Hello chefs, you're listening to chefs, PS a podcast on today's
podcast. We're going to talk about
technique versus creativity when I'm hiring a cook.
Which one do I deem more important?
What do I think? Is more important for a chef?
And at the end of this, I'll give you my process when I'm
trying to be creative and what I do to get into the zone.
So first, let's talk about technique and when it comes to
technique, I do feel that technique is superior to
creativity for the majority of your career and probably for
about 90% of the jobs out there, and I'll tell you why.
Because when it comes to creativity, either have it or
you don't, a lot of people are born with natural creativity.
There's ways that you could boost up your creativity but
techniques and proper technique can get you very far through.
Your career to a very high level, even if you don't have
creativity to go with it. So if you don't have creativity,
you could always fall back on technique and as a chef and what
I use to hire people, you know, the truth of the matter is
you're not going to get your dish on the menu right away
especially when you're right out of culinary school, like let me
be honest no Chef is like going to.
They're very green culinary school students and saying you
know what, what dish ideas that you have, let me see your
creative food. The fact of the matter is that
doesn't happen, but what they need.
From a cook when they're just starting out.
As what, are your technical skills?
Do you know how to dice? Do you know how to brunoise?
How are your knife skills? You know how to set up a proper
station? Do you know how to saute?
Do you know how to braise and all the other cooking techniques
that go with it? And that is what I look for.
When I'm hiring someone is, do you have a strong grasp on the
fundamentals? Which I deem more important than
creativity when you're the head chef for the sous, chef for the
chef de cuisine. Whoever is really riding the
menu. The last thing that you need
really is a Person that's going to take a spin or R if your food
and not do it the way that you want it.
So sometimes creativity can be a double-edged sword when you're
not in a position that allows you to be creative.
But you know is unfortunate because it does push a lot of
creative types out of the industry.
When it's it's like equivalent to you know you have all these
great ideas and you you of what you want to do with your art but
you don't yet know how to paint. So it could be discouraging
early on in your career when you're not allowed to express
your creativity, but the fact of the matter is and Fact of the
matter remains that when you're a chef you're looking for people
that can execute your vision and your creativity.
That's you know, you've worked all these years.
You finally made it to a place where you're able to put your
ideas forward and and create your own food.
And unfortunately the last thing that you need is someone
changing a dish. When you're not looking, which
by the way, is like, in my opinion is like a huge culinary
sin. You should never change your
chefs dish. The only person that should
change the chef's dishes, too. Have.
So that's, that's always been a rule that I've had in.
The kitchen, is no one changes, the chefs dish, but the chef
that is like culinary 101 because you put a lot of effort
into a dish designing a menu. And it's like a huge slap in the
face when someone comes in and says, oh, I could probably do
that better than that. Chef.
Let me, let me change it up because I have all these really
good ideas. And it's like coming from a
place of ego because the chef needs to be able to put his food
out for guests. They want to come back and make
sure that they're getting the same dish and if it's different
every time it's like, well, it hurts the reputation of the
restaurant or hurts the reputation of the chef.
It's going to hurt business. All because someone wanted to be
creative and take creative freedoms with with another chefs
dish. So people, if you're listening
to this, if you're not the chef, you should never change a chefs
dish without speaking to them first.
And I'm not saying you can't do it, but you should always The
conversation. First, you need to go up to the
shelf and say, I think this might work better.
I think this would work. Would you mind if we try it?
And the answer might be, no, get back on your station or the
answer might be, you know what, that's a good idea.
Let's discuss it. And look at it, it all depends
on where you work in the type of Chef that you're working for.
But as a general rule, never change your chefs dish without
asking. But anyway, so let's talk about
technique for a little bit. Why do I think technique is
important? Well, because if you have solid
technique and there's a wide range of skill levels of
techniques, like, if you go to like a three-michelin-star
restaurant, the brunoise is perfect.
You know, where their brune wine tarragon and, you know, the sear
on the fish is perfect, and the pasta is cooked perfectly.
Like, there's a high level of technique, and when you have a
high level of technique, you could really go work anywhere.
You could be a sous chef anywhere because, you know, that
you're confident in whatever, whatever realm of cooking that.
Puts you in. But if you have a low level
technique, it's only going to take you to a certain a certain
level of position of restaurant that you want to work in.
So I would focus early on in my career is really Master the
fundamentals of cooking. Really master your Technique the
way that Trends change, you could look at an Instagram feed
and you could look at food from five years ago.
