I understand that as an owner of a restaurant right now you might be a little bit concerned. Moreover I understand that there are things that you need to consider when you are an owner. But when you are TOO hands on it is damaging not just to the restaurant but also to the people that work in it. ESPECIALLY when you are wrong.
Today, after a relatively slow lunch I made myself my lunch and went out to the restaurant to eat it. The owner (who is taking off for Las Vegas tomorrow) came up to me and made a comment about hours, labour cost and something else. He then proceeded to start having an EXTREMELY inappropriate conversation with me while Chef was absent (because he could, after all he is an owner).
He spoke about the way the kitchen was run today from a labour perspective and then started bitching about labour last week. At first I tried to disengage myself from the conversation as it certainly was not one to be had without Chef. So I put down my food (my appetite now suitably ruined) and tried to speak with him about his concerns as he would not let go. He then proceeded to ask me a question and upon hearing my answer, in as much, called me a liar. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Now we have stepped outside the realm of professional conversation and lodged a personal attack. When I tried to assuage his concerns he proceeded to start flaring at me and refused to listen to what I had to say. In fact it would not have mattered whether it was Chef or I, the response would have been the same.
He then proceeded to diminish not just my character but also my professionalism. At this point I ended the conversation as I had any number of choice words to express my absolute DISGUST with his lack of professionalism and his personal attacks on me. To be perfectly frank I do not need to be called a liar by anyone OR have my professionalism attacked.
I spent most of this year studying under two great Canadian Chefs. One who was one of the youngest Executive Chefs in Canadian Chef History and the other who has worked with the likes of Heston Blumenthal. As I write this I am still seething and if the conversation was happening now would register my disgust in any number of choice ways. As it is, if my character and professionalism are in question, perhaps I should go back to the level that I started at instead of working for basically amounts to a steakhouse.
I am actively going to have conversations in the coming weeks with Chef and other Chefs and friends I have in the industry AS I AM CERTAIN that my character and my professionalism are in HIGH DEMAND and would be appreciated just about anywhere I walk through the door.
In an odd twist of fate I had to go to Reservation today to drop of some things for the Pastry Chef and another colleague. I happened to run into Director of Operations and we spoke briefly about the new job and what is going on. He asked about C and after I mentioned that I might go down to NYC for work to which he said; “You will have no problem finding work down there.”
I am reminded of a quote from Bob Marley; “The stone that the builder refuse is most often the stone he should use.” I AM SEETHING WITH ANGER but as I write am becoming more composed.
Voltaire once said; “Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well”
Mother Teresa once said; “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Week in Review (file under Pain, Burns and Great Success)
Henry David Thoreau once said; “Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.” I don’t think that he ever experienced a severe burn on his hand that made it virtually impossible for him to write. But thankfully, I have a great experience memory and can draw on it even a few days later.
This week was a rough week. There was lots of work to do and very long services. Lunch service each day went from approximately 11:30 am until around 3:30 pm which gave us little more than an hour to get ready for dinner service. We were exceptionally busy this week what with all the people getting into the Christmas spirit.
As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes you find yourself operating on auto pilot, not necessarily thinking about what you are doing. Well again this week I managed to get a terrific burn on my right hand. It occurred when, on autopilot, I reached on top of the salamander and grabbed a pan. The salamander is kept at approximately five hundred degrees and metal pans stored no top of it as you can imagine get impossibly hot. Immediately my hand seared into the pan and while the normal reaction might be to drop it I brought the pan down to the fire and then jumped up and down in unparalleled agony. My hand immediately blistered and all I could think about was the half dozen or so orders that were on my station. I immediately put my hand under hot water for a second while one of my colleagues grabbed the burn spray. Once it was sprayed on I grabbed a glove and put it on to which Chef advised me that it would make the pain worse. I looked at him and said that may be so but I still have orders to get out. This of course is the sanitized version of events as there was quite a bit of cursing for about a minute or so. Plus I started beating myself up right away for not having a rag in my hand and what’s worse thinking that I did.
