Hello chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
I'm your host Andre Natera. On today's episode, we have the
Angry Brunch episode. Stay tuned.
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now it's not going to be published strictly ebook and
audiobook. When I was recording this
audiobook, so originally I wanted to do the narration.
Obviously I do the podcast so I know how to edit audio, but when
I played it back and listened to myself.
So anyway, here here's the story.
First time I did it I forgot to turn on the mic, so I read the
whole audiobook and then when I went back to play it, it didn't
record anything. So that kind of pissed me off
initially. And so then when I re recorded
it and listened to it, it sounded terrible.
You know, some people, what people don't understand is for
people that are voice actors or read audiobooks, that's a skill.
And I quickly realized it's a skill that I do not have.
I sound like I did when I was 8 years old, standing up in the
middle of class, stumbling, trying to read the words that
the teacher wanted me to say the page out of the book.
It's not me. So anyway, it's not my voice.
I do a quick little intro, but it's not me.
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You can get all that, but let's get on to the show.
We digress. I could have easily titled this
episode 1000 Reasons Why Chefs Hate Brunch.
I almost did. Maybe I will.
Who knows? Before we get started, I need to
make sure everyone knows fuck brunch.
Let's get that out of the way. I absolutely despise brunch, and
there's nothing anyone can say in the comments that's going to
change my mind. Now, I should say that
everywhere I've ever worked, I've served brunch.
And I understand it's a good model for a lot of people and a
lot of people do like brunch. A lot of people serve brunch and
they're very successful at it. And a lot of people love working
that brunch shift and love cooking eggs and that's that's
you. That's not me.
The expression I like to use is there's two types of people,
people that hate brunch and people that are wrong.
So there's nothing you're going to say that's going to convince
me that I should love brunch because I don't.
Actually, I take that back. The only way I like brunch is
when you're cooking it and not me.
So I'll go eat your brunch. I just don't want to cook your
brunch. How about that?
Now, when I said 1000 reasons why I don't like brunch, or I
should say 1000 reasons why chefs don't like brunch, I
literally could probably list 1000 reasons.
But we're not going to get to all those reasons today.
For me, the ideal brunch in a restaurant starts at 5:00 PM and
serves the dinner menu. That's that's the best brunch
starts at 5:00 PM serves dinner. Ideal brunch.
I think like if you want to be a chef and you're thinking about
going to culinary school because you think you're going to go
work in these fancy restaurants and get your fancy dishes on the
menu and make your special. Before you do that go work a
brunch service. Make sure you really like this
because if you're like me, brunch will make you fall out of
love with of cooking pretty quick.
I'm I'm, I'm joking obviously. But if I had started out at
brunch, which actually now that I think about it, I did start
out at brunch. Maybe that's why I don't like
brunch so much. When I went when I was a young
cook, what we used to do for Sunday brunch is different what
from what you see a lot of days in today's Sunday brunch world.
So it's a smaller menu, egg poachers and, you know, maybe a
steak and there's fries and there's truffle oil everywhere.
But when I started, I was the old school Sunday brunch, which
had mirrors and carving stations and chauffeur and salmon, Kubiak
and beef wallingtons and a cake buffet.
And the Garde Monterey used to have to make these mirrors with
pates and on crude. That's the brunch that I used to
have to do. And we used to have to shine the
mirrors up with vinegar anyway. Maybe.
Maybe that is why I don't like brunch.
And a lot of restaurants do serve brunch.
And by the way, there is some sarcasm in this, so understand
that I I do see the business model why people need to have
brunch in their restaurant. It does make money.
It's an extra meal period. A lot of places are extremely
busy for lunch. I should say brunch.
You can make a lot of money doing it.
It's usually lower food cost for the most part if you've designed
a good menu. So I get the case for brunch, so
let's get that out of the way. I understand if you're a
business owner, you're a restaurant owner, you're a chef
that has to do brunch. I understand, but I don't have
to like it. So what's the best part about
working brunch? I would say probably telling
everyone how much you hate brunch.
That's the best part. Spending the day complaining
about how much you dislike brunch is the best part about
working brunch. If you've ever heard of the
Orboros, which is a dragon or a snake that's consuming its own
tail, sometimes you see it as a an Infinity symbol.
It like it represents, like the cycle of life and death the
Uroboros. That's brunch because a lot of
times if you don't have your menu planned, well, dinner
service suffers because you're prepping for brunch.
And so you lose a little bit of your limited team because you
have to displace people to go prep up for the brunch service
the next day, and then brunch service suffers because you
didn't pull enough people off dinner to support brunch.
It's like a vicious cycle that people go through.
Now if you're in a kitchen that's staffed up and well
prepared and you have a prep team that's dedicated to that,
or all your menu items crossover, so you don't need to
prep extra for brunch, you're smart, well done.
Congratulations, you're a Unicorn.
Most people don't do it that way.
And by the way, I should add in that one of my favorite songs is
Brunch on Sundays by Nas and that should be the anthem.
So I post it on Instagram all the time.
That's the anthem. Shout out to Nas and Escobar
cigars. A lot of chefs get caught in
their own mind when it comes to creating brunch menus because
they think they have to not repeat anything on any other
menus. So they prep a menu entirely for
the weekend, what I call building a church for Easter
Sunday. You wouldn't do that.
It's like pulling on all nighter for a test that gets called off
by, you know, 3:00 PM the next day and then everything gets
thrown, thrown away in the trash like you.
