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can i get all these at one job: more guidance, more responsibility, more learning & more money?

It takes a long time of working in kitchens to develop a knowing over-the-shoulder glance at what the wake of your boat means. Like reading tea leaves, one has to drink a lot of tea before one notices patterns at the bottom of their saucer.

How long should you stay with a chef, in a kitchen, for a company, in a city? These questions can only be answered by you, or your mentor.

As you move towards your various goals, you should be collecting people who know from whence you came, where you're at, and where you'd like to go. You should be part of someone's collection to. As we say, stick with the winners. Wherever I work, I notice people who should be noticed, and I add them to my basket. You never know who will be your next boss, or hire.

A woman wrote to me recently and asked:

"How do I go about finding the right chef and getting a position with them? Who do I contact about getting jobs in certain kitchens? Is it uncouth to contact chefs directly? How do I make my desire for knowledge known to certain individuals?

To which I answered:

• You should be trailing as much as you can. Not necessarily for a job, but for the experience. There are few chefs who will turn down a free worker for the day.
• Aim high. go through zagat and mark down every fine dining place. those houses have pastry chefs and teams. eat those people's desserts. every day you should be going out. if you can't afford dinner, call ahead and see if you can get desserts at the bar. THIS is your research. if you like what you eat, ask for the pastry chef's name and send your resume -- by SNAIL MAIL. say you ate their food and you want to work for them.
• be prepared to move cities. if what you want to be is a chocolatier get as much experience with america's best. do you know Sahagun / Elizabeth Montes in Portland, Oregon? her chocolate is amazing, but very different than the frenchies. if you're with your future spouse I can't imagine that person will die if you move elsewhere for a year for your education/career. of course I don't *know* your situation, but this industry can offer so much more if you're able to travel.
• Stage with Chef Migoya at Hudson Chocolates once a month if you can't get hired right away. THAT'S AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY and you would be a fool to pass it up. Seriously. Not only is he brilliant, but he KNOWS EVERYONE AND EVERYONE KNOWS HIM!
• send me your resume. I'll pass it on to some people I know.
• when you trail a place, talk to the other pastry assistants. get a read on the kitchen. are the dishwashers happy? is the kitchen clean? does the boh respect the foh? are people staying for a long time? when you're trailing a kitchen you should be PAYING VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to the WHOLE KITCHEN.
• do as much research on your future kitchen/chef/pastry chef as you can. {I can't tell you how many cooks are ridiculously lazy about this! now with google no one has any excuses not to look someone up.}
• stop working for people you don't admire.
• pick jobs where you are completely over your head. run to catch up. and eat as much as you can all over nyc - every borough! travel/explore/use this city.

Then she wrote to me again. She said she couldn't move cities. She said she really needed to start making some real money. She said she needed health insurance. She said she wanted to habve kids soon. She said she thought she was ready to be a pastry sous chef. She sent me her resume. I had already guessed where she was working. I was right.

In her words:

"I am at a point in my experience, and in my desire to go all in, over my head, where I am more than ready to take on the role of sous chef. Not only will it challenge me as I wish to be, it will (hopefully, most likely) also provide me with a salary commensurate with my skills, and add the bonus of medical insurance, possibly. I am no perfect chef, not by a long shot, nor do I know more than any number of pastry cooks out there, BUT, I have such a strong desire and will to lead, teach, give, and share what I do know. The core necessity here is money, but the inclination toward teaching and leadership is strong too."

My response:

On the subject of money and saving for your future:

• there are few jobs in this industry that pay well. even when you become chef/enter management, what you get paid, divided by the labor needed, comes out to little more than rent, transportation and the odd night out.
• take out a calculator and enter in a series of numbers and you'll see what I mean. ie: if you make $40k as a pastry sous that's $769 weekly gross. divide 769 by 60 hours = $12.82 an hour, gross, which is about $9 an hour after taxes... Increase the yearly by $10k and then divide it by 70, 80 and 90 hour weeks.
• if you want to make a lot of money, go to the hotels, or union houses like The Four Seasons.
• but know this: IT'S EXTREMELY HARD to go back to A. an independently owned/non-union wage house, and/or B. a non-management position, once you've gone after the title &/or the $.
• it's also hard to get "learning" positions after you've gone after jobs just for the title &/or the $.
• What I mean by all that: it's easier to learn the right way the first time around, than get your bad habits beaten out of you by someone who *does* know what they're doing. *think of it this way: if you were me/or someone else you respect, would you hire You at the place you're at, to be their sous chef?*
• Just because you're "already" in a position of teaching etc., does not necessarily mean you're ready for a promotion to management. ALL assistants and cooks should be teaching/showing/leading/practicing! I was an assistant to many many pastry chefs before I was promoted. 
• Once you take a sous position, the minimum commitment is two years. Are you ready to make that commitment to your chef & the house? if you are, you must think very carefully about whom you choose to give that promise to.
• Maybe you think you're ready to be a pastry sous chef because of who your chef is right now. You might not think so if you were working on a bigger team, in a more established house, with a badass pastry chef... Some things to consider.
• There are loads of chefs out there who aren't ready to lead. Leadership skills are but one fraction of the  skills that great sous/chefs posess. There are also a lot of chefs who think/believe they're ready/want to lead, but they didn't have enough or very good teachers/mentors, and when they're in charge of a real kitchen with real rules and real bottom lines and real cooks with real problems, they implode.
• You're not the first cook to choose money so soon in their career. I've seen loads of cooks get promoted to sous long before they were ready. Many people get promoted just because the chef needs someone to work more than 40 hours. IF YOU ARE TO BE IN CONTROL OF YOUR LEARNING, YOU HAVE TO BE CRITICAL OF YOUR SKILLS. If you're not capable of being critical about your skill set/level, chefs and restaurateurs will seduce you into roles you're not ready for. That's a promise.
• There are plenty of chefs out there who chose/choose making a family over working crazy hours for little pay. This is as good a reason as any to change kitchens/chefs. The only prize you should be keeping your eyes on is YOURS. If you know what YOU Need, go after it.

I added some footnotes~

You should be trailing at at least one kitchen a week on one of your days off. never get too comfortable. There's no such thing as a trail being a waste of time. The worst trail is better than the best first date. Even if you see a dirty, disorganized, lazy kitchen with shoemaker cooks and inedible food, you'll know what not to do/where not to work/who to work under, in the rest of your career.

As your resume reads right now I would say you need at least two, but preferably three more years of working for badass pastry chefs, on amazing teams, in solid houses, under your belt, before venturing out as a sous chef. If you don't feel like you can afford to work like this, go immediately to a house where you can grow into that position fast. Houses that come to mind: Locanda Verde, The Four Seasons (resto not hotel), Marea, Del Posto, Gramercy Tavern, Lafayette, Buddakan, Daniel, Jean Georges, to name a few. I can send your resume to all these pastry chefs, but the rest will be up to you.

Lastly I added specific feedback about her resume.

Cooks resumes these days are at an all time low. Some of the errors are egregious! Whetever happened to spelling well, not mixing tenses, and leaving off jobs we worked at for less than a year? Final word of wisdom: get real critique/feedback about your resume before you send it to a chef you respect/admire...

...which brings me to -

I'm starting a new service:

Send me your resume & $25, and I'll critique it before your next job interview. Seriously, yo, your resume is you. Most chefs I know these days, including me, erase ten times more job queries than schedule interviews. If you want to cook professionally, and get better and better jobs in great kitchens, with serious chefs, you must represent yourself better! And it starts with that word document...

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Stagiaire Advice.

Stagiaire Advice.

I get a lot of email from cooks, chefs, soon-to-be cooks, culinary students, parents, spouses of BOH peeps, etc. They are looking for advice from someone in the field that no for-profit culinary school, or glossy magazine will tell them about the whys and the hows that one needs to navigate this mine-field of a not-so-straightforward-road of a career "path."

But my viewpoint, my story, if you will, is only mine. Please write your own comments below to add to this list. Every kitchen, every city, every chef, every cook, every walk-in is a snowflake. Meaning: what my kitchen requires might be loathsome to you. Or what one feels every stagiaire should know, times a thousand, creates the real list.

A female culinary student has written to me for advice on staging. I replied thus:

• bring with you: a notebook that fits in your back pocket, 1 fine & 1 regular sharpie: both black. have these with you for the rest of your career. Claire Fontaine is the very best notebook I have ever used.

• buy a waterbottle/put your name on it. EAT A SOLID MEAL BEFORE EVERY SHIFT you work. do not expect the job to feed you.