And then look at you from a great chef and then you can look
at their food today and you'll say, wow, it's unrecognizable, I
wouldn't I wouldn't do that. That now and that's because
Trends evolve. So rapidly plating Trends, the
ingredients that people are using it changes.
I mean, you I've seen Instagram trends like I don't know if
everyone remembers like there was this like a stamp where you
use like at the bottom of a cup and it would make this like
beautiful, you know, stamp. And then it was the comb and
then it was the paintbrush and then it was the spiral.
And you know, all these things evolve And regardless of what
the trend is or the creative plating, like what doesn't
evolve? Well, I shouldn't say it doesn't
evolve, but it involves much slower as the technique.
And here's, here's something when it comes to cooking
techniques, like let's just say, for the sake of this
conversation, thousand years ago, people are cooking with
fire water. That's pretty much it right?
So they're boiling things in there, cooking things over Fire
fast forward. You know thousand years later,
we're boiling things Cooking things over fire, does it really
change that much where you saw a great evolution in technique was
I'd say probably the early 2000s when Ferran Adria came out and
he started cooking things differently.
He started approaching food differently, you now we're
working with liquid nitrogen, no one was working with liquid
nitrogen 50 years ago in The Culinary world.
You know. We're cooking sous vide we're
using anti griddles we're using alginates food for the first
time since you know No, the dawn of cooking, with fire and water.
Saw this great jump in, technique, creativity and
evolution. So that was like a pivotal
moment in time. I would say like the next big
thing was when Rene redzepi started doing all the forging
and fermentation and not that, that hasn't been around, but it
wasn't ubiquitous. And now you see it?
Pretty much at any top restaurants, they're doing some
form of foraging or fermenting or even even if they're not
foraging and they're just saying To get more sales or to add to
The Narrative of the restaurant. But the fact of the matter is
that now you see the more advanced techniques that you
would see, like, in a obscure, world's 50 best or three
Michelin star restaurant. You see it like in your
neighborhood restaurant. There fermenting just like, just
like Renee there. Hopefully, they got everyone's
going to have reindeer dick on their salad soon, you know,
according to Rene redzepi or I'm sorry, it's in his new book if
you don't get the joke. But anyway, long story short, I
focus on technique when I was opening up a hotel, a couple of
years back and we were delayed. So I had all these culinary
people on my team, all these culinarians and we had about a
month to get ready for opening, but the building we couldn't get
in it. So I had everyone on board.
What am I going to do with them? I said well I'm going to run it
like a culinary school and what I did every day is every day.
We're going to brunoise and we're going to do it again
tomorrow. We're going to learn how to
tornado. We're going to brunoise.
We're going to learn how to cut. Chives perfectly working to make
French omelette. And I really just focused on
making sure that they knew how to work in that they had really
strong fundamentals, and technique and fast forward that
to a couple months later when we opened, we opened up strong, all
my Cooks were good and I would say, I remember having this
conversation, with one of my, with one of my Cooks, shout out
to Lauren Pogue. If you're listening and I
remember having a conversation with her, she was a culinary
student that the time. And I said, when you're done,
Done with working here and the training within a couple of
months, she was still a student. I said before before, we're done
your knife skills will be better than your instructors.
And so, months later, I went back to her and asked her.
I said, hey remember, I told you this and she said, yes, I said.
I'm so how are your knife skills compared to your instructors?
And she said, yeah, they're better than them.
They're asking me how I do it. So, anyway, point being is like
technique will carry you very far in your career, but now,
let's talk about creativity. And when it comes to creativity,
like I said not everyone has it. So if you don't have it you
could always fall back on your Technique but true creativity.
You know, I would argue that almost everything is not really
original, you know it's some form or fashion of something
that's already been done. You know the Chinese did it, the
French did at the Italians, did it someone's already done it and
usually chefs are saying oh I'm putting my spin on something.
It's like well you're not putting that big of a spin on
it, you're just taking ideas from other cultures that have
been invented. I haven't really seen Chef's
come up with something original that doesn't exist the way they
combine. It might be original but you
know the the fundamental techniques are not.
And I would say the the only two chefs I could think of and I'm
not knocking any chefs, but I'm I could only think of two that I
don't think they stole from anybody because all Chef steal.
Like, you know, I did a PSA once like if you're going to steal
the dish, you know, make sure that they're not next door to
you, or make sure your Chef doesn't have the same cookbook
where you stole the dish because the The matter is all chefs, get
inspiration, there's nothing wrong with it, we all do it.
