Hello chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
I'm your host Andrea Natera. On today's episode, we're gonna
talk about social currency in the kitchen.
Stay tuned. This episode of Chef's PSA is
sponsored by J&R Grills and Smokers.
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They've always stood with me. Go to jrmanufacturing.com to
learn more. So before we get started, just a
quick update, Last week I did the Q&A that I do on my
Instagram every Sunday, cigar Sunday Q&A, shout out to Escobar
cigars. And this week, well, this past
week I should say I had to type the answers because I couldn't
smoke my cigar because it was very cold outside.
So I I'm starting to have to rethink this a little bit as we
go into winter and it starts to get cold, but there's going to
be a lot of weather anomalies that don't make it ideal cigar
weather. So sometimes when it's too cold,
it might be just Q&A Sunday with no cigar.
Anyway, you know, early on I used to do the Q&A directly to
the podcast. There's, I want to say there's
four total episodes. Like I answer your most pondered
questions, part one and two, and then I think there was a fall
episode where I answer your questions as well.
Anyway, you can go back and listen to those.
The good thing about those Q&A S when I do them on the podcast is
I can answer them in a longer format where when I do them on
Instagram, it's very short. I think Instagram gives you like
30 seconds to a minute to answer them and sometimes they're deep
questions. I could some of them I could do
a whole podcast on, but the clock is ticking and I got to
get my most witty answer out while smoking a cigar, looking
at the clock and drinking that old fashioned.
So sometimes my answers are a bit brief and also some of the
questions are a bit vague. Anyway, if you want me to go
back to doing a long format Q&A session on the podcast, let me
know. I do get a lot of questions
regarding having guests on the podcast and honestly right now
that's not something that I intend on doing.
You listen to this podcast since episode one to now episode 71.
You'll note that I've had exactly 0 guests on the podcast
and if I ever do venture out to a guest centric podcast, I'd
love to do chef smoking cigars talking crap podcast.
But I need a cigar lounge for that.
So if someone wants to invest in getting me a cigar lounge, we
could do chef smoking cigars podcast.
Anyway, if you want to support the show, go to chefspsa.com, go
get the books Culinary Leadership Fundamentals, which
honestly is probably the most important book for all chefs.
Then Kitchen Art of War is, you know, advanced strategy for
chefs. Bad sue good chef is for the new
sous chefs. And you know, maybe sometimes
when you have all these questions that are going through
your mind and you don't know who to ask, that's the book that you
want. I based that off a lot of the
Q&A questions that I get and also questions that I would have
when I was a sous chef or that my sous chefs used to ask me.
Line cook survival manual, which I think is the book that line
cooks and new cooks need, as well as how not to be the
biggest idiot in the kitchen, which not everyone needs that
It's more of a joke book. There's some practical advice in
there too, but it's a lot of jokes.
Now the topic at hand, Social currency in the kitchen. 1st, we
should probably explain what social currency is.
Social currency is like money. Money is currency.
Social currency is your value that you bring to social
settings, The kitchen being the social setting that we're
discussing right now. Someone asked me the other day
if I could explain what it's like for new cooks to navigate
in the kitchen now. There's a lot that they don't
tell you on culinary school, and there's a lot that you figure
out once you get into the kitchen.
And I think the transition for some people can be shocking,
especially if you're coming right out of high school and
going into culinary school, or if you're skipping culinary
school and going straight from high school into a restaurant
job. And what you quickly find out is
no matter what your social status was in high school or if
you're a career changer in the previous job, it is completely
null and void when you step into a kitchen.
Now, I don't want people to misconstrue what I'm saying.
I think there should be a baseline of respect in all
kitchens. Everyone should be treated with
dignity and respect. I think kindness goes a long
way. I think chefs need to do a
better job at respecting people up and down the hierarchy and
not not. And when I say chefs, I'm, you
know, I'm, I'm painting a picture that all chefs don't do
that, but a lot of chefs do. I'm just saying in general, the
stigma that the industry has is that chefs are egotistical and
tyrannical. That's not the case with
everything. As I've said before, there's
good people and there's bad people, and some of those good
people and bad people happen to become chefs.
It doesn't mean that chefs attract bad people.
It's just there's just kind of a mix of people out there in the
world. So I want to establish that
first and foremost there should be a a baseline of respect
throughout all kitchens. But when we're talking about
social currency and you're new to the industry, you might
quickly discover that the social currency that you had in your
previous industry, school, college, whatever the case may
be, is null and void when you step into the kitchen.
And why is that? Because the only thing that
really matters when you're in the kitchen is can you cook and
how do you work the line? And are you responsible and do
you show up when I need you? Do you help out the team?
Do you clean? Do you work efficiently?
