eggbeater

Chefs Who Open Restaurants. /A Metaphor {involving unapproved psychoanalysis}

There's someone in your family who has a problem. Gambling. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex.
It could be any or all of the above. Every family has a secret problem person. And sometimes they're not a secret.
You hate this person. And you love them. And sometimes you feel both things and they are so intertwined you don't even know you're in a forest among trees.
But their addiction maddens you. Frustrates, annoys, tortures.
You think,
"This aunt of mine is so smart. My brother has everything, what is he doing wasting it all? Why can't my mother get her act together? I hate that we have to move every time my father loses all his money from ______. I wish we weren't going to that cousin's house for Thanksgiving, I get so embarrassed when she gets wasted, she's too old to act like that!"

Addiction is a powerful force. Humans are its hosts, and it will stop at nothing to separate you from what and whom you love, as it kills you slowly.

Passion can feel like addiction. Passion, obsession, addiction; they are all closely related although slightly dissimilar.

Some passions can feel like obsessions or addictions because the drive that is within us to pursue our passions stays in our line of vision when red flags are popping up on all sides. Being a visionary, a dreamer, a doer, an entrepreneur, means forging on even when practicalities outweigh the validity of the mirage.

A friend once told me that people who open businesses have to be good business people, of course, to make it stand and walk and live; but moreover they have to have a larger dose of dreamer in them to get such an idea off the ground before wings are formed. A dreamer trusts in something else, some other, deeper part of themselves. A dreamer is a survivor in that she/he knows picking up a broken self and starting all over again might be in the cards.

One has to be prepared for loss when one dreams.
Turning dreams into matter could also be compared to having a child.

It never ceases to amaze me how women I know who have become pregnant, and had children, swear they will be the same person after childbirth. But there is always a transformation. And it seems so obvious after the fact, that they never mention it again. A major calamity, an act bringing on extreme grief, will create transformation as well, but since birth gives and grief takes away, the grieving person has little outward proof of their reason for change.

All these metaphors are related to chefs who open their own restaurants.

Back to addiction. It's possible that no one in your immediate life has had a struggle with addiction. Although I would find it implausible, especially if you grew up in urban America, as I did. In my own family many people have lived with and through imperiling addictions. Joyous for me, many of those family members have found 12 Step programs and become sober.

But hoping beyond hope, praying every moment of the day for someone's sobriety is a tricky thing.

We think that if said person stops drinking, or buying white powder, or sneaking off with the rent check to basement card games, everything will be normal again. Groovy and just so and perfect and happy.

But what we don't know, right up until that very last drink or prostitute or wager or glassine envelope, is that said person is someone completely unknown to us. That said person without a substance is no person without a reason to live. And we, the other humans in the room, are not reason enough to bring said person back from the edge of the grave or sanity or wherever their self esteem found its last refuge. Person in question can not and will not give up their drug of choice just because we want them to.

The person in our life who can abstain, and therefore halt the deadliest physical side affects of addiction, and replace that black hole with something unrelated to the mortal world, is a stranger, until we take the time to meet them again.

This might seem like a very dark example for the subject at hand, but in my world everything is like a language that is connected by ideas, if not a visually familiar alphabet.

I have maintained in my posts about Opening A Restaurant here on Eggbeater, restaurants are like children, or babies, which non-traditional families make. Non-traditional in that there are usually far more people involved in opening a restaurant than there are needed to have sex and conceive a human child.

We have that spark, it makes us giddy and sleepless, happiness reaches critical mass and we are delirious with ideas and hopes and dreams, we pray there's someone whose feet are planted on the ground who likes math and understands percentages, sometimes we get cravings and/or morning sickness, and pretty soon we are truly sleepless because the restaurant is all mouths and stomach and #2 and there's never enough time or food or energy to satiate the helpless beast infant.

The baby metaphor is like the sober alcoholic family member. See?

Because the chef who is now the owner wanted more than anything to open a restaurant. That was their "Story." Their only story.

            I Am Chef. Must Open Restaurant. To Prove I Am Real Chef. Must Have Proof. Restaurant. Must Be Mine.

But didn't know that once restaurant was fed 24 hours a day and bathed and diapers were changed ad nauseum and tiny nails were clipped and doors were left open so that even the tiniest whisper of a cry could be answered immediately, the restaurant turns into someone something else.

    Restaurants are run by people, by many many many egos. Even if it is The Chef's Baby.

And something odd happens to the chef whose restaurant is turning into an opinionated child in front of them. The chef must mourn the loss of their dream. Or part of it, at least.

The same way you want your best friend to get sober but when she does she's not the same person anymore and if you want to stay in her life you have to give her a lot of rope, time, patience and empathy, and then you have to re-introduce yourselves. And you might even have to go to therapy or a 12 Step meeting, or 20, to understand your part. It's usually more than you bargained for when all you thought you wanted was for that person to give up the thing which seemed to be making them into a monster.

For better and for worse, and all that murky grey stuff in between, The Restaurant becomes someone you don't recognize and you have to go with the flow, or be left in the dust. And a Restaurant without a leader is a lost soul. Whether there's coup or a closure, restaurants require herding, a forceful, directed lasso and guidance, by someone, into helping them become whomever they are becoming.

Life is a wild and woolly ride. If life is a verb for you, that is. If your passions take hold and don't let go until dreams are conceived and born and let loose to run amok, and create terror and delicious food and and, and, and and and.

