Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs, PSA
podcast. I'm your host Andhra natera.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about my chef kitchen
pet peeves. Stay tuned.
So before we get started, let me give you a little bit of an
update. Well, I'm going on, I'm actually
rushing to get this done because I'm on my way to hot muck.
So hot luck is a big food Grazer events that happens here in
Austin Texas. There's a lot of chefs under and
anyway I'm going to go check it out.
See what it's all about. Walk around.
Eat some food talks and shit meats and chefs have a good
time. Actually, I'm not even sure who
the lineup is singing it, which probably I should probably know
who's there. So I took a quick second pause,
and looked at the list of who's there.
I actually, I feel guilty, a lot of good chefs.
They're just looking through the list, you got here in Austin.
A lot of my friends, you know, for me, Noona is Kevin Bacon to
bail Edgar Rico, James Beard, award winner, John teas are from
Dallas, Misty. Morris Mason from Turkey in the
whoop, Masha, my bailey. Hayward looks like it's an
All-Star lineup. I'm looking forward to going to
that. And anyway, Prince food Pockets
bichette speaking of cooking, something that I have coming up
that I should probably inform everyone.
I'm doing a guest Chef dinner part of Texas, Food & Wine and
lives in Dallas. Texas on June 26th, tickets will
probably be live next week. I'll post it on Chefs PSA and
also Texas. We don't want to lives will also
be promoting it. It's going to be four chefs
doing a five-course dinner so myself.
Anastasia Quinones who's the host Chef, she's from Jose and
Dallas Green Restaurant. If you haven't been Philip Speer
from comedor here in Austin, Rick Lopez from La condesa James
Beard nominated shock. So, anyway, Illuminati chefs, we
will be there. I think it'll be a good time for
a good cause helping support, Texas will win Alliance.
So if you're happy to be a Dallas and you want to try some
good food, You're Gonna want to go to that dinner again.
I'll share more details later. I also just published the bad
sooo good. Off book, I've ordered my copy,
it's on paper back, I haven't gotten it yet.
So before I go tell everyone, you still get it.
I want to see a person and having physical copy in my hand,
but the e-book is done. You can find that on gumroad,
it's on Amazon as well. The audiobook is being produced
as we speak. If you're going to get the
e-book, I should probably mention I would advise you to
get it on gun Road versus Amazon Kindle personal preference.
I think it's formatted a little cleaner on gumroad versus how
Kindle slightly. Us towards it.
But if you're a Kindle reader, I think you could download ebook
on gumroad and also read on your Kindle.
So that's my advice. If you're an e-book reader,
that's the way to go at a, an audiobook listener, give me some
time, it's probably about two weeks out, it's being produced
right now, if your traditional, and you'd like reading with your
eyes, as they say old school, if you're old school and you've had
with your eyes instead of your ears, the paperback version is
out. I'm excited about this book.
It's a continuation of the leadership series of the
leadership series. For me, would be culinary
leadership. Fundamentals, kitchen are Of
war. And then this one good shoe bad
Chef, or should I said that wrong?
Bad suit. Good shot.
And the format of the book is the conversation and I've
touched on this before but it's really good.
It answers the majority of the questions that get asked to me
as a chef. It's all so many questions that
I used to ask my chef when I was on the come-up.
Inspired by a lot of the cigar Sunday q&as that I do.
I think you'll enjoy the book. A lot of people that I sent the
book out to, to proofread and give me feedback on have all
said, it's their favorite book of all the ones that I've
written that. It's the most applicable to
Everyday scenarios that they use.
I will say it's probably my second favorite.
I really like the kitchen Heart Of War.
I really like the kitchen art of work but I understand.
Like kitchen heart of Wars, high-level strategic thinking
and it might not make sense to everyone, especially, depending
on where you are in your career. It's a really heavy book and
it's very philosophical. This one is much more practical
and realistic to most situations that you're going to encounter
in the kitchen. Like we go over like how do you
how do you deal with managing friends?
How do you deal with it when someone on your team is better
than you and your their false. So I cover a lot of those
questions that people have anxiety over that Honestly,
there's no books out there talking about, so I want to make
sure that I cover it. Because everything that I'm
doing here is really to arm you to be a better show. speaking of
arming, you to be a better chef, One last update, I should also
say that the to audio books for line, cook survival, manual, and
kitchen Art of War had to be redone.
They were taken down by a CX due to an issue.
I have to redo them, they're done there, have already been
recorded and edited another just going through the approval
process again. So hopefully, those will be up.
