eggbeater

Chef Advice. On 'Giving Notice.'

Quitting a cooking job right has to be one of the most talked about subjects amongst cooks. Everyone wants to know how to do it right. And few people give, or take, notice of resignation well. Most cooks know that to give 2 weeks notice today is to have one's last day today. Most chefs know that to receive a 2 week's notice today is to have a good-for-nothing-'senioritis' cook for the next two weeks.

Giving notice right often appears to be more elusive than bankers showing personal responsibility for their actions. And, yet, is is possible. But you have to be prepared, intuitive, professional and treat the person/kitchen/establishment with as much integrity as you wish for others to treat you.

If you are not management, always give two weeks, at least. If you think the chef will fire you on the spot ask for your paycheck. In the USA you must be given your final check on the day you are fired. For every day you have to wait for your check your employer must pay you, whether you have worked or not. Knowing your State, City & Federal rights IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you think your chef is going to fire you on the day you give notice make sure you can afford it to give notice on that date.

If you want to give a proper notice and do not wish to be fired on the day you give notice, promise your chef that you will work every day you're scheduled harder than you have up until now.

Work hard to make the kitchen miss you and wish you were not leaving, before you give notice.

In the USA is is illegal for an employer to give you a malicious reference. The worst reference an old employer can give a prospective new employer is no reference at all.

But,

you know what?

Chefs are notoriously as club-ish as cops. If you have upset one chef in your city, chances are said chef will spread the word not to hire you. Yes, it does happen.

As I've said, many times before, a cook's world is small. Travel thousands of miles and you might work with someone you met already. Piss off a cook yesterday and tomorrow they could be your chef, or worse yet, your sous chef.

You think you're no one. You think no one notices. But chefs talk. They trade players or steal like baseball teams. Your chef, your pastry chef, sometimes a whole kitchen full of cooks, will be courted, will be swooned, will be stolen.

Give your notice with aplomb. Play your cards right.

Always play your cards professionally.

Even if your chef is a hack and the line is a bunch of shoemakers. Even if the owners of your restaurant are absent or drunk or appear to have no idea what it takes to build a successful restaurant.

Being professional when giving notice includes some, if not all, of these pointers ~

• Write a letter of resignation. This is a letter, not a sentence. Write it like a real letter not a text or an email. Date it. Spell everything & everyone correctly. Say something about what you learned. Give your final day as a full date. ie: "I should like to work on and up until Saturday May 1st, 2010." Hand sign the letter. Put it in an envelope.
• Print and hand deliver, do not email, your letter of resignation.
• Give notice on a day or during an hour when you can have a few private minutes with your chef. Even if this means asking for that 'date' a number of days in advance.
• Do not give notice in front of any of your co-workers. This will be seen as quitting and you surely will not get a good reference, or be able to place said job on your resume, if you quit.
• In your letter of resignation say what you learned and why you're moving on.
• Give 2 weeks even if you have only been at a job for 2 weeks.
• Stay calm and collected no matter how your chef is reacting.
• Do not stoop to insults. Do not cast aspersions. Do not place blame on others. Think about omitting the word 'you' from the beginning of your sentences and instead speak from an "I" perspective.
• Stay positive. Really. In lieu of however your chef/owners are treating you in your resignation meeting, stay composed. People will remember that you remained professional. Even after they have calmed down. Freak out later in the bar or with your lover or to your friends, but remain clear and determined and calm with your boss[es].
• Remember that you are not responsible for how your notice is taken but it helps to be compassionate/empathetic. It helps to see how your giving notice may look to your chef/team/house. Everyone takes departure differently. Know that those last two weeks will be hard and very very different.
• Leave on a good note. Leave your station/partner better than what you came into.
• If you have been in a kitchen for a long time, thank each cook/sous personally & privately. Even if it sounds sappy, people remember that shit. Many of us feel like we're in a thankless profession & getting a 'thanks, you taught me a lot' gets remembered.

If you are a chef, meaning you have a management role, your notice should be far more than 2 weeks. The longest notice I ever heard of was Eric Ziebold, who gave Thomas Keller a 4 year notice when he left The French Laundry to work in Washington DC. I gave Elizabeth Falkner a month's notice after working as her pastry chef at Citizen Cake for 2 years.

