Hello chefs, you're listening to chefs, PS a podcast.
I'm your host Andhra natera. On today's episode, we're going
to talk about accelerated learning and what are some
resources out there that you could use to get better faster.
Stay tuned. So before we begin, I should
probably give you an update. What I've been up to this past
week. I did a little bit of traveling
last week, I went to San Antonio.
I did some really great restaurants, I don't know if
anyone's ever been to the Pearl in San Antonio, that's, you
know, the culinary Hub where all the restaurants are.
So you have The Culinary Institute of America, they're
CIA You have a lot of different restaurants.
You have the hotel Mo, which is gorgeous Hotel, I stayed there,
shout out to those guys. It's a, it's an old Brewery that
they remodeled and turned into a hotel and it's it's really
fucking stunning. If I'm being honest, I had a
good time. Yeah, I was chilling lounging.
Anyway, I went to two restaurants while I was there.
I went to ladino. Shout out to those guys, they
took good care of me. I Chef Kevin Fink to Val, great,
guys. Great chefs, the food is on
point. Recognize me when I walked in.
So, if you're listening to this podcast, shout out to you guys.
I went in to, when I go to restaurants and I did this on
Chef PSA made a video on this, not too long ago.
My go into restaurants are, like to sneak in sneak out.
I don't like, I don't want, I don't want to fuss or anything
like that. I just want to go in.
I want to eat my food. I want to try and I want to go.
So I was eating by myself really quick and they recognized me and
so, you know, the chef sent out a dish.
So thank you chefs for sending that out.
It was amazing, food is really good.
If you're in San Antonio, go, try ladino, After that, I went
to Machu Picchu. I think that's how you say it.
It's a French Bistro and it was really good.
I wanted the classic. So I went in there and I had
just a baguette with butter and lobster bisque.
I was already full from The dinner right before.
So anyway, lobster bisque was good.
En croute. That's the kind of food that I
like I like simple food done. Well, the classics, you know,
that onion soup, dad lobster bisque.
That you know, they had their confit de Canard anyway.
It was really good. I enjoy that area and there's a
ton of restaurants right there so people are in San Antonio, go
check out the Pearl. Go check out ladino.
Go check out mon Choo-Choo. Stay at the hotel Lemma.
Take some continuing education courses at the CIA.
None of those. People pay me but I am open to
money if you want to pay me anyway.
I was down there to teach a class.
And I was teaching a presentation on leadership.
So I had a really good a really good time by the way that wasn't
a class that was open to the public.
So for people that often message me and said, can I sign up for
that class? That class wasn't open to the
public. The other thing that I've been
up to recently, as I've started going down, the path of writing
the new book chefs, PSA is the next Edition in the series.
The next book in the series is titled, bad.
Sooo good chef. And what it is.
It's a conversation between two chefs are very wise.
Chef in a very insecure and experienced person.
That's about to become a sucia. They sit down to play a game of
chess. They have some coffee
restaurants closed and they began to have dialogue on what
is necessary for. Someone to go from being a bad
sous chef to a good sous chef. So that's the title of the book.
I'm about five chapters in. I'm excited about the progress,
the way it's coming. I'm enjoying it again.
I use AI to animate. A lot of the lot of the
storyboard for the book. So there's a lot of different AI
images. So for people that follow me,
you'll notice occasionally on Instagram, I'll post like a
cartoon with the caption like a comic book.
I'm making those, I have fun with that.
So, as I'm diving into AI, which is a side hobby that I do aside
from, Cast in all this, I really am fascinated with image
creation that you could do with a ISO.
I've been turning those into little Comics, maybe I should do
a whole Chef PS a page that's just instead of, you know, the
standard red thing, the red background with the
inspirational quote that maybe I should just do comic versions of
it. I don't know if you guys like
that better anyway. I don't want to fuck up the
flow. I like the red look.
So that's why if you go on my pages already, I don't want to
fuck that up. Anyway, I'm also recording video
right now. I don't know if I'm going to
publish the video, but I might turn this into smaller clips on
YouTube. This is the first video I've
done, you could see him background behind me.
It's a virtual background. I'm not really, I'm not really
here anyway. That's what I'm up to, we
digress. Today's topic is how do you get
better? So here's the thing with getting
better faster. As I think, you know, when I was
coming up as a chef They were there is just a few ways that
you were going to get better. Obviously, the first thing was,
you went to culinary school, learn how to cook, he went to
your job, you learned how to cook and then you picked up,
cook books and magazines. And you learned how to cook,
there was the occasional TV show that you could pick up.