I got the orders out. Which for me was painful but all part of the job. My response to the pain was to work through it and make sure that my patrons got the same food that they would have if I had not burned my hand. Once service was over I placed my hand in an ice bath to numb it from the pain so that I could continue to work. I was both proud and ashamed at myself. But I did get the job done.
I also worked the front line alone on Friday. It felt really good to be able to do this. It enabled me to work two stations and get food out in a timely manner. It caused me to work on my timing and speed as well as order completion.
I felt good about the week and what I accomplished. I have some homework this week as Chef is doing a retooling of the menu. He’s asked me to come up with some dishes for review along the idea of what I would eventually like to cook. Gladly I responded and have spent quite a bit of time considering it.
Maxwell Maltz once said; “When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mechanism" within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or "willpower”
Dale Carnegie once said; “Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”
How true are those?
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
This week was a rough week. There was lots of work to do and very long services. Lunch service each day went from approximately 11:30 am until around 3:30 pm which gave us little more than an hour to get ready for dinner service. We were exceptionally busy this week what with all the people getting into the Christmas spirit.
As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes you find yourself operating on auto pilot, not necessarily thinking about what you are doing. Well again this week I managed to get a terrific burn on my right hand. It occurred when, on autopilot, I reached on top of the salamander and grabbed a pan. The salamander is kept at approximately five hundred degrees and metal pans stored no top of it as you can imagine get impossibly hot. Immediately my hand seared into the pan and while the normal reaction might be to drop it I brought the pan down to the fire and then jumped up and down in unparalleled agony. My hand immediately blistered and all I could think about was the half dozen or so orders that were on my station. I immediately put my hand under hot water for a second while one of my colleagues grabbed the burn spray. Once it was sprayed on I grabbed a glove and put it on to which Chef advised me that it would make the pain worse. I looked at him and said that may be so but I still have orders to get out. This of course is the sanitized version of events as there was quite a bit of cursing for about a minute or so. Plus I started beating myself up right away for not having a rag in my hand and what’s worse thinking that I did.
I got the orders out. Which for me was painful but all part of the job. My response to the pain was to work through it and make sure that my patrons got the same food that they would have if I had not burned my hand. Once service was over I placed my hand in an ice bath to numb it from the pain so that I could continue to work. I was both proud and ashamed at myself. But I did get the job done.
I also worked the front line alone on Friday. It felt really good to be able to do this. It enabled me to work two stations and get food out in a timely manner. It caused me to work on my timing and speed as well as order completion.
I felt good about the week and what I accomplished. I have some homework this week as Chef is doing a retooling of the menu. He’s asked me to come up with some dishes for review along the idea of what I would eventually like to cook. Gladly I responded and have spent quite a bit of time considering it.
Maxwell Maltz once said; “When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mechanism" within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or "willpower”
Dale Carnegie once said; “Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”
How true are those?
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
Genetically Modified Foods (file under Do you know what your children are eating?)
This is a follow up post now that I have a little bit of time to expound on the post that related to this last week. You can read it at http://newbieintheweeds.blogspot.com/2008/12/times-file-under-they-are-changin.html .
There is no doubt that the last generation has seen a technological leap no less significant than the steam age, the industrial revolution or the post war period. This leap has been the result of our primary civilization drive to make the world a better place. If you believe this last statement I think that you should check your head or let me sell you a beautiful plot of land on the moon.
The leap that has occurred since world war two is the result of the spoils of war. Our medical advance is largely due to the inhumane practices of German and Japanese scientists that suffered no punishment for their crimes against humanity and were instead treated as intellectual heroes, taken from their homelands and given free reign and freedom in America (a little known fact to the general public) as long as they continued their research on behalf of America. This may seem like a far fetched statement but if you study history you will see that it is in fact accurate.