So that's why that book was taken down for a couple of days
due to the issue. It's being redone.
Anyway, it should be out. Hopefully, by the time you're
listening to this podcast or early next week, right now we
are Are in the week of May 27th, so that's actually what I'm
recording this 2023. If you're listening to this in
the future, Anyway. Speaking of making you a better
cook. What I want to talk about today,
is Kitchen, pet peeves, at least my kitchen pet peeves.
I used to have a nickname in the kitchen.
They would call me Chef picky because I was so picky about
everything. And that's just how my mind is
wired. I'm hyper attention to detail.
I noticed everything if you know me in real life, some people say
I'm fidgety because I'm always looking around, looking up,
looking down, who's coming in the door?
Sit with my back here. Anyway, I'm very fidgety in real
life. I have a ton of attention to
detail. When I'm looking at things, and
that's how I run the kitchen. So, needless to say, I'm very
picky, and I was very picky as a chef, and so, I have a lot of
pet peeves, but a lot of my pet peeves, stem from just good
habits in the kitchen. And I just my pet peeves, right,
you could go, you go ask a lot of chefs what their pet peeves,
are a lot of the ones that I'm going to cover.
Today are going to show up on their list also.
So today I want to talk about what are my top 10 Kitchen, bad
habit, pet, peeves. That just kind of annoy me when
I see them as a chef, when I'm working at the kitchen, let's
start with my number one, pet peeve, and I hadn't talked about
this one before. So I have two videos that I've
done on social media about like bad line cook habits and, you
know, they're short and choppy and I don't really expanded like
bad line Cooks do this. But the one thing that I've
never said, I never even done a PSA on this, because I haven't
figured out how to word it. So, at least it's kind of like
in Arresting because I think this just might be a me thing.
But sometimes, when you're in the kitchen and your plating and
as the chef, you might be working and you have your
spoons, or your tweezers, or your whatever utensils, or maybe
you're using these things, your fingers, God's tweezers, AKA
your finger, and you ask someone to pass you something and they
pass your like let's just say it's in a deli container so you
don't use the slang Deli container that would be like a
plastic quart container with a little Or whatever the container
may be. So there you say pass through
this and you go and they pass it to you, but it still has the lid
on it that to me, is like that. Like, this is my number one pet
peeve, there's nothing more infuriating.
And when you're like, focused in the zone, head down plating and
someone passes, you a jelly container or whatever and it has
the lid on. It's like it takes you one
second like I clearly I need it for plating.
You see me played in as the shop And you're going to pass it to
me with the lid on, like, fuck that annoys me, I just I used to
get, I used to get so frustrated with that anyway.
I laugh about it now because it's like I'm Chillin, I'm not
frustrated about that, but when I was in the kitchen, I was
frustrated about it. So nothing would nothing would
frustrate me more than someone passing me, a deli that still
had the lid on it when I needed it for played him like a bad
habit. So it's like, if you watch those
shows like dr. Scalp, and you're passing things
to the shop Like a Surgeon, for all the things.
Need. But what I'm saying is if you're
ever working with your Chef there's a Cadence that someone
that's worked with a chef for a long time.
Like you a sous-chef in a chef or a line cook in a sous chef.
Like they have a certain Rhythm like they're just moving and
they're handing each other stuff and it's really beautiful to
watch. So I have a lot of chefs that
I've worked with for a long time and they just know like I'm just
reaching for stuff in there handing it to me without even
without me, even having to ask and they know is like the lids
are off the Plastics removed. It's just set and ready.
Maybe it's on a small sheet tray that's already sitting.
Ting. Put a little paper towel or
server yet. So it's training and then you
pass it. It's like smooth and there's
this like kitchen karate thing going on.
Anyway point being chefs PSA, if you're listening to this, take
the lid off the deli when someone asks you for playing.
So that's a huge pet peeve of mine.
Pet peeve number to go for holes.
Now if you don't know what a gopher hole is and some people
call rat holes or it's basically when you get the plastic and
you're like too lazy to remove the plastic from the container.
So you pop it with your finger. So you could like, stick your
dirty hands in there to grab whatever.
Like that's so lazy to me. It blows my mind that the amount
of time it takes to remove the plastic is like you're going to
say, literally, like one second to remove the plastic versus
popular, it's like you have to take it off anyway, when you re
wrap it, like the worst thing you've seen this before, right?
They The plastic and then they wrap it again.
So they've wrapped the popped plastic like fucking big pack
Loop. Nothing is like, like, what the
fuck are you thinking, like, why why gopher holes?