Perhaps those of us who know, only work as cogs in massive dream machines. Perhaps those who dream must be brought down to earth every once and while to have a drink with the pragmatists to sober up and see some leaves on some branches and maybe even a tree or two.

I know this. For every hope there is a process and the need for an application of hard internal, as well as the obvious, external work. If you are a chef owner who thinks there is no transformation, whether necessary or possible or inevitable, when leaping over the wall from cook to owner, you have a nest full of chicks in eggs who will hatch wing-less. In an argument about nature vs. nurture you must understand that the restaurant, who it will become with and without your care and presence, is not an either/or situation.

As is with the case of the person whom you love very much, who has just barely escaped a walking or actual death, a re-configuration of your hopes must be assessed and put in order.

For while there is time to stand back and be puzzled and frustrated, and become silent and incommunicative, and feel betrayed that Your Baby is not who you want or think it should be, you do not have all the time in the world, for it will become an anarchistic star, burning out on its own from lack of structure and acceptance. Like a Rock Star.

If you are the chef and the owner, it is your job, and no one else's, to take responsibility for your restaurant's success. And this takes rolling up your sleeves for hard internal work. For the cogs may be able to help you, and give you a portal from which to travel to the Ray Bradbury moon where you can watch your unconscious play leading role in Greek tragedy after Greek tragedy, but they cannot stop the momentum of your actions, or inactions, as they pertain to The Restaurant Baby you have given birth to. For the cogs will come and go, no matter how much they care in the moment.

And if you resist? If you resist transformation, or the knowledge of transformation, or change, or that X-ray vision or anything else that comes along with a life changing experience, I have only one question.

        How's that working out for you?

Dear Savoury Chefs, or {other} Pastry Chef Consultants.

    Hello.

    You don't me. I've never met you but we wear the same uniform in the kitchen. We have the same attitude. All four of our hands are scarred. You have oil burns and I have caramel scars. Neither one of us has seen real sunshine in 10 years. Both our paychecks suck., although there's a good chance that mine sucks worse than yours.   

    You probably don't like eating dessert, but I do. You think creme brulee and molten chocolate cake are fantastic, and maybe even tiramisu. I think blanching tripe is icky and I cringe at the thought of butchering live lobsters. You might have trouble following a recipe involving grams. I get off on order and cleanliness and you think I'm crazy.

    Sometimes we are similar, but more of the time we are quite different.

    You would like me to come and accent your salty food with a little something sweet.

    The problem is that I don't sleep in your kitchen if I'm consulting. Your house has a guest room and it's where I wash up, but I don't stay overnight. This means that, because you pay the mortgage and I just bring the odd green bean casserole and bundt cake, it is your job to taste everything I make all the time, because I am not there to serve it. This is where it's difficult.

    It is at this juncture that I release my children into your hands. We have to trust each other, we have to respect each other, and it would help if we each knew something about each others methods-- not super specifically like your secrets and palate, but if you don't know how to reach nappe and I don't know how to saute scallops to tender perfection, we are in a relationship headed towards disaster.

  those red flags are not waving you in.

    How do we create and sustain this tenuous relationship? How do I stand in front of the school and watch my children run to school where I am not with them, garnishing and paying close attention to their crumb and texture? How do you communicate with me when it appears as though we speak another language.

    Anthony Bourdain says in Kitchen Confidential pastry chefs are the neurologists of the kitchen.

    How do we navigate this rocky terrain for which there are no maps? Each consulting gig is it's own thing, no two alike. I'm like a traveling circus performer. Bend this way or that, apply make up for smile or frown, juggle eggs or  play with fruit, create fancifulness or down home heart warming goodnesses.

 

    Be who I can't be.   Be who I don't want to be.   Be making things I don't want to eat.

    It's all right, I can be your stuntman.

    I'm no line cook anymore. I like sugar and alchemy. I'm macho too, but in a different way.

     Another pastry chef recently contacted me. She wanted to know what consulting is like, how much does it pay and how do you let people know you exist. A different person wrote to me, a savoury chef-- she said that she didn't think she could consult-- to have someone else in charge of her food-- she could not imagine letting go of it in that way. Two months ago a close friend of mine said it seemed to him that I was really good about talking about my feelings, better than most.

    What do I say to all of this? Nothing is easy. I make it look easy? You're not inside my head, my heart. I am not my recipes. And if I give someone a folder of lists of ingredients, amounts and times & temperatures, they cannot be me. Who takes care of a pot de creme like me? Who watches those custards like they were newborn babies, who listens to their every breath like me? No one.

    I thought I could leave my heart at the doorjam if I was a consultant.

    Ha.

    At the end of this week I make a transition: I am done with one kitchen and I start to support another. In between I go where the bagels are real but the face features and lawns are not.

    It's all a process, yo. You want advice from me in this area? Sorry, I am taking a vacation from making it look easy. Now it's your turn.

    Whatever will be will be.

/The soundtrack & backdrop for this post was Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Gorgeous, if you have a chance. Inspiring in many ways.

Chef Owners Who Work The Line.

Did that get your attention? Can you remember the last time you saw a chef owner on their own line? Oh I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of restaurants everywhere where this is the case. But in my own 15 year career it's been rare.

I don't think it's where the chef should be all the time-- it neither makes sense for her to be on the line every night nor him to never be on the line, but it's a powerful sight to see the chef step on the line and blow everyone out of the water.