• eat foods that give you real energy. if you start to survive on caffeine/sugar/drugs etc. you will not have the real stamina you need to last in this industry for more than a few years.

• if you plan a career in pastry, keep a baby offset spatula in your pocket. there are one million uses for this tool and if it's sleeping in your knife kit, you can't use it on the fly. also a hard bowl scraper in your other back pocket. I can't tell you how many savory cooks have borrowed this from me-- it's amazing for passing difficult solids through fine meshed sieves/tamis etc.

• look and learn. try not to chat or ask a lot of questions. see if your answer is in front of you before asking it.

• be safe. stay out of the way. a stage is always in the way, but try to find a place to be and keep it clean and organized.

• show up early & stay late. this shows commitment.

• SAFETY FIRST. because you are an unpaid worker, the establishment is taking a risk with you being there. if you are injured in their kitchen you will be covered by workers comp, but the money basically covers band-aids. if you cannot lift more than ______# don't do it to be macho. I know people who have had serious injuries because they were too afraid to appear weak in front of their peers.

• the answer to every question is either "Yes, Chef" or "No, Chef" it's always better to start out more polite than you need to be.

• all your tools should be clean and sharp. if you don't need your gigantic tool-kit, don't bring it. bring only the tools your chef tells you you need. but this does not apply to your baby offset spatula. you should never be without this.

• wear a uniform that fits you. you should look neat and clean at all times, and professional. do not wear your school chefs coat.

• be on guard. sometimes the friendliest cooks do not have your best interest in mind. do not shut off your instincts! if someone feels creepy, in ANY way, they probably are creepy. give said person the least amount of energy you can but do not act rude.

• it's possible you will be older than everyone in the kitchen. these days a lot of executive chefs are 30 or under. if the whole kitchen is very young, age-wise, they might try to make you feel out-of-place. stand your ground - you are there to learn, not be their mommy or guidance counselor. anyone can go to college, at any age! a stage is like auditing a class, not marriage. no matter what a cook's age; if he/she is serious, respectful, polite, humble, clean, organized, and has a sense of urgency, he/she belongs in said kitchen and can grow to be part of the team.

• immediately after every day of staging, write down EVERYTHING you saw, did, heard. even if this isn't legible to anyone else but you; even if grammar can't find it's way into your sentences, write it down. at least 30m before you go into that kitchen, read through your notes twice. at the end of every week, create a list of the most important things you saw, heard, smelled, ate, tasted, felt etc.

• KEEP YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. if you hate the food, or think the chef is disorganized, or think you know better, or see someone not FIFO'ing, or see a busser/server/host drinking the last of the wine glass dregs, or suspect _________ is having an affair with __________, or want to season something more/less, or think BOH should get to eat family meal, or any variation therof, stow said opinions away in your  "what I learned during my stage" notebook. DO NOT SHOW this notebook TO ANYONE but your cat. 

• if someone asks for your opinion, be vague and diplomatic if you feel negatively. the premise of a stage is that you are a person who knows almost nothing. if you know more than nothing, keep it to yourself, unless YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE the person you are dealing with is an ALLY. even someone you are sleeping with might not be your ally. all is fair in love, war, and kitchens.

• hierarchy is a real thing. it matters. a lot. pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to who likes who more, who teases who more, who is quiet, who is boistrous etc. it's just like grade-school -- you don't want to be beat up every day at school, but there are factions, and if you are seen as a traitor to the team you're on, it can be hard going. straight up people pleasing gets most people in trouble.

• when you have questions, make sure they're informed. meaning: do your homework. research the chef, the restaurant, the pastry chef, the cuisine, the owners etc. if I think the question asker is lazy I don't give that person a lot of attention. I'm more fond of the curious person than the know-it-all.

• my favorite cooks are the ones who care, are intensely clean & organized, and are problem-solvers. anyone, skilled or not, can point to a problem and announce it. sometimes the only difference between a cook and a chef is how she/he handles the SNAFU incomings.

• keep your eye on YOUR PRIZE. constantly re-define success. if you're learning anything, no matter how minor it appears in the scheme of things, that kitchen is a good place to be. but YOUR PRIZE is yours: it's personal. we all think we can suss a person out, merely by look at them, watching them, and asking a few surface questions. not so. you have no idea why that gal on garde manger, that man expediting, or that woman on saute is doing what she's doing or where she's come from or what she's seen or how long she''ll cook for. keep your focus on you and keep your side of the street clean. accountability is your best friend, not your lover. accountability is looking deep within yourself and coming clean to your chef and your team when you've made a mistake. remember: you only go to sleep with you every night. your integrity is all you've got.

