% But you're not going to do it by being some pretentious absentee assfuck that just pops in on occassion to tell all the customers that you're the owner. That ain't how this business works Jack.

The Future is Uncertain

My sous chef turned out to be a back stabbing asshole. A sous chef is supposed to be like a Capo's Consigliere. The chef should be able to trust him with anything. I chose to trust my sous chef with some concerns I had about one of our supervisors.
Here's the jist of it.
The hierarchy at my restaurant is as follows. General Manager, then me. I've had an issue with one of my General Manager's relationships since day 1. He's living with one of my kitchen supervisors, and from the get go has been gently prodding me to get rid of my (originally 2) sous chefs, and promote his room mate.
One of the sous chefs was a complete boob, and realizing this he stepped down from the role. The other, was a good worker, could outcook anyone on the line, absorbed information, grasped concepts, often seemed able to read my mind. All of these things are crucial factors of being a sous chef. The only factor I was never sure on was whether or not I could trust him. And the only way to find that out was to trust him.
I told him that I had suspicions our jobs were in jeopardy from this line supervisor. This supervisor walked out on the company years ago when he was a KM, and has since returned. Having walked out however, he can't take on a big management role again, unless promoted into it. I told my sous it seemed that the GM was trying to knock us off one by one until he was left with no choice but to promote the super to chef.
Anyway, I told the sous chef that as long as were both united, our jobs would be safe. I wouldn't let them fire him, as long as he didn't try to pull a coup on me.
Within weeks he'd made the coup attempt, telling the boss everything I'd told him, claiming that I was unstable and was likely to kill someone. (hehehe)
The boss knows that I'm unstable and likely to kill someone. If you're not ready to kill someone over an improperly prepared sandwich, you really shouldn't be a chef.
Long story short the GM and my sous chef agreed that the sous chef should go, and now my boss's roommate is my interim second in command.
This is a situation I'm deeply uncomfortable with. I really want to believe that everything is okay, that my GM doesn't have a plan to drive me out and make his roomie the chef. But I also know that in situations such as this, people want to believe everything is okay, when it's quite obvious that it isn't. I'll keep you posted. I need to do regular paranoia checks with myself, and this is probably the best place for it.

Welcome to my first post!

Hello!
Thanks for stopping by.
I'm a chef/kitchen manager in a high volume kitchen. The company I work for refers to their kitchen managers as chef, regardless of whether or not said Kitchen Manager is certified. This makes me feel like a bit of a poser. I've had some training in classic French cuisine, but I've never tested to become a certified chef de cuisine.

The segment of the industry I work in is premium casual dining. We do food that is trendy, with a price tag, but we do it fast and with some corners cut. We bill ourselves as a sports bar with shockingly good food. While I'm definitely no Gordon Ramsay, I'm certainly no Rachael Ray either.
I'm something in between, like most of the kitchen managers and high volume line cooks in Canada. I'm an adrenaline junkie with the attention span of a gerbil on speed.
This blog is going to focus on my day to day experiences at work. It will chronicle the life of a chef. It's going to be my page to rant about the weak and the foolish and the damned that I deal with every day. It'll be my place to laud or decry the FOH (Front of House)people for their triumphs and tribulations. You'll hear endless condemnations of grossly inept suppliers.
It'll be entertaining for you, because I'm cynical, verbose, wildly enthusiastic and slightly delusional. I'm often paranoid, worried that there are tremendous machinations being construed against me, and I over-think and over-analyze any and all situations.
Stay tuned, and please subscribe :)