Let me tell you a story.

Many years ago I was the pastry sous chef at The French Laundry. That kitchen is insanely small. It's a little bigger now, and of course now it's part of an empire, but because the building is land marked there's not much else Thomas can do to expand what space exists. There are 3 lines and off to the side of pastry is where the cheese person stands.

The lines are like this: every station has a partner station. Fish & Amuse, Garde Manger/First Course & Meat, Cheese & Pastry. If you can count, this means that there are really only 6 people who can say they've cooked at The French Laundry. Everyone else is support staff-- and there are about 40 of those.

The year I was there (you can cross reference my resume here), an amazing person and cook named Eric Ziebold was the chef de cuisine. He was TFL's first ever sous chef and to this day I have never seen any one person work so many hours. (He, Thomas & Laura all put in 17-19 hour days, 7 days a week.) Everyone knows The French Laundry is an amazing restaurant, but few know why. It's easy to blame or praise one person, but the truth is that it takes a village.

Eric has a very interesting temperament. Read between the lines and you will see what I mean. His famous line was, "I'm an equal opportunity asshole." Or he would sidle up next to you real close and say, quietly, "Oh, is that how you do _______? Here at The French Laundry we do it like this," and then he'd gracefully move you aside and show you. It was with Eric's constant feedback that I learned how to and how not to manage. He reminded me that I had to do what felt right for me-- what was going to let me sleep at night?

        do I sound like I was in love?

One day Eric did something amazing. He was frustrated at how things were going on the hot lines. Eric was not a screamer, but he could be direct in a way that made you stop dead in your under-the-breath mumblings, shape the fuck up, focus and do it right. Thomas's approach was more like Chinese water torture-- he would repeat the same sentence over and over until he had what he wanted in front of him. Something like this:

"I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. I need an agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti. Agnolotti."

You get the point.

So this night Eric was watching the line. At the time the kitchen was trying on a new expediting model that they later employed full time when there were more sous chefs: Thomas stood at the pass and Eric helped anyone on the line who was crashing hard or getting overwhelmed.

But Eric was pacing. Trying to understand why service was going so poorly. You have to understand this: there was no "talking" at TFL. It was a "call & response" kitchen. (Yes, much like the military.) Few sentences were uttered by anyone other than Thomas, and his were quite succinct as I've pointed out. Any response from us underlings that was not, "Oui Chef, or Yes Chef" had to mean something. If anyone could be prepped for that kind of job from another career it might be the people who write newspaper headlines, or surgeons and ER professionals.

Finally Eric says something that makes us all look up from our minute, detail oriented tasks. "You heard me, get off the line, all of you, I'm going to show you how to cook."

In my first 6 weeks at The French Laundry I saw a number of people get fired. Oftentimes right in the middle of service. It would go something like this:

TK: "What? What did you say? Excuse me?

Bye. Yes, leave, you're done. Yes, bye."

And a few times I saw him walk up to the sorry cook and, is his 6 foot + many-inches-of-adamantness-you don't-want-to-fuck-with way really make sure the cook stopped cooking. he wasn't physically violent-- he didn't need to be, his look and words were enough.

So when Eric asked the line to step away from their stations they all thought they were getting fired. it was quite a sight.

"No." Eric said to calm them a bit, "Stand over here, I'm going to show you how to put out this table, I'm going to show you how to cook, how to work like a team, how to put out just one ticket."

And then he did. He cooked every single course, by himself, with not another soul on the line touching sauce pots or spatulas or garnishes. He jumped this way and that, gracefully, using every part of his body, talking, admonishing, telling, teaching, showing, explaining as he went.

It was the most amazing thing I ever saw in a kitchen.

Eric took over the entire kitchen and cooked all those cooks under the fucking table. We were in awe and I have tears in my eyes and can't type fast enough to tell you this story now, more than 10 years later.

When the line resumed their positions, every single cook knew just who they were. Cooks.

You know why Eric was the very first sous chef of TFL? Because Thomas told all his line cooks the same thing on the same day. Line cooks who had been with him for years and others who had only just arrived.

"I am going to promote one person to sous. It's going to be the person who is already acting like the sous chef."

When Thomas made the announcement, half of his line walked out.

My industry will tell you life is black and white. It will whisper you dark nothings in the middle of the night. People have these words tattooed on their bodies. Everyone has scars that show and we all have scars that are invisible. 'This? This mark is from when I shaved off my pinkie on the mandolin but had to keep working because someone else had called in sick that day.'

But there's a lot of gray area too. Too much, if you ask me. These days I'm starting to think people should take a test before they open a restaurant.

It will be like a triathlon: you must work the line, well, if not stellar. You must understand and be able to explain one P&L statement. You must understand why raw fish and cooked meat cannot share the same bin in the walk-in. You must understand how to make cookies, one dessert with chocolate that's not a molten chocolate cake and it would be great if you knew the difference between panna cotta and creme brulee. The test would list a series of questions and you would be graded on how much responsibility you took for your own actions or the actions of those you hired. For bonus points you might have to research why all the restaurants in your location before yours failed, or cooking in and creating a menu for a kitchen with no Latinos (or your State/ Country picks for easy-to-exploit-able peoples.)