Richie Nakano gathered a bunch of cooks hints about how to and how not to stage too, on Linecook. Check it.

I look forward to hearing your experiences too!

Remember, we keep what we have by giving it away.

 

Pastry Chef at Large.

Happy September. The city's summer quiet comes to a close this weekend, as if tying off a scarf one began in April.

So much has happened since I wrote on eggbeater last. I'm sorry to have been away for so long, but oftentimes what is going on for me in a given kitchen, on a job, is not mine to tell, wholly, and I can't always figure out how to tell it diplomatically. I'm sure you understand.

Also, to be fully transparent, I've been cheating on you. Since April.

I've been taking my words elsewhere. Sharing them with others. My sentences are being edited by Charlotte Druckman. I couldn't be luckier, more honored, and more grateful. Behind every great writer is a keen, tough, grammatically correct editor.

My new paramour is Medium.com and the room we do it in is called The Egg Beat. I'm profiling pastry chefs. The idea is to give press to pastry chefs directly, without the middle man of their employer's website. Most pastry chefs aren't even named on their dessert menus, or acknowledged by print media journalists, or credited for their recipes in cookbooks! Most pastry chefs have no "name" until someone "discovers" them.

I think that's ridiculous, and I aims to change the playing field.

Let's face it, most professional cooks don't have the time, (or desire), to self-promote, or they don't really know how to use the-social-media-platform-of-the-moment. Twitter is about as much as anyone can bear, and there's a lot of katchka dreck to contend with, making it impossible to find the pastry chefs who aren't on TV.

So this bi-monthly column is a way to recognize the people behind the pastry. Maybe introduce you to an intuitive baker, a punk rock chef, a pastry chef making chocolate dirt or a chocolatier setting up shop in an old bookbindery factory. I'm writing about modern and old school pastry chefs alike. I could be writing about a pastry chef near you, or one halfway around the world.

At the end of this month I'll be participating in the Star Chefs International Chefs Congress in a few different ways. On the Sunday (if all goes according to plan) I will be one of the "Floor Judges" for the Pastry Competition, and the next day I will collaborate with my good friend Amanda Cook making baked goods to highlight heritage grains* from New York State. We will have a table as part of the eat@ICC "food court," if you will. Look for "A Bite of the Big Apple."

*I have recently begun a "conversation" with GrowNYC's Strategic Developer June Russell, who is working with various farmers growing grain, milling it into flour, in conjunction with the Heritage Grain Conservancy. I am most excited about working with Emmer and Einkorn varieties, which I am told have very different flavor and structure than the "standard wheat" we have all grown accustomed to.

And lastly, the most exciting idea to come across my desk is Mealku. I'll report back as soon as I know, and can explain more.

If you're wondering where I'm working these days, I'm At Large. It's like being On The Lam, but different.

 

 

 

Professional Cooks & Our Relationships

A sous chef I worked with once said to me, with no irony or malice, "In this business you can have a romantic relationship or friends. You will not have time for both. You will not have energy enough for both."

He was right. For most all of my 20 year career thus far, this has been true.

Another cook told me, "You will miss all weddings, births, funerals and holidays. Get used to it."

If you work from dark to dark and sleep and do laundry on your one day off, you do not become an ideal candidate for dating. And if you never RSVP to family and friend functions, you will completely drop off their radar, piss them off and it could take you another lifetime to gain back their trust enough to 'schedule you in' to their lives again.

There are many chefs who prefer working in a kitchen to being in their parents, children, friends, partners lives. There are many cooks who could work more efficiently and get out after 10 or 12 hours rather than 14 or 16. And there are chefs who prefer to go to the bar after work, rather than home.

There's not a cook amongst us who will not argue, til death, the necessity of our presence in our kitchens. Kitchens are indeed like underground clubs. They are "our" people. We "understand" each other. Our cooks "need" us. Without us our kitchens will fall apart! Days off?! Who needs them?!! Shoemakers, that's who! Our stations will be a fucking mess if we don't micromanage them 20 hours a day.

