Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs, PSA
podcast. I'm your host Andre natera.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about what makes a chef.
So first, let's start with an update.
What have I been up to? I've had a busy week per usual.
I'm always hustling, but the culinary leadership
fundamentals, video courses done.
It's wrapped up its edited. It's ready to go.
The only problem I have with it is I need to find the right
platform where it's easy to download because it is quite a
large file. So when people want to watch the
video it's about I think it wrapped up being about an hour
and 20 minutes or so. But what I cover on that is you
know a lot of the same Same things that are in the book.
So food cost management cost mitigation building, a culture
dealing with difficult situations, social media
marketing, Etc, anyway, that'll be available.
As soon as I figure out what the right platform is to host it and
I'm still kind of working through some thoughts on that.
I'm not 100% sure. The other thing is the culinary
leadership. Fundamentals, audiobook is
pretty much wrapped up doing some final edits.
I'm hoping that that will be out.
I feel like I've been talking about this you know, for quite
some time but Open, that'll be up in a relatively short period
of time. But after that, I've been
thinking about writing another book and I know I just wrote
three books this year and maybe I need to take a break but, you
know, my mind moves rapidly. And if I had an idea for another
book, it would be things that I learned from my chef so lessons.
When I was a cook things that my chef taught me and just kind of
make a compendium of those thoughts and ideas and put them
into a book format, short short book, but more of a, more of a
story format. So, I don't know, I don't know
if I'll do that. I'm not announcing that.
I'm a start doing that because if I announced it then I have to
do it. I'm giving myself the option to
not do it. But if that's a book that you
guys would like to read, let me know and maybe they'll give me
the motivation to write it. If you all feel that, that's
something that you all would like to read anyway.
One of the thing I forgot to mention is on last week's
episode. I had mentioned that starting
this week. I would also do video on YouTube
and Spotify, so you could watch this.
Well, that clearly didn't happen.
I had a, I still have a little bit of a learning curve, if I'm,
if I'm being honest, I haven't fully figured it out and I want
to do a back back up, I'm sorry. I want to do a black background
behind me. So you do everyone gets tired of
seeing my Shelf anyway. So that's not ready yet.
I lied I made a mistake. I spoke too soon.
I thought it was ready to start doing video and audio, turns out
I'm not as tech savvy as I thought so.
Still a work in progress. Anyway, subject at hand this
week is what makes a chef. This is a very interesting
conversation for me because a lot of people Really throw the
term Chef around, pretty Loosely, and sometimes I throw
it around Loosely and I want to get into why throw it around
Loosely, but really, what makes a chef?
I'm going to start out with a story when I was in culinary
school. I remember, they were going
through lecture and I signed up for culinary school.
I honestly, I didn't even know what the word culinary meant.
I thought I was going to Chef school and some some guy.
Some annoying guy. Said, no, you're going to
culinary school. I said what's calling her and he
started laughing at me so you don't know what culinary is bro
your stupid anyway You know, what happened to that guy?
He was an idiot. Not me.
I was probably an idiot as well. I honestly didn't know what that
word is a big word for me. I was only like 16.
Anyway, long story short. I'm in culinary school and the
chef is up and he's giving lecture.
And he's talking about when we graduate upon graduation, we can
become certified cooks. And I remember I raised my hand
and I said Don't you made will be shops and he started laughing
and he said, absolutely not. Maybe in 10 years you'll be a
chef, but when you graduate, you're just going to be a cook
and you got to work your way up. Starting from the bottom.
Now, when I heard that, I was devastated because I thought
that graduating from culinary school made one a chef, I didn't
realize that that's not the case.
You don't graduate from culinary school in most cases and go
directly into becoming a chef But I didn't know that I was
just a kid. So being the young kid that I
was I was I was super bummed out.
Anyway, fast forward a couple of years later.
I'm working in this restaurant and one of my buddies leaves and
he goes to work at this golf club and he tells me, hey, there
looking for a head chef and I think you'd be perfect.
So I was like really, you know, and at this point in time, I may
be 18 years old. So I went to culinary school
when I was 17. So, I'm probably about 18 years
old at this time, and I remember, I went and I
interviewed for the job of executive chef, I'm only 18.
And they For to be the job and I'm like, holy shit.
I'm going to be the executive chef and I'm only 18.
I'm such a badass and I remember going to speak to my chef that I
worked for at the time and thinking, like, we're going to
be peers. We're equals because you're an
executive chef. I'm going to be an executive
chef, but the fact of the matter was that there was only one
other person in the kitchen. It would have been just me, and
my friend, and I would have been his boss.