In the years since September 11, 2001 & this new economic downturn, giving notice has taken on new meaning. Few cooks & chefs are given the chance to do so before they are laid off or show up to see a city padlock on their kitchen. How owners and chefs give notice to their employees ranges from months and months notice to less than an hour.

It's a precarious business we're in. While people have to eat, they do not have to eat in restaurants or hotels or on cruise ships or hire caterers. 

The restaurant where I work now has recently placed an ad on Craigslist for cooks. In the resumes we have perused so far, it's obvious times have changed radically. It used to be you could not put the name of a place you worked on your resume unless you had been there at least 6 months.

Now you're lucky if you see 3 months of continuous employment on someone's resume.

But I'll say it again.
Treat your employer, your chef, as you wish to be treated.
If that job has meant the world to you.
If your chef is better than you ever thought she'd be.
If your fellow cooks took time with you.
If your sous taught you more than you ever thought you could learn in one span of time.
If you mentored, made a difference, came early & stayed late, took a leadership position before one was given to you, loved every menu change, didn't just complain but worked on solutions, were proud to say your worked at that restaurant, woke up {almost} every day excited to work, can say those dishes you made were spot on, called a station Yours, pushed yourself out of your comfort zone, got buried in the weeds every service and helped those around you finding their way through the bogs too, you can barely say all your learned because it overwhelms you--

If

you can't believe you're leaving a restaurant, a chef, a sous chef

you have fallen in love with.

Treat those people, and yourself, with respect, integrity & professionalism.

Because sometimes people evaporate.

Because in your next job you'll be working as many hours as you were working here, and it's easier to lose touch than stay connected.

And because

you never know all you've learned
until you leave.
until that job has become a dot in your rearview mirror.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten jobs from connections I made in previous kitchens. Or with cooks I've worked with. Almost all, in fact.

Where I work now, for example. Gina dePalma, Babbo's everlasting pastry chef, was someone who kicked my ass to hell and back at Gramercy Tavern many many years ago, started asking around New York to see if anyone needed a pastry chef, when I was coming here from London last November. Jonnatan Leiva responded and then called Mourad Lahlou, a close friend to us both, to cross check me. It was on these two amazing chef's high recommendations that I landed in an execugtive role almost immediately after landing in New York City.

If you want to be treated with integrity, act with integrity. Even in the face of anarchistic unprofessionalism, that this industry is wont to display, at least recently, do it the old fashioned way.

Give notice to your job respecting your journey, and your chef's journey before you.

Because you know what?

Sometimes,

sometimes it can be the most amazing experience.

Sometimes

you can think you know a chef, you can think you love a chef enough, you can think you have learned all you can learn in a chef's kitchen

until you give notice.

and you both cry.
and you both reach for the others' hand.
and you exchange thank yous that reach into the very core of who you are.
and you are stunned by your chef's grace.
and you realize in that moment you know nothing.
and you know that knowing nothing means the most incredible journey ahead, not leaping off a bridge.
and you feel goosebumps borne of honor.
and you feel graced to have been allowed a position in his kitchen.
and you both want everything for the other, the way the best, most unselfish love feels.
and you know you will hate every minute that ticks away your time left in that chef's kitchen.
and you know that you will be his friend forever. and he, yours. equally and without condition.

Because, sometimes, showing up to life, on life's terms, can exceed your wildest expectations.

postcard poems.

unbound spring.
morning warmth.
a soft sun.
quiet sundays, a semicolon to summer.

`

Grand Central Station.
Iconic.
Marble.
Vibrating today with bagpipes and straight backs and a history forgotten.
There are tears at the edges of my eyes i did not put there.
I am grateful to be on a train today.
Grateful to have heard the music, the complicated instrument.

`

At the edge of Williamsburg, where development meets empty and water.
The city always looks the flattest flat from this angle.
Sunny out, wet underfoot.
Looking for perspective.
And answers that will never arrive.

`

New York is so undeniably itself under grey skies.
Barely perceptible tree buds quietly.
Greenwich Village.
Old streets.
Little corners.
Architectural details.
Brick cleaned by rain.
A whispered vibrancy .even in darkness.