You get the drift. You? You're smart, right-- you understand that opening a restaurant means hours upon hours, days upon days, and years toppled on years ahead of you where these things will not be possible:

sleeping late, resting without a care in the world, taking on-the-fly vacations, turning off your cell phone, remaining oblivious to state, local and Federal labor laws, continuing to be absent or uncommunicative to your staff and diners, resting on your laurels or continuing to blame everyone else for your failures and weaknesses.

Opening A Restaurant is like stepping into an X-Ray machine. Are you ready? Wearing the right underwear? Did you floss the night before? Go on, buy those Altoids-- they'll fool a few people into thinking you haven't been drinking that morning.

I'm all fired up. Because it's been a long time since I worked with a chef who knew how to cook. On the line, where a chef has to spend some time, even if they don't for 45 years like our heroes.

I'm trying to get to the bottom of something: there are these "chefs" who say they're chefs because that word, that little innocuous word, means something to them that it doesn't mean to me.

Being a chef is hard work. Opening a restaurant is harder. If it's fame you're after there are easier professions to get there. Or just pull a few stunts: America loves people who are brave enough to do stupid shit.

My questions are these:

If you don't LOVE food, like head-over-heels-I-can't-see-that-you're-an-axe-murderer-love, why are you cooking? Wouldn't you rather have a 40 hour week with benefits and work in a bank?

If you don't want to taste and smell and eat and learn about every fruit and chocolate and nut and fat, then why are you pursuing a pastry career path?

If you don't want to cook and clean and solve problems and figure out new, more efficient ways of doing things and feed people you've never met and learn from everyone you've hired and challenge yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially:

Do Not Open A Restaurant.

    /There are no shotgun restaurant openings. Restaurants don't break condoms and there are no rabbit tests for persons knocked up with a restaurant.

    Restaurants aren't opened in black outs and you can never ever use the excuse, "I didn't know what I was doing, I was drunk when I opened that restaurant."/

I'll leave you with this crazy thought: What if there were less restaurants in San Francisco & the Bay Area? What if these fewer restaurants hired all the cooks and exchanged them when someone wanted to learn something else, something new? What if less of these restaurants were cookie cut-outs of other long time Bay Area restaurants, and we had more kinds of cuisines and techniques employed and that way diners would be happier and so would so many of the local cooks who are leaving for other, more competitive cities because so many of the kitchens here do exactly the same formula, even if it's great? What if all these restaurants could thrive because there was just a little less competition? The cream rises to the top, right?

We already know these things:

There aren't enough people to fill non executive chef positions in the Bay Area. There are less than 1 million people on a peninsula that has, more than once, felt and seen the effects of a devastating economic downturn. Culinary schools are, for the most part, lying to their check-signers and future graduates about what kind of job and at what pay rate they will see after spending their 40+ thousand dollars. New mandates have just been set in place in San Francisco which will, and have already begun to, have a negative effect on restaurant owner's already low (1-3%) year's pay out, net.

There are no workers because everyone wants to be the boss. Or they want to feel like the boss. Or be called the boss.

Not me, I don't want to wear a title I polish everyday, like an obsessive antique car refurbisher. I like my fitted jacket, yes, but I work in it. I don't own my own place because I know what goes along with it. I don't want to be a single parent.

Words mean nothing without elbow grease. Show me a chef who knows how to cook, how to lead, how to delegate, how to be humble and proud (not either/ or), how to keep a restaurant afloat financially, how to make delicious food, how to know when it's time to say, "Hey I need help, I need suggestions or I need this now!" and I will show you my loyalty. I will respect you and return the favor by not cutting corners, by keeping my workplace clean and organized, tasting my food and accepting criticism, costing out my plates, treating the equipment like it's not disposable, delegating, admitting when I'm at fault, and by being humble enough to say when I can't or don't understand how to do something.

-----

This post is dedicated to the chefs who inspired it: TH, ML, TK, EZ, SB, MLH, JC, GS, JB, DK, PC, CF, HH, all of whom I have had the honor to work with and for, and some of whom I continue to know. And DC, whom I have never met, but whose words brought me both to tears and many hand gesturing exclamation points recently.

the politics of blogging about the restaurant one works in.

I know some of you want to know the 411 on The Place.

The thing is this: I'm sure you'll know eventually, the Bay Area is a small town, but I'm worried since my last relationship created some fairly mean comments about me and that restaurant (to me directly and on Eater SF) because the departure was so sudden and murky (remember that the only 3 people who know the facts are those who sat in that room that day, and I'm one of them.) While I agree everyone has a right to their opinions about me, my desserts, who I am professionally, both pro and con or indifferent, I don't want people to hate or love this new place based solely on me and my concoctions being there. I am not this place; not a parent or even a live-in nanny, just a baby sitter. I am not waking up at 2 and four am to feed this restaurant baby, no.

It's not like last time.
/Here, I am just a consultant.

[Also I have this nagging question. Should a restaurant who hires a consultant be allowed to use said person's name even if that consultant isn't there day and night like the rest of the crew? I asked this question directly to another pastry chef consultant recently and she said she left it up to the client.]

    What do you think? Is it false advertising? How much does it matter if I say the name of my new gig(s) on eggbeater? Can you be OK with the fact that I am a roving pastry chef or does my identity have to be defined by the One name above my name on my white jacket?

For the record: I never told anyone not to continue to frequent my last place of employment. I never lied about any of the details concerning my departure. I stated a fact, a fact that was told to me on the last day I baked in that kitchen.