I'm thinking back, you know when I was coming up it was like
Julia Child, Chuck pappan were the two big chefs Paul
Prudhomme. You get to see them on TV and
then back then, my favorite show was a A series called great
Chefs of the world or great Chefs of the United States are
great Chefs of America. To remember what it's called,
who's great Chefs of America. And you saw these incredible
chefs demonstrating techniques and if you go back and you watch
that show you'll see some of the legends of today.
You guys, I think Daniel balloons on there and John
George and you know, Dean fearing and some certified
master chefs. I know on the great Chefs of the
world, you can go back and see like, you know, the late Bernard
Nawaz. Oh and you know, just actually
maybe it's worth even going back.
And for me again, memory lane, going back and watching those.
And if you look at the food back then it's funny because if you
look at the food back then it's like fuck its culinary school
level like it's stuff that wouldn't get past even You're
the best chefs in the world right now.
If they saw that food in their restaurant would be like,
absolutely not. That's not going to fly.
Food has evolved so quickly from the plating standards to the
techniques that we use you know back then it was like everyone's
freaking out a very traditional French repertoire Le gede
escoffier. And now things are much more
quick. Trends are faster social media
changes. Everything.
So if you wanted to get better today, what are some resources
that are available to you to learn faster?
So let's start with the basics. The basics are going to be
culinary school. First and foremost, that's a
very real option. Culinary school is very
different now than it was when I went.
So when I went to is really just Hands-On learning and then you
got your syllabus and you want to learn.
Now you have online culinary schools where you could you can
learn virtually from Home online continuing education courses.
You know, one that comes to mind is Ruby.
You know, I've taken the Ruby courses.
Before I know those guys, they do a great job with online
continuing education and they have very specific classes.
Like you take a whole egg cookery class or shout out to
Barton Seaver. I know he has a seafood course
on there. There's Zero waste, kitchen,
classes. Anyway, there's there's a lot of
continuing education that you can do online including
escoffier. I know has an online culinary
program. I don't know if the CIA does,
but I would imagine that most likely they do, go research
this. Let me know if you find out if
they do. But anyway, online culinary
school is an option in person and online.
So there's that way that you could begin to learn that's like
price of Entry. The next one is the obvious,
right? You go and you work in great
restaurants, you work where you're at, you learn around the
chef's that you are now. I've often said this before is
you always want to work around people that are better than you.
That's how you're going to accelerate.
Your learning is you work around people that have a higher skill
set than you so you're paying attention, right?
That is the next one now. I want to talk about stages and
I know like it's like fuck do I really want to talk about style
Jews because it's a Hot Topic and I know I know a case can be
made like you could steal. Man, the case for stages you can
steal man the case against Dodges I fall somewhere in the
middle because I don't think every case is exactly the same.
Now, when I was coming up as a chef, We have what was called
apprenticeships. And you know, if you didn't go
to school, you did an apprenticeship and you learned
and you work for free or you got paid a certain rate and, you
know, that was your way towards certification.
If you weren't going to go to culinary schools,
apprenticeships were very real option, stage is Fallen that
same sort of line, you know, when I was coming up if you
wanted to learn and you couldn't work in a restaurant and you
happen to be traveling, give you a good example.
Let's say you're going to New York for something and you're
not going to live there because it's too expensive but you're
there for two weeks. Weeks on vacation.
You might want to get in a quick stage at a great restaurant.
So you could pick up some new techniques while you're there.
So maybe you eat in the restaurant, the night before.
And the next day, you do a two or three-day stars in the place,
you can see those techniques. Now, the reason stage is get a
bad rep is because there are people that abuse the system.
There's people that say, oh yeah, you know, we need x amount
of cooks but we could only afford to pay x amount of coke.
So let's say we need 40 cooked, but we're going to take 20 of
them that are paid in 20 of them that are free and that's
obviously I'm taking advantage of the situation and and not a
good situation for anyone involved and it's it's not good.
So I don't necessarily support that business model.
However, If as a cook I know I stashed I've taken up multiple
stages to go and learn and I wouldn't give them back even if
they didn't be writing cares. Like you have an opportunity to
go. Learn you're going to take it,
you pay for culinary school. Right?