Do you cause me problems? Social currency in the kitchen
is how you work with others. The better you are in the
kitchen, the more social currency you have.
This is what gets people promoted.
When you're building a team, Someone that has a high social
currency meaning their high culinary ability, their ability
to work, that's someone that you call when you're a chef and
you're looking for someone if you know them, if you work with
them in the past. But a lot of new cooks sometimes
have a hard time adjusting to that, because in high school or
college or whatever the case may be, maybe you're coming from a
different industry. The social currency might be the
kind of car you drive, what neighborhood you came from, what
city you're from, how much money your parents have, who your
boyfriend is, who your girlfriend is, who your
significant other is, who your circle of friends are.
None of that matters in the kitchen because none of that can
help you when the line is busy. When the line is busy, it
doesn't matter what kind of car you drive and the person who's
in need of your help and needs you to perform could care less
what kind of car you drive. When the shit hits the fan, you
have to think about that like you're weeded, 1000 tickets, the
person next to you is going down and then you're like, boy, I
wish you had a better car and maybe we wouldn't be weeded.
No one, no one says that social currency is ability.
Now I'm recording this on Halloween 2023 and I have a
slang word that I use and I call it a Halloween ninja.
These are things that I throw around in the kitchen.
It's in the culinary dictionary by the way.
You can get at chefs psa.com. It is free, but the term
Halloween ninja means this. A Halloween ninja is someone in
the kitchen who looks the part but is just plain dress up much
like a little kid on Halloween. They dress up like a ninja.
They got the uniform. They got the plastic sword.
They got the fake throwing stars.
But they're a little kid. They're not real ninjas.
And it's a plastic sword and there's no threat.
Well, the same thing happens in kitchens.
We have Halloween ninjas, the type that look the part.
They get the most expensive apron, most expensive knives
that they don't know how to use. They could talk the talk, but
they cannot walk the walk. And the walk is much more
important than the talk in the kitchen.
Doesn't matter how many culinary terms you know.
Get the culinary dictionary. What matters more is can you
execute on those terms? I could care less if you have a
large vocabulary. If you can't make any of it, I'd
prefer the person that has zero culinary vocabulary but can
execute everything in the dictionary.
So it matters not what you look like what you're wearing, it
matters how you perform. Now, I'll be the first one to
say I'm a sucker for a nice apron.
I like the bragard blue aprons. I like fancy, expensive Japanese
knives. But I wouldn't advise someone
who's new in the industry to come in to a new kitchen and
think that just because you have expensive knives and fancy
aprons that that is going to give you social currency.
It's not what's going to give you that social credit is your
ability to perform on the line. How fast you work, how precise
are your knife cuts? Do you know how to braise
properly? Can you make stocks and sauces?
Do you show up on time? That's your social currency.
And in a lot of kitchens, there's always that one person
that is higher level than everyone else.
You know, they're they're just, they're just more swan.
Yeah. They have more finesse on what
they're doing. And everyone always looks up to
that person. And they want to be like them.
Like, I call that kitchen karate.
You know, the way that they move in the kitchen with precision
and they turn around and they have a pallet knife that just
puts the foie grat or shot on the plate, or they base the
scallops just perfectly. They don't tremble.
Their movements all seem calculated.
They're going to put a pan down and it goes directly on the
trivet without having to think. They don't even, they don't even
have to look. They just know where it goes.
I call that kitchen karate. Some people call it the dance,
but it's like you want your black belt in kitchen, karate.
To be precise, having a black belt in kitchen karate is high
level social currency. So now let's talk if you have
zero skills, let's say you are new to the kitchen, you're just
out of culinary school or it's your first job and everyone in
the kitchen is good and there are levels above you.
As I like to say, they speak three languages and you barely
speak one. What can you do to build that
social currency in the kitchen? Well, if you're lacking in the
culinary skills, there's other things that you could do that
would help you stand out in a positive way.
The first thing is to be respectful in the kitchen.
Be respectful to everybody. Let's start there.
Then I would say work at the same pace as everyone else in
the kitchen. There's a certain cadence that
every kitchen has. If everyone's hustling, you
hustle. If everyone's moving to a
certain beat, you move to that same beat.
It doesn't mean that you have to know the recipes, but you just
got to pay attention, use your eyes, and see how quickly people
are moving. You might not know the recipes,
but you can have sense of urgency in your movements.
The next thing I will say is work.
Clean cleanliness is appreciated in every single kitchen that I
know. There's not a chef out there
that I know that doesn't like clean cooks.
Everyone likes clean cook. No one ever is going to tell
you, hey, you need to work dirtier.
It's the exact opposite. Then it's being responsible.
That means showing up on time, being where you're supposed to
be when you're supposed to be there.
