I know I said I'd write about management in the kitchen, but you have to be in a certain kind of mood to write about your bosses, and I don't think I'm in it. Instead- a little insight into what it's like working in a hotel kitchen verses a freestanding restaurant.
Number 1: Accommodation. Last night a woman comes in and gives the server a laundry list of instructions for her meal and has her take this to the kitchen. First of all, the restaurant is closed. Only the bar is open. There were just four of us in the kitchen last night. Granted, we weren't exactly doing a whole lot, unless you count trying to figure out if chocolate milk curdles in your stomach as doing something, but it's not like we were a full service kitchen last night. Anyways, her laundry list includes two sandwiches, the bread she wants, how she wants it toasted, the lettuce on it (she requested iceberg. Iceberg. Who has that in their kitchen? If you do, look in the mirror, and ask yourself "Why?"), the lettuce on the side of the sandwich, the dressing on the lettuce on the side, how she wants the chicken cooked and sliced, and she also requested to know how long this was going to take. GO HOME! Make this crazy sandwich for yourself! Are you kidding? The worst part about this is that even if we were in the middle of service, we would still have to accommodate this person because she is a guest in our hotel. In a freestanding restaurant, people come in and order off the menu. They go into your restaurant expecting to eat your food, and are usually pretty excited to do so. In a hotel, it's the opposite. People come in and demand to eat what they dreamed up. That's just silly. When did eating at a restaurant become a substitute for being a crappy home cook? Yesterday, I found out that caesar and cobb salads, and tortilla soup are not on our menu. Every day, I sell about 30 tortilla soups. Every day, garde manager puts out so many chicken and salmon caesars that I end up grilling off 20 chicken breasts in the morning to be prepared. They aren't on our menu but we are so used to conforming our kitchen to what the guests want, that it's officially on the cook's prep lists. If someone ever came into my restaurant and requested a cobb salad, I tell them that if I wanted to serve a disgusting cobb, I would have put a cobb on the menu.
Accommodation Part 2: Tomatoes in Winter. Tomatoes in winter taste god-awful. We have to have them because guests without fail request them, but they don't know any better. Pull one off the vine in August and take a bite and then ask us to ship them in from California and bite into their beautifully waxed skin
and give me some insight into why you want this in your salad. Accommodation forces a farm-to-table restaurant to be truck-to-table. Stop. Our tomato sauce here comes from perfectly ripe tomatoes with the most amazing flavor and acidity from Rendezvous Farm...canned in September. Take whatever surplus you have from this years harvest, and can it so you can enjoy that flavor in the dead of winter. My step-mom recently went to Paris and told me a story how when she asked for a green salad on the side and they looked at her like she had 3 heads. Their reply was, "It's October. We don't have
green salads." That's how it should be. Don't serve what you can't reasonably obtain.
Number 2: Room Service. Room service can take the line down like no special request order you've ever seen. At Blackberry, room service came in on hand written tickets. The second I saw Chef Adam hold up a handwritten ticket to start announcing it, I knew the boat was going under. It forces you to stop making everything you've been making off the menu for the night and scramble to get random things for the room service menu. One night, we ran out of ground beef for burgers. Remember what I said about accommodation? If the guest asks- we deliver. In the middle of service, one of the line cooks had to head OUT of the building, down into the butcher shop and grind up beef. I don't go off the line to blink, let alone make a ground beef pit stop next door. When the roast guy isn't there to roast, imagine what happens to the line.
In order to maintain our Five Star Five Diamond status, we need to serve food 24 hours a day. That means that the cooks stock up the overnight cart,
happily of course, and if you call down an order a pate at 1 am you can have it. Oh, and that
local cheese grilled cheese you ordered was just heated up by a security guard...in a microwave. We also cook dog food. The other night, my family was going to make dinner for me, a rare occasion. My step-mom said she was making brown rice, and something else that didn't matter anymore. We serve brown rice as dog food to demanding pet owners. One lady gave us special requests on dimensions of the diced chicken that had to be boiled, not grilled. Anyways, I made dinner that night.
Number 3: Politics. Name tags are the biggest concern of the GM. I'm not kidding. He told Chef that he would literally send us home with no warning if we weren't wearing a name tag. Last night I wore Vincent. He doesn't care. As long as it's pinned on. Helllllooo?! We're serving food here. Who cares if I'm wearing a name tag or not. It's not like I'll be out in the dining room kissing babies. I've never even seen a single person I've served. The only person that needs to know my name is Chef, and I'm
pretty sure he knows it. If name tags are what you threaten to send your cooks home over, your not managing much very well. In a freestanding restaurant, what matters if the food. Not the garnish on your uniform.
I'd love to work in a free-standing restaurant just to be able to say no to a diner- but mostly to prepare meals for people that came to eat what we slaved away testing, practicing, prepping, and perfecting, and to diners who will appreciate that.
P.S. Chocolate milk curdles in your stomach, there's a ton of acid in there.