But there's two chefs that I could think of that.
I don't think that they stole from anybody or got inspired by
anyone. I shouldn't say stole because I
don't mean it in a negative way but Ferran Adria, you know, El
bulli I don't think he got inspired by another Chef.
I think all those ideas were original that like to me that is
true creativity like you can't pinpoint where they got there.
Ideas from and it's completely original and he set the trend
for so many other chefs to follow.
You know, Grant Achatz Wylie, Dufresne, you started to see all
these types of restaurants pop-up, even even me I mean back
in 2006 I was in California and we had a restaurant that was,
you know, doing the bubble food. I like to call it, you know, the
Foams and that you know the Spheres and whatnot and I wanted
to be the first chef in California to do it and you
know, I was like I'm going to get some some clout copying food
directly out of LA. Lead 2003 or whatever version I
had of it. But the fact of the matter is
like everyone was stealing or borrowing from Ferran and the
second Chef I would say that was completely original that I had
never seen this style before would probably be Rene redzepi.
You know I like to talk trash on his reindeer salad but all jokes
aside the guy's brilliant and no one else was doing the foraging
for men. Eating food on the level that he
was doing. I would say, like, to me.
That was true creativity. I never seen anyone do food on
that level until he did it and then everyone did it.
You know, when the Noma cookbook came out and I want to say this
is like maybe 2010 when the first book came out, I might be
a might, be off a little bit, but I remember when it came out
it was like, boom, everyone was doing, you know, that sort of
Nordic style plating and you know, everyone had Nasturtium.
Somewhere on their menu. I was even growing nasturtium
because I thought I didn't know where to buy them at the time
and because it was such a fringe ingredient, you couldn't really
find them anywhere as like well I went to, you know, to the to
the store and I bought nasturtium seeds and I started
growing nasturtiums at home just so I could.
So I could have some nasturtium somewhere.
So everyone wanted to be like Renee at the time and I was, you
know, I was no exception to that.
I highly admired the food that he was doing at the time but to
again back to the point that to me was True creativity chefs
that we're not borrowing for anybody.
And you know, I would even actually I should go back and I
should say you know what Thomas Keller was doing when he first
opened up the French Laundry and the salmon cornets.
And the oysters and Pearls like no one was playing with food the
way he was at the time. You know, you see these these
great chefs, you know, the Thomas Keller's the Charlie
Trotter's. The Ferran Adria as you know,
the Rene redzepi 's and what's amazing about them and their
creativity is When they move everyone moves and so they have
a they have a huge responsibility.
It's like having anything that they say is a loaded weapon,
they put out a cookbook and they say this is great.
Then everyone's going to do it. Trust me every every single sous
chef in the wrong restaurants, putting out food that doesn't
belong. Because, you know, Renee did it
or for on, did it back then or whoever, right?
So it's interesting to see how creativity works, but long story
short, creativity can get you. To a certain level of food.
But I would caution chefs, especially new chefs when you
get your restaurant to be careful with the creativity, my
rule of thumb was always 70/30 on menus.
So 70% of the menu was always dishes that I knew would sell.
I had to call him fastballs but I'm you know, I'm not talking
about strictly fastballs but you know, things that people could
wrap their head around was about 70% of my menu, and then 30% of
my menu is always the experimental things that I
wanted to. Okay.
Let's, how are people ready for this, you know, in this
particular market and a lot of times, you know, when the Noma
book came out, I'll give you an example.
If you were doing no more food in the wrong market, like, I'm
just making this up, but if you're a Nebraska trying to do
the food, that Rene redzepi is doing, people might not be ready
for that. So it's important that you
understand your Market to, because, you know, I've been the
victim of that like, maybe, you know, trying to trying to punch
up and and People just aren't ready and then, you know, people
think what the hell are you serving me or this food doesn't
make sense, you know, it's the chef's ego on a plate.
So by the way, going back to a chef's PSA that I did a while
back Cooks. If you're going to put a new
dish on the menu at that, you invented make sure the chef
doesn't have the same cookbook and that's because, you know,
everyone always says, oh I got this like Chef, I want to do my
food, I want to have all these dish ideas and it's like, okay,
show me and they think that you don't have the same cookbook and
it's like I have that book. That's not your You stole it.
That's okay. Everyone does it, but don't say
it's your dish. So anyway, that's just that's
for people that don't think that you're the only one in the
kitchen reading books. Like this is the business that
were in your Chef is reading the same books that you're reading.