`

the air felt like sea air today.
melancholy.
horizon line promising.
Forgetting.
hands waving at the dock.
fog mist soft wet wool.

`

today is watery melancholy spring
silk bias cut quilted sky
Neither gray nor blue.                             .both

`

besotted by spring.

`

First there was a string.
Then there was a knot.

`

Tender.
Flaky.
Rich.
Light.
Supple.
Vegetal.
Herbacious.
Unreal.

`

O No.
Vanilla is the muse of chocolate.

`

Today Brooklyn is Oakland.
Quiet. Desolate. Grey. Vast.

`

Purplish night.
New Jersey lights.
A soft and mercurial Hudson River.
Black dock pylons, broken rows, water eaten wood.
Gulls kibbutzing screaming interrupting.
Eyes refocus:one white bird sits neatly on each black line, like a matchstick.

`

Dusk.
Quilted sky.
Water towers silhouette.
Houston street and all its traffic lights.
Old squats.
Shiny kitchen equipment.
Memoried memories.
Footfalls distinct.

`

new york city winter 2009 - spring 2010

Becoming a Chef. What's the hurry?

A recent post and some ensuing comments to it has led me to be thinking more about the current issues which restaurant kitchens face. This is not at all to say hotel and catering and test and bakery and private cheffing kitchens are excluded from these issues, but most of my experience is with restaurants, and since I cannot share with you what I don't know, I let you cross out one word and fill it in with the one you know. Let's make a deal, shall we-- give me a few centimeters of poetic license and I'll give you a small country's worth of poetic comprehension?

Restaurant kitchens are what you see when the industry is X rayed.

As well, restaurant kitchens tend to be the ones cooks become chefs in. Independently owned restaurants tend to be the professional cooking environments chefs become recognized names in.

And restaurants, in the Isosceles triangle of professional cooking hierarchy, are considered to be the peak. In other words there's an unspoken rule in cooking: restaurant cooks are real cooks and everyone else is a hack. Restaurant cooks look down on catering the same way New Yorkers make fun of New Jersey. It's unspoken, but really it's not.

Because of this prevalent attitude, when someone wants to start cooking professionally, they are rarely introduced to the hundreds of thousands of other ways to get paid to cook. And because restaurant cooking is notoriously, unapologetically brutal, cooks who 'can't make it' in restaurants feel like, or are made to feel, both overtly & silently, like complete failures.

Is it true the first step of recovery is admitting?

Or is it what you do with your admission that counts?

Understanding the emotional and pschychological tactics the restaurant industry use to attract, keep & work to death its cooks is important if one hopes to gain entry into its labyrinth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still in it. I love it. But I know it too.

Well.

Not a lot appears to have changed in the industry since I naively joined it 17+ years ago. What was true then is still true now ~

• most cooks do not get paid for all the hours they work
• most cooks work 6 days a week or more than 5 shifts in 7 days
• most cooks work an average of 60 hours a week, and chefs can be upwards of 120
• most cooks are not offered &/or cannot afford health insurance
• most cooks have to quit or get injured in order to 'get a vacation'
• most cooks experience at least one if not multiple injuries which take them to the emergency room
• most cooks are male and get paid more than their female counterparts, being 'Chef' is no exception
• most cooks eat less than one meal a day
• most cooks feel abused in their workplace & that abuse ranges from yelling to physical violence
• most cooks have legal and illegal substance abuse issues, whether past or present
• most cooks look as if they have not seen the sun in quite some time
• most cooks can not afford to pay off their culinary school loans on the wages they make in the industry
• most cooks who went to culinary school said it wasn't worth as much as they thought it would be once they began working 'for real'
• most savoury cooks know nothing of pastry & vice versus
• most savoury cooks/chefs do not like dessert, and think the making of it is below them
• many savoury chefs do not employ equally good pastry chefs for fear dessert will compete with their limelight
• most pastry chefs get treated like second class citizens by way of wage differential, equipment mistreatment or lack thereof, shortages in staff and in-equal billing/name mentioning on menu/website/press/cookbooks
• pastry chefs rarely get the kind of press savoury chefs do (when was the last time you saw a photo of a pastry chef on the cover of Food & Wine etc.)