And you don't know, sometimes we those instructors aren't
sometimes. They're not even the best
instructors. If I'm if I'm being frank, if
I'm being frank, sometimes they're not the best
instructors. But when you go on a stage,
you're going to be in the environment with the specific
shut that you want to learn from.
So, why wouldn't you want to do that now?
Granted, I think you could steal man the case on either side
because I do believe that people should get paid for what they
work. But sometimes the kitchen is
full. So I'll give you this example
when we're talking about Sasha's, right?
So I don't spend too much time on starters.
This is about learning a lot about stoppages, but let's say,
you really want to work in a certain restaurant to that
restaurant, only has 20 positions, but you want to learn
and you happen to be in town and you go up and you say, hey, I'd
like to work here and they say sorry.
We only have 20 spots and we don't need you.
That's a very real situation. So sometimes if you just want to
get in, You could say, well I'll do a stage maybe for a day or
two, just so you could kind of get your foot in the door and
see what it is, right? Because they can't afford to
bring you on and they have no point to bring you on.
It doesn't benefit them. A lot of times to have that
stars there and I know a lot of places don't allow stages
because of the You know, the legal parameters that are
surrounding stages. So what you see a lot of times
now and then and you see a lot of restaurants moving towards
this is what's called a viewing stage, so you can't pick up a
knife. You can't touch any food, you
know, for legal reasons, for ethical reasons.
But if you want to stand in the corner and watch how we work,
you're more than welcome to stand here and watch a complete
service and pay attention. And that's also very common
nowadays. Now, Let's use this example.
There's a great chef and you want to go learn from them but
you can't get hired because you don't have enough experience or
you just want to pick up a couple of things from their
kitchen, so you can take back to your kitchen, right?
A buing stylish has a very real option.
You can go there, you know? If you're, you know, if you're
smart, you have half a brain, you could pick up a couple of
things that they do in their kitchen, how they move, how they
set their station, how they work, how they handle certain
ingredients. All those things can be learned
visually, right? So, Again, I think if you could
steal man the case for a stash either way.
So anyway, there are stages. There's working in restaurants,
there's culinary school. Then there's other aspects.
When it comes to learning. And I think one of the fastest
ones right now is online social media, right?
So you go back and you look at food from just a couple of years
ago and you look at food today and it's like it's evolves so
quickly, like I go back and I look at food that I've done a
couple years back and this is almost why I don't want to make
any more food for social media because it's like, I never go
back and look at anything and say, wow, that's really good
today, maybe it tastes good, but it doesn't look good.
When I look at today's plating style because it does evolve so
quickly, but if you're smart, you could follow the best chefs
on social media and you can see what their food looks like, and
you could quickly learn what they're doing, right?
If you go back before Tick Tock. So I remember, I was, I was
still a chef and this the photographer that we worked with
the used to do a lot of our food photography, for the restaurant
came up to me and he said, hey, you need to get on Tick Tock and
I was like, what the fuck is Tick-Tock?
And he's like, trust me, I'm there, I already got like a
hundred thousand followers, this was early.
Like, I really didn't even know what Tick-Tock was.
This was, I want to say, like 2019 2018, I really didn't
understand it. And so, I download The Tick Tock
app and all I see is like, Dancing.
I was like, what the fuck is this?
Like this is this is sucker shit.
This is not what I want to do. Not what I'm into, not what I
want to see. I don't think I'm going to do
this and he's like, you could be early, you know, there's there's
only a couple of chefs on here that are doing videos and their
accounts of exploded. And so, I had already had a
little bit of experience editing videos.
And I've talked about this in a previous podcast, I create a
training videos on basic techniques for my staff.
And so I kind of got the gist of editing videos for Tick Tock but
I was like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to do it
or not. Anyway fast forward a couple of
years. No one was doing videos, you
know, you go back to the pandemic and people were doing
these long format videos on how to cook and then you fast
forward, and you look at, you know, the reels on Instagram or
Tick Tock, or YouTube shorts or whatever.
And you can see these high-level chefs that have really gotten
creative with how to demonstrate good technique.
And it's incredible what they're teaching you I there's a couple
of accounts that I like dobber is one, you know, he's funny
he's engaging and he's always showing his techniques I really
liked him because I like how he sets up his line and while the
dish it's like okay, yeah, it doesn't matter what the dishes
to me, but I'm looking as like, oh, that's a cool technique.
How he strained? You know, the peas and the
Vermont a I was like, okay, I never did that.