Responsible also means having a notebook and taking good notes
when you're given directions. If they're giving you a recipe,
write it down. The worst pen is better than the
best. Memory is the expression, and
it's just an expression. I don't want someone freaking
out and saying the worst pen doesn't work.
It's broken, OK, it's it's an expression.
Anyway, we digress. For the person that was going to
call me out on that expression, there you go.
You're right. But the lesson is write it down.
No chef likes to give you directions and then you come
back every 5 minutes and say what's next?
Chef, I forgot. Write it down.
It's one of the most important tools that you could have is a
pen and a notebook. The other thing is ask
questions, but know when to be quiet.
And this is a balancing act. You don't want to be the cook
that has 1000 questions at the wrong time, meaning there's a
rail of tickets. Everyone's head down, go, go go.
And you're trying to find out what's the recipe for this.
Can you tell me how to do that? And you want to have a
conversation with these cooks. It's like social awareness.
You see everyone's head down, quiet.
You also be quiet, put your head down and start working.
But when the time is right, ask questions and write down the
answers and try to avoid asking the same questions twice unless
you need someone to expand on it.
And the reason I bring that up is because when you ask the same
question over and over again, people will get tired of telling
you because they think you're not paying attention.
The next is don't be afraid of the hard work.
The hard work is going to come in every kitchen that you go to.
There, there's hard work in terms of you're on your feet all
day, it's stressful. Or there's also hard work in
terms of someone has to clean the cooler or the freezer or
someone has to work the grill station.
If you're new in the kitchen, you might not be prepared to
work the harder stations, but you are prepared to organize a
cooler. And again, if you're trying to
get social currency and social credit in the kitchen, the
person who cleans the cooler is beloved in everyone's eyes.
And then the last thing I'll say is, and only if you're working
in the type of place that serves a family meal, be the person
that brings the cooks and the team water that goes a long way.
I think that's very underrated. Everyone's hot, they just got
slammed. They're thirsty, they're on
their feet all day. It's a kitchen and here you come
with waters for all the cooks. That goes a long way.
Social credit, right? Some people call it the
emotional bank account. You're depositing money in, the
emotional bank account with others, and then of course,
family meal cook for people. I think what's interesting about
family meal in a lot of places is it doesn't necessarily have
to be like super high end food. A lot of times, family meal is
they just want something comforting.
And depending on where you're from, you might want to make
something from your home, something that you grew up
eating, something from your town, a regional dish.
This goes a long way 'cause you know what it is, It's
nourishing, it's comforting, and people could taste when food is
cooked with love, as they say. So if you don't have the
culinary skills, those are some things that you could do to
start to get the social credit in your kitchen.
But with all that being said, the fastest way to get social
credit in the kitchen is to be good.
Be fucking good on the line, be good with a knife.
The person who knows how to cook walks on water a lot of times,
assuming that they're not a big jerk now in the chef community.
This is something else that I think people think about it.
I've touched on this. A lot of people talk about the
operation, and in the operation, the social credit might not be
where you're at the way that you cook because maybe you work in a
place that's very management driven, maybe where you're at.
It's all about the paperwork and making sure the food cost is in
line and turning an inventory and answering emails and showing
up to meetings. And so where you're at, the
social currency with other departments and other people
that work with you is managerial and administrative.
It's important that you recognize that.
But it's also important to recognize that in the culinary
community, you can't be standing around a group of chefs and
think that you're going to be invited to the food and the
winemaker dinners and the private Chef Illuminati meetings
because you run a good food cost and you answer your emails.
That's where your social currency comes in as you need to
be a good cook because outside of your four walls, they might
not give a shit what your food cost is.
As I often say, no one remembers the person who answered all
their emails and ran a great food cost.
Reputation is made with the food that you create, the people that
you help mentor, how you impact how people eat, and how you
impact food systems in your community.
That's where the legacy is. So anyway, start developing your
social currency in your own kitchen and you'll see how many
more doors open for you. For the person that's
questioning why they haven't been promoted or why you keep
getting passed over. Ask yourself that question.
Are you doing those things that we talked about and still
getting passed over? Now?
If you are, then you probably need to leave, but chances are
you're not doing everything that you can do to get promoted.
So anyway, if you want to support the show, you know what
to do. Go to chefspsa.com.
You can get all the books Culinary Leadership,
Fundamentals, Bad Sue, Good Chef Kitchen, Art of War, Line Cook
Survival Manual, How Not To Be The Biggest Idiot in the
Kitchen, as well as The Free Ebooks, Food Cost Mastery,
Critical Path to Opening Up A Restaurant, Culinary Terms
Dictionary, 100 Basic Recipes You Got Merch, Happy Cook Hat,
Sucker Free Kitchens, Hoodie. We'll see you next week.
Hit the Porno Music.