I never said I loved all my desserts equally and I never said I, or my plates, was the greatest anything. I never talked smack about those I worked with and for at my last job. I didn't play the blame game and say it was all about them and I was innocent.

Eggbeater is written by me, Shuna, so of course I can only  bring you my side. I can only tell you what I heard, show you what I saw, explain what I knew and now know. Tell you how I feel. All relationships, and divorces, are complicated affairs. Sure I'm angry, confused, saddened, feel betrayed-- I'm not a rock without a heart. I poured all of me into that place for 6 months, and I was willing to see it make at least a one year anniversary. Breakups are hard but I'm neither a pile of tears in a dark room, nor am I lobotomized Klonopin-infused pollyanna with not an ounce of resentment in my almost 40 year old body. I'm hurt, I'm angry, and yes, I'll get through it and then one day I'll be "over it" and have a lot more perspective and be grateful they cut me when they did. (ps bloggers & chefs are human too.)

I use eggbeater to process, to figure out, to make sense on the seemingly nonsensical. I know this scares a lot of people-- my own rawness, my ability to write about this industry with passionate love, despondent sadness, critical thinking and hyper happiness. I bring you a voice from the inside and it's not always pretty or easily digestible. You can continue to hate me because you don't think my desserts are anything to speak of let alone blog about. You can hate me because I'm too loud, too sensitive, too strong, too in-your-face, too conceited, too passionate, too humble, too mean, too emotional, too whiny, too skinny, too militant, too ______________ fill in the blank. You can also choose to refrain from reading eggbeater.

I'm attempting to write my industry down. It's not stagnant, it's not still, it's not one thing. It's big, complicated and amazing. If I don't write it down, sketch it as it moves across the page, you might believe TV and there might be a continued trend to ignore the whos making our food we're supposedly so concerned about.

It's complicated, I realize this. And with complexity comes fear and misunderstanding and tears and annoyances both small and grand. In every story, characters, and every character has a version.

So, again, my question to you is this:

How much does it matter if I say the name of my new gig(s) on eggbeater? What are, in your opinion, the pros and cons of such a declaration?

As you can see, I am moderating comments these days. Feel free to comment anonymously. I will accept all opinions, all ideas, all possibilities except those meant to attack, or imply attack--- me or anyone else.

For some comparison:

A few other professional cook written blogs-- some of which choose to be anonymous about themselves, their places of employment, their names and locations, some have no "restaurant home" at all,  some tell us everything, some who only let you pull the curtain aside with one hand ~

the noisy kitchen line cook. In Praise of Sardines David Lebovitz Offal Good Ideas in Food L.2O Blog Knife's Edge Studio Kitchen  Tasting Menu-- Dana Chadzilla Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour

It's Time To Open Another Restaurant. Or: What Consulting Means.

Every few minutes a restaurant is born. Or at least thought about being born. Actually I have no idea how many restaurants are born in any given hour on earth, but it's safe to safe to say that no one opened a restaurant by accident. There are no shotgun restaurant openings. Restaurants don't break condoms and there are no rabbit tests for persons knocked up with a restaurant.

Restaurants aren't opened in black outs and you can never ever use the excuse, "I didn't know what I was doing, I was drunk when I opened that restaurant."

As a friend of mine would say, "You have to mean it."

And yet when will restaurants stop? They proliferate like salmon. When will too many be enough? When will an average city block, mall, a suburban strip-mall, be too heavy laden with joints and shops and dives and white-tablecloths and chains and drive-thrus and marts and bars and buffets and shacks and counters and everything underground and above-ground and high in the clouds and deep in the snow? I mean really. Come on now.

But a restaurant is a dream for so many people. They want to make a baby restaurant and watch the people shape it. They want to serve their food to the masses. If it takes a village for a child, it takes a population for a restaurant. My last chef used to say over and over that there were only 750,000 people in San Francisco. And look how many restaurant babies go to heaven before they're walking there! Too many to count, too many to mourn.

That said, I have begun a new project.

Don't fall off your chair. It's neither my new love nor a rebound relationship. (I've never been good at rebounds. My heart's too big, it weighs down both sleeves. I remain deeply in love with people for ages after they've evaporated.)

This time I am keeping some distance. I am not co-parenting. I am not moving in. I am not donating sperm, or an egg. I am not giving a kidney or blood.

This time I am a consultant.

What on earth does that mean?

Consulting is like a drug dealer saying they're in the import business. Or an Ivy League graduate saying they went to a small school in Massachusetts. It's vague. Open-ended.

Consulting is more like being a traveling call girl, or an IT person who makes house calls. I bring my skills, a bag of tricks, some fantastic advice, a box of tissues, a short flogger or a cane-- depending, my get-down-to-work hat, and, as is the case with me particularly, some good grid paper and waterproof pens.

In my bag of tricks are:

    a number of kinds of menus, innumerable dessert ideas,
            recipes that work, seasonal knowledge,                                                         price-point understanding, a special calculator that figures out dessert sales percentages,

            an invisible tool for measuring fear/ acceptance/ bewilderment/ delight etc. from various sorts of owners, an extra pair of underwear, references, all-natural drugs that make me

malleable,                                             a proven track record-- folded into something that takes up no room in a wallet,
                                a big pocket of gold tinted self-worth, a lot of phone numbers in my not-so-little-black-book, some very strong tea,

    more than enough smiles and "don't worries," "it'll be alrights," "of course I can do thats," and just to be safe, a handful of "fuck yeahs!"