Stop just stop, don't do gopher holes.
If you're cooking, you're doing, gopher holes.
Like let me tell you, nothing screams hack.
More than that, stop doing that shit my pet peeve.
Number three is tala Calvino. We've covered this on Chefs PSA,
many times, fold your towels and It's neat.
It's orderly for me when I worked in the kitchen.
I have like a towel folded on my side.
I have a towel folded on my station, right?
I mean that's that's pretty much what you, hey, two to three
towels on the line. My towels are always nicely
folded. When they arrive in the kitchen,
everything looks have a towel folding party and Let's Fold
them. Put them in a nice little bin,
put the lid on it, put them away and everyone in the kitchen
folks are towel, right? I used to walk around, it was
like one of my things I'd like him.
Like Dad walking around constantly folding towels for
all my cooks and they would look at it.
So that's how I trained them like, I would say, fold your
towel and then I would fold it with them.
And I would constantly be coming up at folding towels while
having conversations with them and they just knew like, oh
shit, here comes Chef, he's gonna fold the towel, so they
would always keep him. Funny story, I wrote about this
in the book. I had all of my Cooks.
Oh, by the way, for kitchens that say, we can't fold, our
towels were too busy. It's bullshit.
Because I literally, I don't flex this a lot, but I literally
ran the largest 4-star hotel in the world with the most amount
of employees and the most amount of Revenue coming through it in
a secondary Market, which is Austin, Texas.
And we all folded our Pals, we all ran it like a high-end
kitchen and people would say well we can do it like how the
hell did I do it that right. Was I just that lucky.
No, it's just. You gotta try.
So one day I go into the kitchen and I want to test my Cooks.
I want to see if this is ingrained in them already.
So I go and I get some towels and I just kind of leave them
unfolded haphazardly thrown around and the cook is watching
me and they're watching me. Do this under like Shaq really
just throwing towels like holding us accountable.
Honorable to fold towels, but yeah, he's just throwing them
and I just was having a conversation with someone.
I left the towels there and then I walked away.
And then one of the cooks soon, as I walked away came right over
folded him, how we do so thirds and then in thirds, and then
stack them up neatly, and I'm watching them do this and I'm
like, they didn't want to say anything to me.
It's like, well, and I understand why they're like, we
can't correct Shah which they could have, but they didn't.
But it bothered them so much that they went and folded them
for me because they couldn't stand the sight of it, right?
I had, I had ingrained in the culture, so much of
professionalism and Perfection like that they were now starting
to become OCD like me. I don't know if that's a good or
bad thing, maybe he'll CDs about doing but anyway, OCD has worked
out for me in my career and I think I don't think I'm the only
Chef out there that Supper's from OCD.
And that's actually the secret ingredient that has made them
better pet peeve. Number 4, Wiping dirty hands on
an apron like just apron etiquette in general, like you
get this beautiful apron. You spend all this money on it
or maybe like, in my kitchen. We'd where we were blue aprons
and they're expensive, right? You want to treat your apron?
Well, you want to look like a professional.
So seeing them, like, they're covered in flour or they just
have Filthy Hands. And then they grab their apron,
they wash their hands. And they wipe their hands on
their apron, where their hands are greasy.
So they start rubbing their like what's wrong with you people.
We respect the apron. I used to hate that, like, I
told don't wipe your hands on a pair like they would know.
Like don't wipe your hands on your apron.
Pet Pete, do not do that. Apron etiquette, don't go into
the walk-in and fill up your apron full of onions.
And the walk out because you were too late to bring a
container with you to the walk-in like respect to apron,
don't wear it to the bathroom. I cannot even believe sometimes
that I gotta say that like don't wear your apron to the bathroom.
There's nothing more disgusting than someone who wears their
apron to the bathroom. Like the juice, just slip it off
to the side or do you use to anyway?
Use your imagination apron etiquette pet peeve.
Number 5, not taking the tape off a container before.
It goes to the dish station. By the way, this station not
dish pit. I like to say, only vipers and
snakes working armpits. Like a pejorative right?
You no one wants to work in a pit.
Yep. Give the pantry station.
You have the grill station, you have the dish station to term of
respect to the people that work in the dish station.
So I don't like to say dish pit I would like to make it a
movements that we should stop saying dish.
Put start saying dish station, that's what confessional.
Anyway, I digress not taking the tape off something, a container
a deli, a sheep and whatever the case may be take the tape off
before you send it to the Station, respect the steward and
team, the porters, the dishwashers.