So, that would have made me the executive chef and I went, and I
spoke to my chef about it, and he said, do you think you're
ready? Ready for a position like that
and I said, yeah, I'll be a chef and he's like, but you're not
really a chef, you don't have a lot of experience you have less
than one year out of culinary school.
And I thought to myself. Yeah, but I'll buy culinary
school taught me, everything that I need to know.
I'm ready, you know, I did, I didn't know better at the time
and he says, how much are they going to pay you?
Now, keep in mind, this is think 1995, 96.
I said you're there can pay me $7 an hour to be the executive
chef and he said, okay. Well maybe just wait a little
bit and I'll send you up to my friends restaurant.
You can learn some more, maybe some different things there.
Anyway, I didn't end up taking the job and in retrospect.
Thank God, I had no business calling.
Myself a chef when I was 18 years old but the reality is is
that would have made me a chef technically.
Technically on paper, I would have been a chef.
I would have been 18 years old. I would have had one other
employee and I would have been his boss and that would have
made me the chef. So when you think about what
really is a chef, it's the chief.
Right? That's that's kind of where the
word comes from. Its the head person, in the
kitchen, the head person in the kitchen, is the chef usually.
Okay, so let's let's, let's take this more as a, as an extreme
example. Ample, there's one chef and
everyone else's not the chef. Now I know there's layers execs.
Ooh, sous-chef Etc. But let's just use this as an
example. The chef is the chef everyone
else's not the chef and a lot of kitchens do run that way.
We're especially in the old days you only called the chef the
chef. So you'd say, you know, Chef
whatever, and if you dared address another Chef in the same
room, that was, maybe the sous chef and call them Chef in front
of the head. Chef boy, I've seen some chefs.
Their mind saying I'm the chef dammit, don't call them the
chef. I am the chef you know, big egos
in those days. So anyway I would not have been
a chef of that was the case but in general let's just use a
hypothetical situation. I've been an executive chef, I
think nine times in my career. So restaurants hotels country
clubs Etc. And in those nine times, let's
say, I did, you know, right now I'm not a chef I can't call
myself Chef, I don't run a brigade.
Wade, I've been a chef but right now I would say I'm not a chef
but maybe I'm your all's Chef, I'm a chef podcaster but let's
say I got a job and in the next job that I got, I'm the fry
cook. I couldn't walk into that job
right now and say call me Chef because everyone else would look
at me and be like you're not the chef, you're a fry cook.
So it doesn't really matter what I have done previously in my
career, if I start a job tomorrow and in that job, I am a
fry cook. Then I can't sit here and say I
am a chef, the chef is the title.
So the chef is the title of the person who runs the kitchen.
The job is cooking or running to kitchen, right?
I think that's an interesting way to view it because a lot of
people just, you know, throughout the term Chef
arbitrarily and I could say right now I have a hard time
calling myself a chef. A lot of times I say I'm a
former Chef because I'm not running a kitchen in to me is
Chef is someone that's running the kitchen.
Now with that being said, in a A lot of kitchens the term Chef is
used also as a sign of professionalism and respect
amongst everyone on the team. So if you go work in a
restaurant and let's just say it's a high-end restaurant and
everyone calls back and it's yes, chef.
Well, you'll start to notice that if someone else is calling
out orders, they might not be a chef and people will say yes,
chef. So maybe it's an expeditor who
has zero culinary experience and maybe there are front of the
house person and they just threw on whites for the day and
they're calling out a ticket. You'll hear people say yes, chef
now. Does that make them a chef?
I don't know. They're running service.
So you could argue that they are the chef.
A lot of times people will call themselves chefs and call.
Our people shops like I said, as a sign of respect.
So let's just say your the fry cook going back to my fry cook
example, they'll be times what they say.
You know, they'll walk up to the fry cook and they'll say Chef
even though I'm not, the chef will say, Chef this that and the
other this is Chef so-and-so and everyone is Chef and kitchens
like that. They do that.
Just out of a term of endearment, a term of respect.
They want to bring some professionalism into what they
do. The chef title gets thrown
around as chef de partie Demi's. Chef chef Cole, me executive
sous, chef etc, etc. And the reason people do that
is, it shows respect for the tradition and the heritage of
what we're doing. So again, what is a chef?
Hmm. So it does get a little bit
muddy. I think the rule of thumb would
be the proper thing is, whatever, is the proper thing in
the kitchen, where you work. So if you work in a place where
there's only one Chef, then that's it.
If you work in a place where there's a sous chef and an
executive sous-chef, maybe that's the rule or if you work
in a place where everyone is called, Chef, maybe that's the
rule there. But it still doesn't answer the
question of what is a chef? And I'm going to tell you
another story. So I told you earlier.