He's watching the shames. Same shows, you're watching her.
She and they are also following the same chefs that you're
following on social media. So, don't be surprised when they
already know where that dish came from.
Anyway, long story short don't do that.
So I'm going to wrap up, but I want to tell you how I would use
the creative process when I was a chef and I was writing menu.
So I've gone through several different methods to get
creative and I'm going to go through all of them with you.
Now, keep in mind a couple years back, I was the chef of a
restaurant. We worry did tasting menu, so
the food had to be pretty high level.
And, you know, I was trying to compete to be the best
restaurant in the city. So you know that type of food,
right? So you know again, Ten years
ago, it's tasty menu, Ferran Adria style.
Everyone wants to copy him and Renee.
So that's kind of where my head was at years later.
I think I pulled it back a little where I'm not doing that
type of food again. Now, I'm trying to do just good
food but not necessarily tasty menu style.
So the creative process for both was slightly different.
So the generic way when I need to get into creative zone for me
is I will usually put on like Classical music Bach, whatever,
something like that. So, are by Bach.
I'll put that on repeat and I just let it go.
I put my headphones on. I'm listening to that.
If I don't have headphones, I'm just listening to it.
You know, slightly low in the office.
A lot of people like to use binaural beats when they're
studying or whatever helps put you in a in a brainwave state,
which will accelerate your creativity and you know, if you
have, I Enter whatever you could find binaural beats that will be
good for study or creativity or whatever.
So, putting that on is good. I don't like to listen to music
with lyrics because I end up singing the song in my head.
So if I'm listening to only Built 4 Cuban Linx by Raekwon, I
just, you know, I start banging out glaciers of ice or something
and I'm like, oh no, I need to be banging out recipes.
Not hip-hop lyrics, so no lyrics for me, I sit down.
I usually sip something caffeinated, in my case, I'm
usually writing menus in the afternoon.
So it's usually like a green tea.
I drink coffee in the morning. Green tea in the afternoon, so
I'll drink something, caffeinated, put my headphones
on, I like to chew gum. I've read before, that chewing
gum stimulates, you mentally mint gum in particular is what I
like. And I've also heard that
peppermint or spearmint is good for creativity and memory and
then I have this other thing that I do which is a recent
thing, there's these things called, I think they're called
boom, boom sticks, and they're like scented sticks that I will,
you know, smell and taste. Like there's some that smell
like spearmint or whatever cinnamon and I smell them and
I'd like puts my brain, okay? It's time to focus and the
reason I have all these anchors is because it reminds me that,
okay, you need to be in the creative Zone.
This is what you need to do. And so every time I'm doing
that, my brain just, you know, it's switches.
Okay, you're in creative mode and then I just start writing
ideas. I just I just think.
And I just write, and I just think, and I just right?
So that's what I do to get creative.
Now, I've had other methods in the past where you might go to a
museum to look, Look at different art.
I might say, okay, I need to get inspired by different colors.
So if I wanted to create a red dish, what would I do or a blue
dish? Or I might go by the color
spectrum, red orange yellow, green blue indigo, violet white,
whatever, something like that. So I'll follow the color wheel.
Then I might do food. And again, these are things that
I challenge myself with Jose. How do I do food with inverse
colors? So like purple and yellow or red
and green. So, Let's let's make a dish of
inverse colors. Then I'll think how do I add
texture and contrast to the dish.
So, how do I make the dish, hot and cold?
How do I make it, you know, crunchy and smooth.
So, I will start thinking, you know, some of these things is
there is there some sort of inverse correlation on the dish
that, that will make it interesting.
Other things that I will think about is I will think about the
season and a lot of people will think, okay, you know, you know,
five seasons. So spraying, you know, summer
Indian summer fall winter. So if you go through the five
seasons and then, you know, okay and spring we're going to morels
and asparagus or whatever, but I try to say, okay?
No. Let's let's get past the morals
and asparagus, like, what else is spring spring is like,
renewal rebirth. I think pastel colors like
Easter temperature, change transition.
Okay? Now those are the things that
are going through my mind like how do I create a dish?
That will Encompass more than just morels and asparagus or
spring lamb. It's like okay.
Yeah that's that's the Obvious. But let's go deeper.
How do we go deeper and think about spring differently.
And then I used to challenge my team and this was a good
exercise when I would get into a creative process with a group.