That's a good idea. Or, you know, the way he sets up
his line, he has a glazing rack and a sheep pen on the back
burner. It's like, oh, that's a good
little little trick there to rest his Always put it over
here. So anyway I look at that.
I'm like, that's cool. I like how he says his line and
I pick up a lot of things for efficiency.
Another Chef that I think does it really well as Ron McKinley
from Canoe Restaurant in Canada? You know, if you followed his
page, he shows some very high-level techniques and he's
giving him like he's giving away all the secrets you could watch
him as like, fuck. That's a master class in
technique. You watch what he's doing and he
does he does some amazing work with meet Sandra Lads and things
like that. It's like, okay, solid technique
you watch him. Like no one was teaching that
and if you didn't know it, like you were going to guess, right?
You're going to guess, how to To do this.
That and the other. I saw dobber video the other
day. We're splittin like
transglutaminase on on Ribeyes, I think you're separating the
bone and I was like, you know, when we show you that you like,
you had to figure it out. If you weren't working in
restaurants that were using TG transglutaminase, it's like, you
don't know how to use it, but now he has videos of just
showing, oh, yeah. I just dust it like this.
And I separate the bone this that and the other and I thought
that's super cool. The fact that chefs are
basically showing you high-level techniques, it's like spend a
day on Tick-Tock spend the day on Instagram reels.
Follow the best chefs and it's like you could level up your
game instantly, right? Two other counts.
Really quick. While I'm shouting out accounts
that I like that. I particularly follow it.
One is Jules cooking. I like what that guys doing?
He's always showing again really intricate.
Refined techniques. You know, a lot of a lot of
garnish work and things like that.
A lot of working with alginates and anyway, you get the point.
Jules cooking also great account.
You could learn from him very quickly and then Ryan Peters
past. I think it's Ryan Peters pasta.
What is his, what is it? His Instagram account.
Let me look it up. I know I follow him.
Ryan Peters, PGH shout out Ryan Peters you know we've known of
each other for a long time, through mutual friends and
through organizations like mentor, bkb.
And I follow and watching what he's doing with his with his
pasta, where he's doubling the egg yolks mr.
Beast out, we're going to double it every day.
It's wild because I think the last videos I was like, over
4,000 egg yolks to make this pasta like Fuck.
That's that's one of those situations where you think
yourself? Hmm.
Maybe there's like, maybe I should have done the math before
this. Maybe I bit off a little more
than I could chew. I don't know.
We'll see how long he goes with us.
But it's pretty cool. Like if you want to learn pasta
making skills, there's chefs out there that are teaching.
You basically anything that you want to know.
You could find right now, right? It's a condensed version.
It's you know that one minute reels Instagram format, but it's
great. Like if you don't, if you're not
exploring that to become better, your I mean, honestly, come on,
like the tools are there. I wish I had these tools when I
was coming up as a cook because this is just accelerating,
everyone's learning curve to become a better chef Now, really
right. And then you know, the last
thing I want to talk about is just the other tools that are
out there. So online learning like
chefsteps chefsteps really was I think when it came out
game-changing I love chefsteps especially in again I like
chefs, I hope they don't take this the wrong way, if you're
listening but I like them more early on because I felt like
they were catering to shops and then I think the obviously the
business model involves then it starts catering to Like everyday
cooks and it's like great but I was following for the chef stuff
and I think they kind of simplified a lot.
But anyway, they're great, like you go on chefsteps in.
If you want to learn about alginates, they have all their
class. You want to learn about macarons
or how siphons work chefsteps is excellent.
I think chefsteps is maybe the gold standard when it comes to
Online teaching. I think they're probably the
best. I can't think of anyone that's
better than chefsteps that. Does it well with?
The the largest variety of techniques, the other ones out
there Grand, I used to have the grand app.
I don't have it anymore just because if I didn't use it
enough, but I used to have the grand app, I liked it.
I thought it was also a very good like chefsteps.
I think chefsteps was a little easier to use again, my personal
preference, but I know a lot of people really like Rhonda.
I didn't use it as much. But I also know that for what I
was doing at the time that type of food wasn't necessarily what
I was very interested in so that it also may have played a
factor. So if I was very interested in
that at that time maybe I would have appreciated the app a
little bit more. The other two that come to mind.
One is yes. Chef also very good.
I had a subscription to that. I really went, I really enjoyed
it, I went through all the classes, I thought it was very
good, a lot of really good chefs on there and then master class I
think is also not that they're necessarily specific for
culinary, but master class has some great culinary programs.