From the initial push on this advance the next primary driver or catalyst has been profit. Slowly we have watched as politicians, the supposed leaders of our countries have become less the man than the companies that “sponsor” them. These companies act with impunity as long as shareholder value is maintained or increased, as is the bottom line. This may have seemed like a good thing in the eighties or even the nineties, but now can anyone argue that the impunity that they operate with is in fact damaging the world in which we live? The Mantra of Gordon Gecko from Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” that; “Greed is good,” may have been true at one point for shareholders and stakeholders but what about the public at large. Look at the current situation in the world markets, it is the result of unchecked greed. Men and women that knew in the absence of regulation they could get away with things that robbed Main Street, you and I, of everything that we have worked hard for. In light of the current loss of seven trillion (7,000,000,000,000) dollars from the American economic engine and the complete collapse of the “free hand” of the market by ludicrous bailouts I’m left with a horrible taste in my mouth which relates to the impunity with which these organizations are destroying the fabric of our societies. This all relates to what I am about to write about in the following paragraphs.
Profit for any company is the end all and be all. It is THE driving force behind innovation, creativity and productivity. If there is an adverse affect on the bottom line you can watch as companies start downsizing and shutting down operations. How does all this relate to food you may be asking. I will illustrate the point now.
Choice. In our market system we are fooled into believing that we have choice. Choice between Coke and Pepsi. GM and Ford. American Airlines and Southwest. But are these real choices or two pigs dressed differently feeding at the trough of both our hard earned dollars and our taxes to boot to add insult to injury. This same belief n choice has lead to massive mergers and acquisitions that have created supranational businesses (again operating with virtual impunity) that are making decisions each day under the supposed guise of profit guidance but which are in fact hurting humanity.
Thomas Pawlick in his book; “The End of Food,” which again I strongly urge you to read, as a starting point, illustrates this point quite clearly. These Leviathans of industry are slowly but surely eating away at the health of citizens, under the supposed watchful eye of government, and are getting away with it.
Geneticists, since approximately 1994, have been invading our food supply for the sake of profit. Companies such as Calgene, Monsanto, Bechtel and the like have created a system by which family farmers are slowly wiped out by industrial farms with which they can not compete. Even more importantly is the fact that nature has a way of dealing with certain problems effectively, while, the seeds and industrial production of food is now threatening the very balance of that system in the name of profit. Pawlick points out that the Tomatoes we eat are not the tomatoes that our parents eat. The North American tomato varieties used to number somewhere around 5500. The tomatoes that we currently buy in the market are predominantly of two varieties. One from California and one from Florida. Both genetically modified to attempt to ensure that size, colour, firmness are uniform. However, what they haven’t told you is that through this genetic modification we are receiving tomatoes that are far less healthy than the tomatoes that our parents ate. In fact, the nutritious elements of tomatoes since the end of world war two have been slowly attacked and replaced with, get this, lipids (fats) and sugar. Now correct me if I am wrong but nature gave us the tomato, do we really need man to perfect it. To corporations the answer is yes. They want to ensure that the crop, year after year, produces the same tomato so that then end consumer can get something that resembles a tomato but in fact is more like a red ball that man has created to look good in a supermarket.
Tomatoes are not the only food that is affected. It is just a good example because I am sure that all of you reading this can go to your fridge right now and find that you have either that tomato from California or Florida. The result is the death of the farming family. And that is a tragedy. Some of the other food stuffs that nature provided that man has tinkered with now include, Cotton, Soybeans, Corn, Potatoes, Canola, Sugar Cane, Sugar Beets and Rice. This list is not exhaustive either. And for what reason is man tinkering with natures already perfect bounty; Reasons include; to make them resistant to herbicides and pesticides and pests, viruses, to abate degradation (predominantly due to the practice of picking unripened fruit for shipping long distances) and in some cases to improve the nutritional aspects of foods (but these are few and far between Rice being the best example).