As a young cook I heard that Andre Soltner, chef of the late Lutece, stood at his stove for 45 years straight, only to take off a few hours once to have a knee surgery.

The byline of our business could be:

Cooking Professionally
Where A Day Off Is A Weekend and Two Days Off In A Row Is A Vacation

All these things are true. being a professional cook/chef is hard work. It takes all of you, and then some.

But there's another truth. And they can co-exist in the same field, the same industry, the same kitchen, the same cook.

Relationships you have, start, form, keep, nourish, participate in, are present for, keep and work on intentionally-- you need these. You need love as much as you need sleep.

It's important to grow relationships outside of your job and the bar. Your family will always be there but that's no reason to forsake them for your career.

There are chefs out there who can sustain multiple "lives" while remaining consistent and effective leaders and inspirationalists at their stoves. They can have friends and lovers. They can go to the occasional wedding or funeral without having to quit their job. They can get sober and stay sober. They can get eight hours of sleep a night. They can own a dog and go on dates and make meals at home.

I agree that the first 5 years of cooking should be solely about cooking. Maybe 10. But in that trajectory a cook can begin to make life choices as well as kitchen/chef/cuisine choices.

For the first time in my career I have a romantic partner, a relationship with my family, friends from inside and outside the industry, and there's talk of getting a d. o. g. Even though I live with my partner, he and I have opposing schedules and sometimes we don't see each other, awake, for days in a row. For the first time in my career I need, but also want, to devote as much energy to building and feeding my primary relationship as I do my kitchen, my chef, my cooks and our diners. Sometimes he even calls me out if I give all of myself to the restaurant and leave nothing for him on our days off together.

There are, and have always been, chefs who buck the 24/7 rule. There's many ways to skin a rabbit.

When I was at the French Laundry, Thomas would sit down with all the cooks at the end of the night to write down the next day's menu. We would all inventory our stations and the walk-ins for mis en place and the sous chef would begin an ordering sheet. We would all start our next day's list. Sometimes we would talk shop.

One night we were discussing the James Beard nominees. Thomas was asking us who we thought he should vote for. A chef's name came up. One of the cooks really liked him and spoke up. Thomas asked the cook if he knew about an incident that chef had been involved in just a few month's previous. He did not. But I did.

This chef was in charge of a restaurant inside of a hotel, both of the highest caliber. There was no doubt his food and technique were spot on. But he offended a female server one afternoon with a disgusting comment. When the union of the hotel asked the hotel management to reprimand him, the hotel management said no, and the union staged a walk-out. Until the hotel management made themselves and that chef accountable for his actions, there was no one to serve the food, clear tables or wash dishes.

Thomas made an important point that night. He said that to honor a chef with an award was not to merely recognize their cooking abilities, but to reward their role as a leader in the industry as a whole.

As a cook you are faced with a number of options. You have to "choose the winners." You have to look for your next mentor all the time. You have to constantly re-evaluate what Chef you have chosen to inspire you and why. As you grow in your confidence and skill you will be able to take in the whole of a Chef. Your Chef as Chef, as Leader, as Human.

And humans are social creatures. We grow mentally, spiritually, physically, sexually, emotionally, psychically, when in contact with many sources of heart, inspiration.

This industry has an invisible voice. It will tell you you have to make a choice. It will tell you to choose the kitchen above all else. While I have done this, at times, I beg of you to hear the quietest of all voices. Listen hard. Hold your ground. Keep your eye on your prize. No one else's goal[s] need be yours.

You can work towards getting out of the kitchen in under 12 hours and let your kitchen be independent and learn how to make and solve mistakes and face challenges without you. You can walk into your kitchen tomorrow and choose this. You can delegate and pass it on and teach and inspire and push while you are there, and while you are not there you can go to museums and read books and make love and look at the horizon and see the stars and feel the sun on your face and get a massage and be a witness at your best friend's wedding and sleep in and make porridge and bundle up your kids for their first snow and go to the farmer's market and

all of these activities can be a recipe unto themselves for You. To marinate in, to support, to water your own garden. When all we are to our cooks is our own insularity, our own tunnel vision we do not teach them anything but what comes out of a washing machine on rinse cycle for far too long. It is important, and vital, to our abilities as leaders and executioners and food makers to see beyond our own noses. Relationships beyond our kitchens are important and necessary.

You can have more than one relationship and cook professionally. You can, and be a great chef one day.