You cram, you study, you prep, you make all this food and then
you don't sell it. You never prep just enough for
brunch. You either prepped way too much
and you're wasteful, or you didn't prep enough and you ran
out of eggs or bacon. And by the way, you only need to
run out of eggs or bacon once for brunch to never do that
again. I was a chef of a restaurant and
we ran out eggs and spinach, I think.
I think it was eggs and spinach for Sunday brunch and it was
like, noon. The restaurant's packed and I'm
working the expediter and I had to stop.
I had to pull someone in to cover the expediter for me.
They had to run to the grocery store down the street, literally
sprinting to get eggs and spinach that we needed for
brunch. I I wiped them out of eggs.
I remember the cashier used to know me.
They were they were laughing because like, oh, brunch.
I said, yeah, brunch. You only need to do that one
time. I never did it again.
Everyone has to make that mistake.
If you haven't made that mistake, it's coming.
Maybe, I don't know. Hopefully not.
But realistically, it probably is.
And then you deal with the tired staff.
Now, this is assuming that you don't have an AM and PM staff
because a lot of places, they're serving dinner and then they're
turning right back around and serving brunch.
So it's that cloak. And they close and then they
open, they're tired. And some of them say, you know
what, I'm still going to go out and have a good time tonight.
It's Saturday. I'm going to go out and have
some drinks. I'm going to be hungover and I'm
going to crawl in to work the next day and try and execute
brunch service Wolf of Wall Street style.
Or there's that person who did that anyway and then called off.
By the way, everyone knows you're lying.
You went out with us the night before, everyone saw you have
too many drinks and then the next day you got a cold and then
you're back Monday and it's like, oh it's just a 24 hour
bug. I guess I'm, I guess I'm better
now or you're 3 hours late because of traffic.
Like, oh, I I hit that 6:00 AM traffic on Sunday.
Now I I get it. Some people are going to be
like, well, in LA there's traffic all the time or, you
know, whatever city you happen to be in, there's always
traffic. In my city, True, there's some
cities that there's always traffic, but most cities,
because not everyone lives in LA.
Most cities there's no traffic at 6:00 AM You could make it to
work pretty quick and you could predict the traffic.
You're not going to be stuck in traffic for three hours.
You probably just forgot to set your alarm.
And no one believes your story. Everyone knows your line.
No one's going to call you on it.
So I don't know why we don't call people out when everyone
knows it. It's like, I know you're lying.
You know you're lying. You know I know you're lying,
but we're not going to address it.
And what happens inevitably during brunch?
You know brunch is busy. It's chaotic.
You don't have enough prep space for your eggs and your pancake
batter, and you buy all this inventory that you only need for
two days a week and your kitchens packed.
And I don't know why, but brunch service always seems to make the
kitchen messier. Like, you'll walk into a kitchen
that's typically very clean, but during brunch, like there's
broken egg shells on the floor and pancake batter that spilled
in the cooler that someone forgot to clean up.
People forget to pull tickets those days.
Everyone just looks like they got their ass kicked at the end
of brunch service. And now if you're the PM cook
coming in and you see all these people that went through brunch
service, like they they just got out of a fight from the Octagon.
They look like they got their butts kicked.
They're like, who was it busy for brunch?
You guys have a good brunch service.
You know damn well they didn't have a good brunch service.
But you still got to ask, right? The PM person coming in, let's
say they're coming in at 3:00. Brunch service ends at three,
3:00, but they showed up a little bit early.
What happens? The host comes back.
I just sat 320 tops. They just walked in, right?
It's brunch is the only meal period where 320 tops are going
to walk in 5 minutes before closing, and they're going to
order mimosas, Benedict's crab cakes, half your menus, 86
because you thought you were closed.
It's that kitchen curse. As soon as you start throwing
everything away, that's exactly what they're going to order.
Don't throw it away. That's what they're going to
order. And you just walked in at 3:00
PM and you see this chaos and you're like, I'll be right back.
I'm going to go smoke a cigarette because you know
exactly that you're going to get sucked into this.
Now you're put behind for dinner.
Now dinner service for Sunday, It's typically, you know, in a
dirtier kitchen. It just has a different tempo.
Sunday dinner service after brunch does feel different.
It doesn't feel like your regular dinner services.
It's almost like the music's offbeat.
So if you don't serve brunch right now, you're lucky.
What you want to avoid is this conversation where the owner or
the executive chef sits you down and says I got a great idea,
What do you think of brunch? You've been warned.
You're going to love it as much as I do.
Like I said, I could have listed 1000 reasons why I don't like
brunch. I don't know if you agree with
me or not. Like I said, you're not going to
change my mind. I'm speaking for the people
today, those people that have to close and open and got screwed
over for brunch and all the mods came in and they want the egg
white omelet with no oil, which by the way is almost impossible
to make. If you made an egg white omelet
with no oil, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Everyone wants it their way. No one orders what's exactly on
the menu. The brunch cooks are fast,
right? Shout out to brunch cooks
everywhere who hold it down, who know 100 ways to cook an egg and
can interpret people that say I want it over easy, but I want
the egg yolks fully cooked. Shout out to those cooks right
there that hold it down. Can I get my gluten free toast?
I noticed you don't have avocado toast on the menu, but you have
avocados. Can we just get that?
It's like Burger King on brunch. They're going to make it their
way and you're not going to be able to do anything about it.
With all that being said, there's only one thing that's
worse than brunch and that's holiday brunch.
All right, chefs, rant over. You know what to do.
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