There are some of the hardest working people in the kitchen
and when you do that like it's more work for them, sometimes
it's sometimes difficult to take off.
After the fact, it gets clogged in the dish machine and it only
takes you a second. Bad habit 101 if your kitchen
right now. Allows you to send things to the
dish station without taking the tape off.
Change that standard. Make sure everyone in your
kitchen, takes the tape off before it goes to the dish
station. Let's do better Chef right.
But we can just simple it's easy to do by Numbers number 6
callbacks. So with this means like when you
call something out and you're like, how long on that?
Like let's say you're the chef expedited.
A, how long on table 20? They say working hard Chef like
nothing is more frustrating than giving some Ambiguous answer
that makes no sense like when you're the expeditor, or you're
running the pass on the line, you're coordinating a lot of
things, you might be coordinating.
The next table, there might be multiple cooks that you're
trying to coordinate with for plating and then you ask
someone, how long on something, and then they say some bullshit
answer, right? The only thing that I really
want to hear is a quantifiable unit of time.
The time it takes for light to cross, the width of an electron
is all I need to know, right? Quantifiable Unit of time,
period, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 30 seconds, 10 seconds.
Whatever the case, maybe 10 minutes, I'd rather know the
truth. Then you lie to me and say
working hard, almost like the only thing that matters is time
because there's a lot of coordination going on when
you're running the pass and you're working the expediter
station. So we remove that from your
vernacular and only have time and everyone is better for it,
right? The operation will run much
smoother when You use time my next pet peeve is shit chives.
Like I know there's this, this Instagram page.
What's it called rate? My chives.
You know, there's a like other the 10 and this is a whatever,
right? I'm glad this Instagram page
exists because shitty chives, it's like, it's a pet peeve of
mine, like it should should it be on the line, right?
You should know how to cut chives and there's a lot of
different tricks to it, like maybe roll it with a damp paper
towel, or maybe you put a rubber band around them, but the trick
is, is just to care. Check them and use a sharp
knife. Like that.
That's the real secret when it comes to cutting chives.
As use a sharp knife, pay attention and care, but a lot of
people will bundle Them up and like I said, he's a damp paper
towel, whatever the case may be, but do something treat your
chives with respect like chefs are funny because they judge
other chefs hard. Like they're like fucking
looking at your mise en place and they're like other tribes
are shit shit show. I don't know why we do that.
We're just very judgy people in general, right?
Swanny a chives go a long way. So shit chives on the line like
I'd get frustrated. Like how did this end up on the
wind? It should have been the trash
should have been turned into Reno.
Boil or something else, right. But not, not for garnishing.
And the reason that is, is because normally shit or shit.
I've slowly good. Chives, beautifully cut.
Chives are some form of garnish, that's getting tossed into a
salad, or maybe into a sauce or something like that.
So, Precision is important, measure twice, cut once.
That's the expression, we digress, next pet, peeve of mine
eighty-sixing, things after the fact, and what I mean by that is
when you 86 something because you didn't count it.
And so, an order comes in, let's just say, we're talking about a
steak and then ticket per state comes in, you say, I don't have
that and as the chef Eli, why are you letting me know that
now? Why didn't you let me know when
you sold will ask one but I don't know.
Okay, so I've done a chef's PSA on this couch, everything,
count, everything, count, everything, everything, yeah,
everything literally count, everything County, every single
piece of chili that you have under station.
You shouldn't be 86 in anything. After the fact, it's like It's
like the mark of an unprofessional like it's Amateur
hour earlier 8016, things after the fact.
So huge pet peeve count before know how many have like a lot of
restaurants. They're able to put that into
the point-of-sale system, so they know like there's a
countdown before before you sell your last one.
The other thing I'd like to do when I was a chef.
Is I would sometimes Reserve like, two portions before you
86, because inevitably, someone would order it.
After the fact or a food critic walked.
And we also had like the Food critic portion, which was like,
the most beautiful portion of the day, that one always gets
reserved for the food critic table.
If they ever showed up, it's the Blogger table long.
I don't think food critics are, as I don't know, the people
still re food reviews. I don't I used to care a lot
about food reviews, I don't know if I'm doing one.
Well, anyway, I'm gonna side tangent, I had a friend, I won't
say who and I'm a friend that's what celebrity chef and texted
me the other day and says celebrity chefs are dead.
They're done and I'm like he's a celebrity chef.
Why is he texting me that he said?