How was 18 and I was going to be a chef now was I ready for that?
Probably not, but I could have done it fast forward, a few
years. I take my first big executive
chef job in California at a resort that had about.
I think about five restaurants big, beautiful 4-star Resort in
California and I was definitely punching above my weight.
I was not ready to be the chef in this in this particular
place, but I got the job. I was a very good cook at the
time and I was pushing on the creativity side on things that
people hadn't really seen at that.
Point in time. So I knew how to cook but I
didn't really know how to Chef and so here I was in this place
and I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.
I kept making mistake after mistake after mistake not in
cooking, but just in running the operation leadership decisions
and things like that. So in retrospect When are you
ready to become a chef? Well, I definitely wasn't ready
for that job, but I was definitely ready for one.
So when people ask me because I get asked this question often,
how do you know when you're ready to become a chef?
Well, number one, you're probably ready and you're
probably not ready at the same time, so you're probably ready
to be the chef at some places and you're probably nowhere
close to being ready at other places.
You could go into a place right now realistically, you could
graduate culinary school and Into an easy place where there's
one or two people and you could be the chef, but I doubt that
you're going to be able to go to a place that's extremely
difficult, where you have 30 or 40 cooks and be able to be the
chef there and I would caution you to take a chef job before
you're ready. Because it's very hard to go
backwards in your career. Once you've taken the chef job,
you're not going to want to go back to being a sous chef or
cook one of the chef's PSAs that I put up is it's better to take
your time and be a good sous-chef later versus
impatiently becoming a bad. Sous chef today.
And I think when we talk about what really makes a chef, when
we talk about good chefs because again, we throw the term around
arbitrarily, everyone's a chef, this is these days, they're on
Tick-Tock there, chef but what makes a good Chef a chef is
someone that has a high level of Competency in most skill sets in
the kitchen that includes vegetable work.
Knife work. Butchering and the basic cooking
method, sought a braised Etc. So someone that's very In, you
know, the culinary, let's call it culinary Acumen.
They have a good understanding of how to cook, but they also
have a good understanding of how to lead, how schedules work, how
to manage food, cause how to do inventory Etc.
So there is a managerial aspect of being a chef, how to run
service, how to run the pass, how to organize themselves, how
to hire people, how to lead people, these are these are
things that you learn along the way.
And I think that knowing all these I will make you a better
Chef. So, when are you ready?
I don't know because an argument could be made that you'll learn
about the job when you're in the job.
And that's how you get better. But then the argument could also
be made, that they're not going to give you the job until you're
ready for the job until you have experience.
Sometimes in restaurants, shit happens.
And a lot of times, you know, a lot of times an independent
restaurants chefs gets get fired or they don't come in or
whatever. And you know, the places, you
know, in a chaotic mess and you know, the owner will look at
someone and say, hey, you're the sous chef, guess what?
Now you're the executive chef, you're like, oh shit.
Okay, what do I do? And we'll figure it out and
that's not uncommon. So sometimes you get your first
at-bat when that happens. That's how that's how you get
your. First, chef job that makes you a
chef as you just kind of get thrown into the fire and you
figure that you've kind of figure it out other times.
Maybe in this was my case, this is how I got my first chef job,
my mentor, my executive chef, he got promoted and while he was
moving up he decided to pull me up to.
So he moved into the next position that was the boss of
the chef and he put me in the position as the head chef.
So sometimes that happens, the persons in the building and they
bring you up other times you and of punch below your weight.
So what I mean by that is maybe you're the number two in a
really high-end restaurant but it's going to be very difficult
to go. Be the number one in a very
similar establishment. So you go be the number one in
something that's just below that level to kind of get your sea
legs about you. That's also very common But
here's what I could tell you is that a certain point, you have
to make the decision that it's time to be a chef, you can't
just sit around forever and say I'll be I don't know what I'm
going to be ready. I don't know what I'm going to
be ready like at a certain point.
You look no one's ever ready just just you got to go for it.
You got to make the decision and say it's time now and I got to
go for it. Now, if you failed, maybe you're
going to find out that you definitely weren't even close to
being ready, and it's time to go back a few Paces, or, and you
may find out. Hey, I was more ready than I
thought. And this was actually, You know,
I'm pretty good at it. Some people transition very well
into the head, chef role and other people struggle a little
bit now. But I can tell you in my
experience and I do touch on this, in the culinary leadership
fundamentals book is that there's obviously different
levels of chefs and there's obviously different types of
chefs. So you know, a chef like Joan
Roca from Celler de can Roca. So I did a dinner with him, you
know, I want to say a couple of years back and when he came into
the kitchen, even though is my kitchen, he's the chef.