What the companies that sell these seeds do not want the public to know is that these genetic modifications require a greater number of inputs to sustain the crops. Herbicides, pesticides, inorganic fertilizers and the like which end up costing more money than the crop is worth UNLESS it is on an industrial scale of production.
To me there are even more problems with genetically modified foods. First off, who owns the seed controls the crop. Thus, a company such as Monsanto can selectively cultivate crops anywhere it wants in the world without regard to what nature wants. But it does so at the expense of the farmer who can not take seed from a genetically modified piece of produce and use it to plant next years crop as has always been the case throughout history. Moreover, in the name of profit, the ancient and proven practices of soil protection of planting one crop one year and another the next has fallen to the wayside. The result will surely be a degradation of the soil to the point that the affect will be scorched earth. Top soil that is so beaten by the herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers that it is no longer useable. Does this sound like good food policy? Or is it good profit policy?
These companies now go into developing countries and have them create massive industrial production farms of crops that were never meant to be there. And in so doing destroy the natural cycle of crop production which will have an adverse affect on ALL OF US no matter where we are on the planet.
These are but a few reasons that we need to pay attention to what corporations are doing in the name of profit with respect to food. We need to demand that our government do studies (not the companies who profit from it) into the long term affects of this current food production strategy.
Profit is also the reason that numerous fish species are in decline and are on the verge of destruction. The reason that diseases such as Mad Cow Disease enter the food chain. You may be asking yourself how does this happen. In the case of Mad Cow which is really called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) which you can read more about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy is the result of profiteers using discarded parts of the cow, grinding it up and putting it in feed for cows to make the cows fatter and larger thus more profitable at slaughter. Does anybody else see the problem with feeding herbivores themselves? This practice has supposedly abated but I’m sure that the profiteers have found a new way to disguise what they are doing. How long will it be before the government starts paying attention to what is done in the name of profit?
AND to make matters worse these are just a couple of examples for which there is evidence that PROFIT is at the core of the destruction of the human food supply system. We need to have a massive grassroots effort to return food to humans instead of faceless profiteers. We need farmers to start being people again and not machines. We need to bring back the experts, the farmers, not scientists in order to ensure the sustainable development of the food chain.
I don’t want to write so much here in terms of what needs to be done because I believe that once people start seeing what the truth is they will come up with their own solutions. Some that are out there right now include the Organic and Slow Food Movements. We have tried the fast food model and look at the result; Massive health implications including Coronary Disease and obesity which is affecting life on this planet for billions of people.
I will write more about this again but think that for now this represents a good starting point for discussion.
Professor Phillip James states; "The perception that everything is totally straightforward and safe is utterly naive. I don't think we fully understand the dimensions of what
we're getting into."
Doctor Geoffrey Clements states; "The genetic modification of food is intrinsically dangerous. It involves making irreversible changes in a random manner to a complex level of life about which little is known. It is inevitable that this hit-and-miss
approach will lead to disasters. It must disrupt the natural intelligence
of the plant or animal to which it is applied, and lead to health-damaging
side-effects."
I urge you to look into what companies for the sake of profit are doing to destroy your health,
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
There is no doubt that the last generation has seen a technological leap no less significant than the steam age, the industrial revolution or the post war period. This leap has been the result of our primary civilization drive to make the world a better place. If you believe this last statement I think that you should check your head or let me sell you a beautiful plot of land on the moon.
The leap that has occurred since world war two is the result of the spoils of war. Our medical advance is largely due to the inhumane practices of German and Japanese scientists that suffered no punishment for their crimes against humanity and were instead treated as intellectual heroes, taken from their homelands and given free reign and freedom in America (a little known fact to the general public) as long as they continued their research on behalf of America. This may seem like a far fetched statement but if you study history you will see that it is in fact accurate.