So let's just say there's four people in the group, I would say
everyone has to come up with 10 dishes and and I would assign
them all different. I would say.
Okay, you're assigned spring and the color green, your assigned
spring and the color red, and your assigned.
Spring and I want you to think cold and hot so I would give
them very specific parameters and then they'd come back and
say, okay these are the dishes that I came up with and that
would that would help because if you have again let's just say
you have four people and maybe myself included.
So let's say it's five. Then at the end of it, you'd
have 50 dishes, right? If everyone just comes up with
ten at the end of it, you have fifty dishes and maybe you only
need 10 for the menu. So we have 50 dishes and then we
just sit in a room, it's like, okay, what do we think about
this? Yes, no, that would be good, but
let's do it with this. That and so we all start
bouncing ideas off each other. It was, it was really great
brainstorming when we would approach things that way.
And then one of the last things I'll talk about when I would
think about creativity that would help me.
And this was something that when I just started something that I
learned but also started noticing patterns in cooking is
like, you've heard the expression.
If it goes together at grows together, that used to be on a
voicemail for one of The Voice. Gordon.
I should say, for one of the places that I worked for, they
said, oh, Chef Andre. And I Tara says, if it grows
together goes together as like, everyone's always used to
associate that with me. It was like, I didn't invent
that. I think that's been around for
years, but someone quoted me saying that somewhere, so, that,
that became the thing. And every time I'd bump into a
friend. Oh, you're the goes together,
grows together guys. Like no, I don't think that was
me. I think that was like, you know,
every Chef that came before me, but whatever.
So anyway, long story short I would look at dishes, so let's
just take sushi, for example. So if you look at the seaweed in
the sushi and then you look at the fish and then you look at
the Wasabi, like all these things grow in the dark.
So it's okay, let's try and pair things that grow in the dark or
let's try and pair things that grow on bushes or let's try and
pair things that grow high up on trees and the things that would
eat. Those things high up in trees.
So I would, I would start thinking about that.
So it's like, okay, what would a rabbit eat?
And I don't really know if rabbits eat carrots.
I think they do, but it's like, okay, if we have a rabbit dish,
I imagine like a rabbit. Carrot and what else would they
have? You know, they might be eating
some lettuce. Okay.
So how do we combine that onto a dish?
And then I would also sometimes and this is this is no longer
relevant. But at one point I had an
exercise where every dish needed to look like something and that
was like there have to be certain shapes on the dish.
There would have to be certain textures and there had to be a
focal point. So I'll just give you an
example. Every dish had a main focal
point and that was the star of the dish where there was a
protein or vegetable or whatever.
But let's let's just say in this case it was Lamb for whatever
reason, and so it's okay. Lamb is the focal point and then
we needed to have to vegetables. So let's just say that lamb had
carrots and asparagus for the sake of conversation, so it'd be
like, okay, it's going to it's got to have carrots and those
carrots need to be prepared, at least two different ways.
So I might do a cooked carrot and then I might do a carrot
puree. And then the other vegetable I'd
say it needs to have a raw preparation and a cooked
preparation. So I say okay, There might be
like shavings of asparagus and there might be asparagus tips
that are cleaned up on the plate.
So it's okay, we have a raw preparation, we have a cooked
preparation, two different vegetables and then we need to
include some sort of herb. So we were talking about
nasturtiums earlier with maybe put some nasturtiums on the
plate or whatever and then it would have a sauce.
So every dish had to follow this similar format where I was like,
okay, two types of vegetables, two different preparations on
each vegetable and herb sauce and a focus and That was like, I
picked that up from a cookbook and I won't say which one but
actually there's probably several you could notice a lot
of cook books that were written in a certain era.
That all kind of had that similar style is like, okay, I'm
picking up and then there was the same shapes like circles.
So you know, shaved coins of carrot, radish, whatever
footballs, so you know, that was the canal or, you know, the
dollop on the plate and then what I used to call like
branches. So there was always like
straight lines or branches of stuff.
So Those shapes were always on a plate.
So maybe it was like the slice of lamb tenderloin, that would
look like a circle carrots that were sliced into coins, you
know, football shaped like a canal of carrot puree or
whatever you get the idea. So I would check all these
things off. So, anyway, long story short,
that was my creative process, that's how I did things.
So hopefully you could take some of what I said.
If you don't have a creative process and may be incorporated
into yours, Maybe not, maybe, I don't know, maybe you don't need
one, maybe you're super creative.
I've already anyway that's going to be it for the show today.
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