                                                at the bottom of my bag like loose change, plenty of water, little blue pills that allow me to eat air and become satiated, and that's just the carry on.

Being a consultant means being anything and everything, or nothing, for the client.

Of course there's work I won't do. (In fact I have a genetic ailment that keeps me from doing jobs I hate/ don't believe in/ disrespect/ or just plain think are un-delicious.) But for the most part if I can be baking, making elegant plates, and feeding a few unsuspecting people something other than molten chocolate cakes, artificially flavored butterscotch puddings, mediocre creme brulee and stale cookie plates, I'm happy. Keep Them On Their Toes, that's what I say!

Consulting is an amazing challenge because every house is different, in scale and breadth and just plain equipment vs. seats vs. square footage! It's a way to create lovely desserts for people who may not have the time or the skill to make them themselves. It's an involved process that includes training, teaching, listening. Applying the golden rule, "An Ability To Go With The Flow," is of utmost importance.

Until people walk through the door, sit down, read the menu, order, eat, drink and pay up, none of us have any idea who that restaurant child will grow up to be. We put out a lot of fires, rearrange our arrangements, make decisions and then cross them out, every day a thousand times and then some.

Opening a restaurant is a ferociously exciting process.

And it's another notch in the belt of kitchenlife. heh.

/back into the frying pan

wait. didn't I just do this? will someone pinch me?
yesterday I spent all day on the phone with purveyors, salesmen. placed orders, shopped, schemed, made lists, brainstormed, organized new product in brand new spaces, walked the neighborhood to get a feel for the place, and made one very strange trip to Jetro. have you ever been here? all I can say is this:

go here if you need to understand why we're doomed.

heh.

you might think Kmart is big. or maybe that's small next to Home Depot. still think I'm batting in a cage? think Costco times 10. the not-quite-as-good-looking Ikea of foodstuffs.
Jetro is the god of big.

Jetro makes Big Box look like a cheap forgotten gift under the tree.
my life is now complete.

you need a card to get in. you pass it over a scanner and then a voice from somewhere mechanically welcomes you. you can pick up a cart that's as big as my hatchback car to push around the "store." you will pass people along the way buying enough cases to line a tennis court. you must buy in case. you must buy no less than 25# of sugar. modern muzak echoes through, metallic as it bounces off one trillion tons of cardboard.

it's so inexpensive you wish you owned a storage facility so you could buy as much sweetened condensed milk as you wanted. you wish you're swimming pool could be filled with all those chocolate chips. how come no one told you about this place when you were addicted to Cheerios. life made simpler.

Jetro is the antichrist of the local, seasonal, organic, sustainable movement. don't go here if you have a heart condition. go here to do research. to understand how people who you think you don't know live. but of course you do.

I left empty handed and I thought someone might arrest me.

today I'm baking, sorting, signing invoices, and finding my rhythm in a new space. don't freak out, it's not a huge deal. I'm just happy to have my hand in the sugar bin again. delighted to reunite with rhubarb. will taste a number of yogurts. have my way with brown sugar and butter. mix up some cookie dough. test the ovens. zest some lemons. slice mandarinquats. candy citrus peel. scent the kitchen with warm ginger. organize containers. chop walnuts and poach dried fruit.

p.s. do you have a favorite brownie recipe you think I should take a look at? thanks!

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

something amazing happened today yesterday. something I was hoping for but could not have expected. something shattered and honesty broke forth. there are things I cannot talk about because they are not mine to tell. but for myself I will say thank you.

thank you to my friends who know me better than anyone else. thank you to a force bigger than I that I can lean on when I falter, when I waver, when I have no more hope. no more hope to give or use to go on. I want to be part of the solution. I want to inspire. I want to believe in possibility, in endless skies. I want to lead and mentor, learn and grow and to be humble. I want to believe.

thank you azo for knowing me. for knowing when my dark days come and for reminding me of my patterns. sometimes only a friend can give you perspective. it takes love to make courage. if honesty is filled with love, love no matter what, I can hear it.

*
in my field there are voices. they tell us we cannot get off the train. they say that if we are not behind a stove every minute of every day we don't deserve to wear the uniform.

but sometimes life gets in the way of those voices. I will never forget the matter of fact voice I used years ago when I called my kitchen to say I was not going to be at work that day, and maybe the next day, because I was in the hospital. plain, factual, emotionless. finally I could not be at work and I had no control over it. release. let go.

this business takes heart. if you're whole heart's not in it it's not worth it. and there are no cowboys on islands. for every success there is a team, not a person. I am not whole unless you can see all those who came before me. if you can't see every cook, every chef, every pastry chef I've ever worked for, worked with. I am a compilation. I have no recipe.

*

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

*

I belong to an organization with millions of members. we are a faith and hope lending machine. we have a lot of sayings.

   you can start your day over at any hour

is one of them. it sounds trite, I know. but believe me when I say these sayings have saved my life. I was not meant to reach the age of thirty, let alone forty. not at the rate I was going. so every day is something.

    sometimes god does for you what you cannot do for yourself

sometimes a window opens and there is light, if even for an instant. some days there is joy, and some days there is contentment. my joy is hard won. survival. struggle. I had the hustle. streetwise.

it takes heart. it takes humility to admit you haven't been who you suppose to be. it takes humility to admit. it takes heart to admit. it takes heart.

and then there's an opening. we can start over, you and I. I reach out and if you reach back there's possibility.