Yes, chef Jeff Wright said his cutting board up, I'm going to
be his go for whatever. So he's the chef even though
it's my restaurant. He is Chef.
I respect the fact that he is my senior and I'm going to treat
him as the chef. There's other times when I would
walk into people's kitchens and maybe these people were people
that had worked for me in the past and when I would walk into
their kitchen, they would call me Chef.
So all of a sudden they are like, passing passing the
respect of them and their team on to me.
So, Like I said, there's different levels of chefs.
And, you know, sometimes when they come in your kitchen, it's
yes. Chef set up your cutting board.
Here's here's your towels. Nice and folded, Chef, let me
know if you need anything. So keep that in mind.
There's different levels of chefs.
But additionally, there's also a big difference in the type of
environment you're going to be a chef.
So, let's say you're in a hotel and there's levels and hotels,
there's a 100-room hotel, there's a thousand room Hotel.
There's a luxury hotel on the beach.
They all All require different skill sets and knowledge.
As a chef, there is the diner down the street where you're
going to be the chef. And there's also the
three-michelin-star place where you going to be a chef, and they
all are going to require a different level of skill, set,
and culinary knowledge, and Leadership, and, and business
Acumen etcetera. So developing yourself as a chef
in all facets is never a bad thing, right?
Become a really good cook first, and I say that with a little bit
of caution as as you, Up. Sometimes you're really going to
miss the kitchen because a lot of times, you don't have as much
time to spend in the kitchen due, to all the other things
that are going on, in the restaurant, you're putting out
fires, you're dealing with issues, you're ordering
etcetera, right? Schedules.
All the other things take up your time and you're gonna be
like, damn. I really miss cooking, and rust
is a real thing, right? The the board time you take
outside of the kitchen, the harder it's going to be to get
back in the kitchen. I'll tell you all the story.
Now, I haven't been a professional chef and almost a
year now, and I've made. Gnocchi my entire career right
ever. Since I was like 18, I can I
know how to make gnocchi. And the other day I was making
gnocchi from for my house and I couldn't remember how to make it
now. Hold on.
I should probably clarify that statement.
I knew how to make it, but as I was, I had to like stop and
think like, okay, what's next, how do I do this?
Okay. Yeah, that's right.
And then I was always rolling it like it's automatic memory but I
had to pause and think it was no longer just automatic and that's
because I'm not in a kitchen every day seeing food and You
start to get a little bit Rusty, I had to brunoise some, some
things the other day because I was making a pie for the pie
hole project. It was a donated pie.
So inside my pie, I had brunoise vegetables.
Mirepoix so celery, root onions. Carrots and everything was, you
know, a strict brunoise how I expected by Cooks to do it.
Remember I was doing it. I was like, holy shit.
I can't believe I used to make my Cooks.
Do this just takes a long-ass time.
Sorry. If you're all are listening to
this, I'm sorry. I made you do that.
It took me a long time. Time to brunoise everything.
Perfect. And I was like, this is a, I'm
Rusty. I couldn't get this done as
quick as I could. You know, my team could probably
do it in half the time that it took me because I was definitely
out of practice. But long story, short is, as you
move up into your Chef rolls your skills, do get rusty so
it's important to learn as much as you can spend as much time as
you can and those positions because the longer you take in
those positions, the better you'll be when you're in the
next position. And one of the things that's
very important when you're a chef.
Is people are going to ask you how to do something and you need
to be able to show them right. Because if you can't show them
and it's your kitchen, it becomes a little bit of a
problem, right? People want to respect the chef,
they admire the chef and they want to know that, okay?
You're, you're competent in the things that you're asking us to
do. So, anyway, food for thought,
I'm not even sure if I answered the question.
What is a chef? Well, there's some ambiguity
there. I would close it by saying the
chef is the person that is in Charge of the kitchen to me.
That's what the chef is. However, what is it in your
kitchen? Because obviously, every single
kitchen is different. And everyone has a different
opinion on this. If you ask me the chef or under
stripes, and work your way to the top and and earned it.
The title is bestowed upon you. It's not just frivolously given.
So at some point you have to earn your stripes if you get
there and it's a something for nothing, meaning you got there
and you didn't turn the position.
You have to earn it at some point, if you, if you don't
learn it, now you're gonna have to earn it later, right?
You'll get discovered and found out that you're incapable of
doing the job. So make sure that you're doing
everything you can to better yourself better your team and
constantly be pushing forward to become a better Chef anyway,
that basically wraps it up for this week's chefs PSA, if you
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Anyway, thank you all see you next week, hit the porno music.