What do you mean? He's like, no one cares about
the celebrity chef anymore. What people care about now is
Bringing money to ownership. What value do you bring like
that? That is that is bigger than the
celebrity show. I don't know.
Maybe he's right. Maybe I should do a whole
episode on celebrity chefs anyway where we at?
Oh yeah, 86 next. That P stating on counters as
the expression. Go.
Counters are four glasses, not for asses when I was a young
cook. I didn't know like my shop was
was pretty hard on me. Like, I couldn't put, you know,
sometimes metal stainless tables have like a shelf underneath or
sometimes they just have a metal bar underneath.
I would put my foot on. And come by like take your foot
off, that extend up straight. So a fucking how he's had to
work again prim and proper. So I put your feet on the table.
No, no resting your leg. No, no sitting on a counter
though. So, one day, it's after service,
I'm just chilling with the cooks, talking shit, whatever,
Post Service were just hanging out and I happened to then get
up on the counter, sit down ass on the counter.
And so, the chef is walking, and he's coming around the corner
and he sees me and I didn't think anything of this, right?
I was just out of there. May be a sous chef made a
cookout and I was young. Those early 20s and the chef
sees me and he says get your ass off the counter right now and
like fucking yelled at me in front of everyone.
I was so embarrassed I jumped off those like oh shit, he's
like your ass is not sanitary, Do not sit on a, Do not sit on a
work surface like that stuck with me.
Number one, Because I was embarrassed everyone else but to
I had never thought about was like oh yeah your ass shouldn't
go, you're prepping food and so people that have been in the
industry for wild like remember this if you're new to the
industry you might not but years ago on Iron Chef America.
Bobby Flay was battling Morimoto.
Iron Chef Morimoto, Iron, Chef Bobby Flay.
They were having a battle and at the end of it, Bobby Flay stood
up. Got on the counter, stood on
this cutting board, raised his hands like you won and they were
interviewing Morimoto afterwards.
You should. Look this up on YouTube.
I'm sure. You can find it here,
interviewing Morimoto afterwards, it was pissed about
it like he's not a chef. He was telling Shannon this
about Bobby Flay, I'm paraphrasing, but it was
something like he's not a chef, he's got a real shot.
And I remember talking about that with my chef at the time
and he's like you never disrespect The Cutting Board,
never disrespect the kind of bored like I understood but I
did it really understood like the tradition and especially
like Morimoto being the man that he is liked very disrespect, I'm
sure. They squashed the beef, right?
But the point is like, He's right, that's cut in the
kitchen, cutting boards, or sacred, counters are sacred,
that's where you prepare food. Don't sit on the stainless steel
table. Also, don't put dirty ass boxes
on the stainless steel table. Like, those boxes are stored in
warehouses on the floor with rats little DC's, right.
Then you go put that on the counter, like don't do that, but
that he would put boxes in the kitchen.
If we can, if that's an option, go ahead don't even bring them
in the kitchen. Last pet peeve for today is
knowing something is bad, but deliberately deciding to serve
it. Like maybe you're the chef and
you didn't get a chance to take their everything or aspect
everything in an order goes out. And it comes back and they say
hey the guest said, it's bad, you want to taste it and then
you taste it was like rancid or something like that and then you
ask the cook, did you know it was bad?
Did you taste it? Yeah, I tasted.
Did you know that bad? Yeah.
Why the fuck did you serve it that blows my mind and believe
it or not like you? Everyone see it?
Well, that did. It does happen.
Trust me. Maybe you're a good cook and you
don't do that. But the thing is, is like, the
reality is, there's bad cooks in the kitchen, there's new cooks
in the kitchen and sometimes they don't know.
And they will say Serve something that they know is off
because they're hoping, it doesn't get caught.
It's like the path of least resistance.
Maybe no one will notice it on a Sleek, it in like, that is a
huge pet peeve of mine. If you know, it's right, fix it
right? Unacceptable to serve something
to have guessed deliberately knowing it's wrong, huge pet,
peeve of mine. Anyway, those are by top ten pet
peeves, when it comes to a work in a kit, trust me.
I got a lot more. But anyway, those are my top 10
pet peeves when it comes to working out of Chechen.
Being a chef from things that I would look for in any way.
Show over, if you want to support the show, go to Chef
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The all the books, the new one. Bad to good, chef kitchen.
Art of War. Culinary leadership
fundamentals. Like look survival manual.
How not to be the biggest idiot in the kitchen.
If you're a video learner, there is a video course on there for
culinary leadership fundamentals.
I go and in-depth war on food cost of pink like that.
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