I think you see my point.

You might ask why I still do it. Knowing what I know. Or seeing that, in almost 20 years, not much has changed.

And I say. Be the change you want to see in the world. Even if your world is only as small as restaurant kitchens. Even if your world is only as small as the cooks {?un}lucky enough to work with you. Even if your world is only as small as you think it is. Because making change takes a long time. Change can oft not be seen until it's become quite small in the rearview mirror.

Most of us only know what we've learned long after we've left.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.

In "Chef Advice. or when cooks say " ." chefs hear " ." " I imply something I do not say outright.

There has been a change in the industry I've called home in the last 17 years. And, to be fair, it had started long before I stepped on the foot of Reed Hearon who was the chef to kick my ass to hell and back all those years ago.

In a profession considered a craft considered a lifelong education considered a place where you paid your goddamn dirty dues in a workplace considered to be completely insane and without fairness or law or recourse or reason in a series of apprenticeships unpaid and paid with minimum wage and or easily let bodily fluids and not, what was discontinued to be, slowly, quietly, but methodically undermined by this thing we know as culinary school.

And not because all culinary schools are the root of evil.

But because a school system was built to more quickly train what it had taken others {who would be, no doubt, asked to teach in such facilities} dozens and dozens of years to learn.

And that, my friends, is what I was implying but did not say outright in my last post.

What has changed, because of culinary schools or the advent of them; because of tv chefs or the creation of themselves as products by mainstream media to sell you an image you'd rather swallow whole than the Real One (see bulleted list above); because of reality shows and the chefs they 'find' to play real ones on tv {all entendres intended}; because of all the glossy food magazines telling you how much luxurious fun it is to be a chef,

what has slowly crept in,   i n s i d i o u s l y   is the HURRY.

The speed at which everyone seems to want to be a Chef.

WHAT IS THE BIG HURRY?

To become something that one can't really become anyway? Because being a chef is a verb. It's about learning and growing and asking millions of questions and eating and smelling and tasting and listening and it's constant. Sometimes its the kind of repetition that makes you want to blow your brains out. Sometimes it's rewarding in ways you can not verbalize so you cry or do another line of coke or fuck your brains out or lay down on the floor and look up at the ceiling after a particularly grueling night of service. Most of the time only those who wear your uniform too can understand your accomplishments, albeit small or far between.

The hurry is disrespectful.

It disrespects every person who has come before you.
It disrespects those who have taken their whole life to learn.
It disrespects those who are attempting to teach you.
It disrespects the industry as a whole.
It disrespects the craft.
It disrespects every piece of food you touch, every animal you butcher, every service you try and set up for.
It disrespects diner, owner, dishwasher, waiter, busser.
It disrespects the finesse, the knife, the ingredients, the process, the uniform.

If you're in a hurry you're disrespecting yourself.

And that disrespect affects me and affects the kitchen as a whole, and in turn affects the entire industry.

The way a city begins to lose its soul when landmarks are destroyed, this hurry has eroded parts of a craft I love fiercely and wish to protect. 

And

to know a love, to be a craft, to walk a talk, to have and to hold dedication, to live a full life, to be brave and vulnerable both, to speak the truth despite circumstance and loneliness, to rally and advocate for the silenced, to write about those whose words will never be read, to listen, to know and still to speak out, to keep what I have by giving it away, to attract but not promote, to conjure stamina day in and day out, to learn and to teach, to mentor and to guide, to allow dissent, to practice anger without violence, to swim deeper and deeper into into the whys and the hows, to engage you, to bake and share delicious foods, is the hope of eggbeater, and its author.

Chef Advice. or, when cooks say " ." chefs hear " ."

An incident happened in the kitchen yesterday. I became so angry I could not speak.

I'm still angry.

I'm angry at the person, but moreover I'm angry at what said person's actions spoke. Spoke of, spoke to.

Because for every word spoken in a kitchen, an action follows, and for every action, a meaning.

Because when cooks *complain, give excuses, present attitude, ask for special favors, {attempt to} triangulate their managers, are lazy, lie, walk in late, work slow, are a mess, do not listen to direction, mope, whine & moan & whinge & pout, do not communicate with their partners, do not help their fellow cooks out of the weeds, think their chefs are their friends, cry, and talk back to their chefs,* they do not step into the good graces of their chefs & fellow cooks.