*

hope struggles out of the box. poor poor pandora.

*

what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? can you admit failure and make a promise for better? can you admit failure and know you yourself are not a failure? who will take advantage of vulnerability? who will be more honest in the process? who is willing to admit humanness?
sometimes bravery is quiet.

what are you afraid of?

my heart never ceases to amaze me. I can't promise forgiveness but I can promise that I'll try. I will borrow your faith if you've some to spare. I will lean on your trunk when I am empty.

*

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

*

I steer away from defining myself complete. I am a work in progress. I have more questions than answers. I am not a recipe. and I need to remember that neither do you. more can change with compassion and empathy than attack. if I give up on you then nothing will ever change. and if I don't learn this lesson with you I'll meet another you again soon, I promise you this. what are your patterns?

*

I want to thank my team. for allowing honesty and tears and opening up. sometimes bravery is quiet. for allowing the possibility that we can start our day over at any hour. and to my friends-- ceaseless gratitude, love, admiration and a promise to venture forth with you no matter how difficult our life paths become. I know that I am naive to think that communication can solve everything, but there it is. a delicate flower. a hopeless romantic. an optimist in a cynic's body.

for side hugs and humility, I thank you. for engaging in the dance, even when the future is uncertain. love is not insurance. passion is haphazard. faith is a dedicated practice. humility is not humiliation.

thank you for standing side by side on the firing line naked. here's to riding the roller coaster. thank you for strapping me in and holding my hand.

*

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

*

and if you think you know who you are this will confuse you. because there is no recipe for this ride. there is only your heart. how much can you love?

sometimes bravery is quiet.

Sens Dessert Menu, January 2008

There's no end of fun in our pastry kitchen. In between all the prep for the menu, services and private parties, we test and plot and conjure and eat and change, and new desserts are created. Poof! they come together and it's a new dessert, born. There are no recipes for plated desserts. Plated desserts are built, they are formed and re formed, constructed and de-constructed, and there are endless variations on anything you can imagine to eat, in every form and temperature possible.

Just as the seasons change so do all the raw ingredients we use. Dairy thickens and thins depending on rainfall and temperature, flour absorbs more moisture today and tomorrow all the bread is sticky, caramel heats quickly one day and next week you're waiting all day for the mercury to rise.

When I wrote down my menu for you last I had just changed all their names to reflect edibles and had eliminated poetic titles. Did it help sales? It's hard to tell because so much changed in the restaurant as a whole. Three newspaper reviews came in, the holidays came and went and Michael made a number of changes to his menu.

Selling desserts is up to me in part, but really it has a lot to do with how much the waiters are into it. I let them taste all the menu items and talk extensively about what makes them special. I provide an open door for questions and ingredient smelling and tasting. Anyone can taste any component at any time so long as we're not smack dab in the middle of service. But even then, if it's the difference between a customer going away happy or sad, just about any accommodation can be made.

            Pastry is the Pleasure Business.

Currently we are participating in San Francisco's Dine About Town. The interesting thing about serving a prix fixe menu is that all people automatically get dessert. It's difficult to judge dessert sales when everyone gets something, whether they would have ordered it or not. Of course it's wonderful because some people who would not normally order a sweet can try something of mine and maybe I've made a new fan. Pastry chefs who have only ever worked in restaurants with prix fixe menus get quite a shock when they go to work in houses with a la carte menus because dessert sales percentages can fall dramatically, and lead to their joblessness. A pastry chef must always be on one's toes, paying attention to and tracking everything, to insure their sales are worth their salary.

But that's another story, one that's fairly boring and confusing if you don't make a living by wearing a white jacket every day.

I am soon to make a major change in my dessert menu at Sens. I will take off an item which has been there since our very first day. I love it like a friend but it's time. To me this dessert is 100% Sens because I created it solely for us and was inspired purely by the regions we focus in on at the restaurant: Turkey, North Africa and Greece.

Honey-Cumin Pot de Creme

A ramekin of silky-smooth cumin infused pot de creme is garnished with vanilla sea salt, Marshall Farms honey and bee pollen. It sits next to a {sugarless} heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad tossed in California walnut oil and apple cider reduction. The little salad is inspired by charoset.

I guess it can no longer compete with the menu's varied and spectacular plates. And people are just plain afraid to order a dessert infused with cumin. Or our waiters are afraid to suggest one. Every time I talk about taking it off the menu my sous chef, bless her heart, asks me if I need a hug. I realize it sounds ridiculous and silly but I've grown fond of and very attached to this dessert.

There's another plate that will come off at the same time. Both have similar Autumn-like flavors and it's time for the menu to embrace Winter whole-heartedly.