From the initial push on this advance the next primary driver or catalyst has been profit. Slowly we have watched as politicians, the supposed leaders of our countries have become less the man than the companies that “sponsor” them. These companies act with impunity as long as shareholder value is maintained or increased, as is the bottom line. This may have seemed like a good thing in the eighties or even the nineties, but now can anyone argue that the impunity that they operate with is in fact damaging the world in which we live? The Mantra of Gordon Gecko from Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” that; “Greed is good,” may have been true at one point for shareholders and stakeholders but what about the public at large. Look at the current situation in the world markets, it is the result of unchecked greed. Men and women that knew in the absence of regulation they could get away with things that robbed Main Street, you and I, of everything that we have worked hard for. In light of the current loss of seven trillion (7,000,000,000,000) dollars from the American economic engine and the complete collapse of the “free hand” of the market by ludicrous bailouts I’m left with a horrible taste in my mouth which relates to the impunity with which these organizations are destroying the fabric of our societies. This all relates to what I am about to write about in the following paragraphs.
Profit for any company is the end all and be all. It is THE driving force behind innovation, creativity and productivity. If there is an adverse affect on the bottom line you can watch as companies start downsizing and shutting down operations. How does all this relate to food you may be asking. I will illustrate the point now.
Choice. In our market system we are fooled into believing that we have choice. Choice between Coke and Pepsi. GM and Ford. American Airlines and Southwest. But are these real choices or two pigs dressed differently feeding at the trough of both our hard earned dollars and our taxes to boot to add insult to injury. This same belief n choice has lead to massive mergers and acquisitions that have created supranational businesses (again operating with virtual impunity) that are making decisions each day under the supposed guise of profit guidance but which are in fact hurting humanity.
Thomas Pawlick in his book; “The End of Food,” which again I strongly urge you to read, as a starting point, illustrates this point quite clearly. These Leviathans of industry are slowly but surely eating away at the health of citizens, under the supposed watchful eye of government, and are getting away with it.
Geneticists, since approximately 1994, have been invading our food supply for the sake of profit. Companies such as Calgene, Monsanto, Bechtel and the like have created a system by which family farmers are slowly wiped out by industrial farms with which they can not compete. Even more importantly is the fact that nature has a way of dealing with certain problems effectively, while, the seeds and industrial production of food is now threatening the very balance of that system in the name of profit. Pawlick points out that the Tomatoes we eat are not the tomatoes that our parents eat. The North American tomato varieties used to number somewhere around 5500. The tomatoes that we currently buy in the market are predominantly of two varieties. One from California and one from Florida. Both genetically modified to attempt to ensure that size, colour, firmness are uniform. However, what they haven’t told you is that through this genetic modification we are receiving tomatoes that are far less healthy than the tomatoes that our parents ate. In fact, the nutritious elements of tomatoes since the end of world war two have been slowly attacked and replaced with, get this, lipids (fats) and sugar. Now correct me if I am wrong but nature gave us the tomato, do we really need man to perfect it. To corporations the answer is yes. They want to ensure that the crop, year after year, produces the same tomato so that then end consumer can get something that resembles a tomato but in fact is more like a red ball that man has created to look good in a supermarket.
Tomatoes are not the only food that is affected. It is just a good example because I am sure that all of you reading this can go to your fridge right now and find that you have either that tomato from California or Florida. The result is the death of the farming family. And that is a tragedy. Some of the other food stuffs that nature provided that man has tinkered with now include, Cotton, Soybeans, Corn, Potatoes, Canola, Sugar Cane, Sugar Beets and Rice. This list is not exhaustive either. And for what reason is man tinkering with natures already perfect bounty; Reasons include; to make them resistant to herbicides and pesticides and pests, viruses, to abate degradation (predominantly due to the practice of picking unripened fruit for shipping long distances) and in some cases to improve the nutritional aspects of foods (but these are few and far between Rice being the best example).