Unless your chef is a shoemaker, just like you. In which case you're in good company.

But if you want to be a better cook one day. If you don't just want to be a shiny happy tv chef. If you want to learn from the good ones. If you don't want to be fired. If you like your job/kitchen/crew/paycheck/menu.

May I make a suggestion?

Think hard about your actions before taking them.

Think about what we {chefs} hear, when you {cooks} do any of the *above.*

When you say, "_________." = we hear "-----------."

"Do I have to ~ ?" = "I'm lazy and I'm looking to you to validate me and my lazy ass." "I don't want to learn anything new or push myself in any way, shape or form." "I like my comfy lazy spot and why would you want me to do something I don't want to." "I wanted to be a cook because I thought it would be fun, not hard."

"I'm going to come in later than you're asking. I'm set-up." = "I don't think about anyone but myself. I'm special." "I am not on a team, I work by myself." "I don't want to do anything but what I have to." "I'm an independent contractor." "I'm psychic and I know how many covers we're going to do between now and when I come in next. You should pay me extra for psychically forecasting our numbers." "I've done way too much mis en place and nothing I serve in my next service will be fresh." "I want to sleep in." "I don't care if disrespect my fellow cooks by trying to get special favors, personally, from the chef." 

"There's nothing to do." = "Please fire me." "My eyes have stopped working." "I don't know how to clean or organize." "I was supposed to be a famous chef by now." "I am worthless and if you still have me on payroll after I've uttered this, than you are a bigger fool than I."

Cooks:

your actions are translated into words for us chefs. Just as you base your respect of us on our actions, so do we, you.

If we have nothing to teach you, leave. If treating us, your fellow cooks and yourself with respect is beyond you, please find another profession.

This industry, this career, this craft is borne from loyalty, apprenticeship, a lifetime of education. It's really not for the meek. It's for the humble, the teachable.

What we do, day in and day out, involves a kind of stamina few people understand.

And if you work in a teaching kitchen, a kitchen where the chef works the line, a kitchen where the menu changes seasonally, a kitchen with few or no "extra people," a kitchen bringing in whole animals, a kitchen brought back from the grave, a kitchen where every chef works a station, or four, a kitchen surviving in this horrible economy, like the one I'm currently in, I strongly suggest you show it some respect. Because, I can guarantee it, you won't know what you left behind, until long after you're asked to leave it.

But if you don't really want it.

If being a professional cook is a stop-over to a better career, a lily pad from which to jump to your next thing, something you're doing because you didn't want to go to college; then do not expect me to invest in you.

Discontinue to expect respect. Instead, work on earning it.

How Many Restaurants {choose to} Butcher Whole Animals In House?

Two questions for chefs & cooks:

How many restaurants have you worked in so far in your career?
And how many of them brought in & butchered whole animals?

I've asked this question over at Twitter, and I will post all your answers in a follow up post to this one.

And, yes, I will post my answer, and why I'm making this inquiry. You may make your response anonymous if you feel you need to for professional reasons.

Thank you in advance! I look forward to this important conversation.

Jonnatan Leiva, chef & Matthew Wilbur, sous. butchering lamb & suckling pig.

 

Matthew Wilbur

 

Jonnatan Leiva

Suckling pig & lamb raised in Vermont by Lydia Ratcliff, farmer extraordinaire.

Tasting Table NYC loves dessert.

not just any dessert,

although they appear to have really good taste

in many a sweet thang,

but here, and now,

allow me to point you in the direction of Tasting Table NYC's March 1 edition! ~

Sweet Relief
A pastry genius touches down at 10 Downing

Because,

you guessed it,

it's about me.

yes, just moments after arriving & baking in NYC, some gorgeous press from Scott Hocker, formerly of SF Magazine & currently at Tasting Table SF. Not only did he get me and my food, spot on, he had my mouth watering on the subway while reading the latest issue of Edward Behr's ineffable The Art of Eating newsletter.

If you're not already signed up for the Tasting Table newsletter, may I suggest you consider it? There's one for LA, SF, NYC & D.C, Chicago & National.