Without further ado, my dessert menus as they are right now:

Lunch:

honey-cumin pot de crème
& heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad
8
rosemary caramel
slow roasted hazelnuts, supple semolina, rosemary-caramel ice cream & candied valencia orange
8
lemon essence
citrus soufflé, fennel shortbread, lemon sherbet & pine nut-date-anise-arbequina oil relish
9
frozen honey mousse
spicy gingerbread, candied citrus peel, balsamic caramel & pomegranate seeds
8
cool milk chocolate cream
chocolate-almond salad & sour cherry marmalade
9

Hot Cocoa with Honey-Marshmallow 4

-------> and for Dine About Town, at Lunch, there's

roasted pear & buckwheat clafouti with pear ice cream

Dinner:

honey-cumin pot de creme
& heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad
8
pistachio gift
vanilla phyllo wrapped pistachio frangipane
with mastic-rosewater ice cream
{ allow 20 minutes }
9
rosemary caramel
slow roasted hazelnuts, supple semolina, rosemary-caramel ice cream & candied valencia orange
8
cool milk chocolate cream
chocolate-almond salad & sour cherry marmalade
9
citrus!
mandarinquat marmalade, lebne cheesecake, moroccan almond “crust”
& mandarin supremes
8
warm chocolate
cocoa cake, sensuous chocolate, cardamon ice cream
& shuna’s famous dark chocolate sauce
9
lemon essence
citrus soufflé, fennel shortbread, lemon sherbet
& pine nut-date-anise-arbequina oil relish
9

Hot Cocoa with Honey-Marshmallow 4

Early Autumn 2007  & Early Winter 2007 dessert menus

See you soon?

Octopus Braise

The other day I caught one of my favorite preparations from the restaurant on film digitally: braising octopus. Michael is passionate about where these animals come from and he works hard to keep its preparation consistent. I love watching it start to finish and it's my favorite dish to order or suggest to friends who come in.

Octopus is easier to mess up than it is to make delicious and tender. I've worked with chefs who are good at both destroying and honoring this incredible creature. Some say it's outcome has to do with the size of the animal but I disagree as I've had both young and mature rubbery octopus. I think, as with all ingredients, animal or not, it has to do with understanding the molecular make-up of the ingredient's flesh, skeleton and its natural habitat. A collard green likes to be cooked longer than spinach because it grows in harsher conditions and its leaves are much thicker. Some citrus peels needs a lot of blanching before candying, while another needs none.

I have some conflict with eating octopus because I have always felt related to the sea and all the creatures who live in water. When it comes into the restaurant I try to send my thoughts its way. But I was excited to have my camera to photograph some of the process the other day, because these animals are so magnificent.

When I work with chefs who treat their menu ingredients with respect I can appreciate their food much more, and conversely, make desserts which follow their savoury thoughts that much better.

Working in a restaurant is building a relationship. It's hundreds of relationships and it's one, all at the same time. One of many is the relationship we all have with the myriad of ingredients and those people who get them to us from land and sea.

As I've begun to document, photographically and with words, the daily life of the kitchen I call home, I see there are layers and layers of life going on every second, every minute, every day, with every aspect and every person and every action. It is not possible for me to tell all of these stories, I am not omniscient. I am merely attempting to give you a glimpse, a peek from the inside and to the inside, with as much respect as possible.

For more photos of the octopuses and their braise preparation, check them out on flickr.

The San Francisco Chronicle Sens Restaurant Review

After many sleepless days, nights and weeks.
After tearing down one restaurant to build another.
After countless interviews
and recipes tested
and systems built
and training sessions taught.
After nail-biting and hair pulling and extreme highs and lows,

The {Crucial} Review is Here. <------- click on this link to get there.

In my own opinion, Mr. Michael Bauer has given us a fair and even review. I think he said well what our hurdles are and what we've accomplished thus far. I appreciate how much he concentrated on the food and Michael Dotson, our chef, in particular.

These days a restaurant review happens far sooner and more suddenly than it once did, pre-Internet days. As much power as various online community review sites have and hold currently, it is still that restaurant's regional newspaper which carries the most weight, especially in terms of a particular chef's career. Magazines pay attention to newspapers and newspapers pay attention to newspapers and trade magazines fill in the rest.

This was my very first time being personally reviewed by Mr. Bauer. I feel grateful for the experience and I hope it will do what restaurants rely on The Review to do-- put us on the map and bring the people forth. What we do with the people once they get to us is up to us, not the SF Chronicle, but the SF Chronicle lets the entire Bay Area know we're open for business.

We all exhale now and continue on doing what we do. For me personally it means testing new ideas and locking in a schedule that is fair and serves everyone, concerning tasks at hand and educational goals.

I look forward to every day bringing challenges that will help me and my team grow. The Review is great because it gives us an outside perspective, a report card if you will, and let's the staff know that all of our efforts really do come through; they are visible to others. Pushing ourselves to be better and learn more, and make the mistakes which will help us grow as cooks and co-workers and supervisors and people, does work towards the whole of a restaurant's goal.

Goals can be made real. Within us and as a team effort.

This business requires a lot of self-motivation. As a whole cooking professionally is devoid of a constant stream of external back patting sayings. We don't often say, "Gee whiz, you're going such a Great Job!" because it's what we expect. But every once and a while a critic: an outside voice, a voice for the public (which you are in the business to serve whether you think so or not), a non-whites-wearing mouth, is an important one to hear words from. You might not always agree with or understand why they said what they said about who and such, but still it's an important perspective's shoes to try and climb into, if even for another way of understanding how someone else might see you, might taste your food, might understand your vision.

In the restaurant business you get to know your local critic in a way the public does not and can not. We read in between the lines and chefs talk and we notice patterns and likes and dislikes. It's a mysterious and locked up business, the review. Top Secret until the envelope is torn open.

Me, I'm so glad to get it, to read it, to see it and now to link to it. I hope that no matter what you agree and disagree with in Mr. Bauer's words you'll let us have you taste for yourself.

See you soon?