What the companies that sell these seeds do not want the public to know is that these genetic modifications require a greater number of inputs to sustain the crops. Herbicides, pesticides, inorganic fertilizers and the like which end up costing more money than the crop is worth UNLESS it is on an industrial scale of production.
To me there are even more problems with genetically modified foods. First off, who owns the seed controls the crop. Thus, a company such as Monsanto can selectively cultivate crops anywhere it wants in the world without regard to what nature wants. But it does so at the expense of the farmer who can not take seed from a genetically modified piece of produce and use it to plant next years crop as has always been the case throughout history. Moreover, in the name of profit, the ancient and proven practices of soil protection of planting one crop one year and another the next has fallen to the wayside. The result will surely be a degradation of the soil to the point that the affect will be scorched earth. Top soil that is so beaten by the herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers that it is no longer useable. Does this sound like good food policy? Or is it good profit policy?
These companies now go into developing countries and have them create massive industrial production farms of crops that were never meant to be there. And in so doing destroy the natural cycle of crop production which will have an adverse affect on ALL OF US no matter where we are on the planet.
These are but a few reasons that we need to pay attention to what corporations are doing in the name of profit with respect to food. We need to demand that our government do studies (not the companies who profit from it) into the long term affects of this current food production strategy.
Profit is also the reason that numerous fish species are in decline and are on the verge of destruction. The reason that diseases such as Mad Cow Disease enter the food chain. You may be asking yourself how does this happen. In the case of Mad Cow which is really called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) which you can read more about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy is the result of profiteers using discarded parts of the cow, grinding it up and putting it in feed for cows to make the cows fatter and larger thus more profitable at slaughter. Does anybody else see the problem with feeding herbivores themselves? This practice has supposedly abated but I’m sure that the profiteers have found a new way to disguise what they are doing. How long will it be before the government starts paying attention to what is done in the name of profit?
AND to make matters worse these are just a couple of examples for which there is evidence that PROFIT is at the core of the destruction of the human food supply system. We need to have a massive grassroots effort to return food to humans instead of faceless profiteers. We need farmers to start being people again and not machines. We need to bring back the experts, the farmers, not scientists in order to ensure the sustainable development of the food chain.
I don’t want to write so much here in terms of what needs to be done because I believe that once people start seeing what the truth is they will come up with their own solutions. Some that are out there right now include the Organic and Slow Food Movements. We have tried the fast food model and look at the result; Massive health implications including Coronary Disease and obesity which is affecting life on this planet for billions of people.
I will write more about this again but think that for now this represents a good starting point for discussion.
Professor Phillip James states; "The perception that everything is totally straightforward and safe is utterly naive. I don't think we fully understand the dimensions of what
we're getting into."
Doctor Geoffrey Clements states; "The genetic modification of food is intrinsically dangerous. It involves making irreversible changes in a random manner to a complex level of life about which little is known. It is inevitable that this hit-and-miss
approach will lead to disasters. It must disrupt the natural intelligence
of the plant or animal to which it is applied, and lead to health-damaging
side-effects."
I urge you to look into what companies for the sake of profit are doing to destroy your health,
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
Chef O’ Claus (file under Merci Chef!)
I received two presents wrapped wonderfully from Chef this week. He looked at me as he handed them to me and said that I couldn’t open them until Christmas. He then relented and said that I could open the smaller one first. He wrote on the present; “For the intellectual Chef.”
I got around to opening it yesterday and was thrilled to see that it was “Food – A Culinary History.” Another encyclopedic volume to add to my growing culinary library. I’ve started reading it and from the introduction can tell you that I will have many a post to write about it.
Garrison Keller once said; “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” And I plan to.
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
I got around to opening it yesterday and was thrilled to see that it was “Food – A Culinary History.” Another encyclopedic volume to add to my growing culinary library. I’ve started reading it and from the introduction can tell you that I will have many a post to write about it.
Garrison Keller once said; “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” And I plan to.
Are you dreaming big and inspired?
A la prochaine
SDM
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