Aaron Franklin, Thomas Keller, Gordon Ramsay.
Dominique crenn. I'm trying to think who else is
on there. Think.
Well, who else has a class on master class anyway?
Lot of chefs have class on masterclass, you can learn
bread-baking, learn, Mexican food.
Anyway, I like Master Class just because of the style of
teaching, but if I had a small criticism on masterclasses, I
don't think. The level of Chef that they get
is very high, right? You're not going to get Thomas,
Keller Massimo bottura Gordon, Ramsay, or Aaron Franklin, in a
room Dominique crenn, like the level of Chef that they have is
extremely high, but I feel like it's two geared towards the home
cook where some of these other ones are a little bit geared,
more towards the professional, This might be a controversial
statement, what I'm going to say next.
Now, I haven't had a subscription to master class for
almost a year, right? I canceled it.
But I had a subscription to master class for like four
years. And honestly, I think I made a
list of how many of the classes I completed and not just
culinary, but I think I completed something like 50 of
the classes that they have. So I was a big masterclass fan
for all the other things that they had the best master class
for culinary. In my opinion, is the Thomas
Keller one. because I think he shows the most amount of
technique and there's a lot of finesse and there's a lot of
detail and what he's teaching and very A very high level of
the proper way to do things so you could build upon the skills
that Thomas Keller's teaching in that master class.
And then you could take that into whatever it is that you're
doing some of the other classes might show more Advanced
Techniques. But this is, this is also one of
the things like, some of its trendy and it's not long lived
at the stuff. I think in Thomas Keller's
class, is long-lived and very technically sound.
That's my favorite class on the master class.
Controversial. Possibly anyway.
Probably going to. Get Bastard class again if you
know they got to add some new shit because I just wasn't
digging it after awhile. It was just kind of more of the
same. Now with all that being said, so
we talked about school, we talked about working in your
kitchen, we talked about working around people that are better
than you. We talked about stasia's,
controversial subject, but stash is done the right way.
I think could be beneficial to you if you do them the right
way. But again, this is This depends
on the person, that's hosting the stars and the person that is
doing this Taj, all things need to be good.
So there's an unethical way to do is dodging.
I think there's a way that you can do it where it's mutual
mutually beneficial for both. So I don't think we need to
throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Social media resources, shot out to a couple of different
accounts. Probably, you know what?
I forgot to mention one. Social media account, shuts.
PSA, like fun. If you want to learn.
Like, I'm not teaching people all the cooking stuff because I
think there's the internet saturated with that.
But I'm teaching you like no one's teaching you the shit.
I'm teaching you, right? I'm teaching you how to be a
chef. I'm teaching you marketing.
I'm teaching you how to open up a restaurant.
And teaching you, your daily discipline mindset.
So no one's teaching you that there might be a couple of other
pages that are copying my style. I'm not going to call them up.
Anyway. There's also podcast resources
like this one, there's a lot of good culinary podcasts out there
that you can listen to you know, some of my want.
Honestly, some of my favorites. I'll give a shout-out to the
sucio podcast. I love listening to that Roots.
Hospitality is another good one. Anyway, I could go on and on
flavors unknown, there's a lot of, there's a lot of really
good. Chef podcasts out there.
The ultimate dish, the escoffier culinary school podcast.
I've been a guest on most of these podcast line, cook
thoughts. Shout out to those guys.
They do really good podcast where they're educating people.
But the most important thing when it comes to accelerated
learning is that you have to have a curiosity for learning.
That's that's really where it all begins.
Learning isn't going to come to you.
You have to meet it halfway. You have to go forward and you
have to find these things. You have to seek out the
information to learn it, right? And obviously now with a I like
if you're even too shy to go out there and get the information,
get yourself a subscription to open a ichat GPT for and learn
how to communicate with it and start answering your questions,
right? All these resources are
available to you. So if you are Not learning.
If you are not getting better. There really is.
No one else to blame. You have full responsibility,
you're in the driver's seat. Anyway, we're going to wrap it
up. Thank you all very much.
You know what to do if you want to support the show, make sure
you leave five stars on this podcast Spotify or apple or
YouTube. Where ever it is that you happen
to be listening to this. Tell a friend.
Tell them to listen to chefs PS. A very important, right?
I'm giving you good information. Help your friends out.
Don't keep this, don't keep me a secret.
Just to yourself, don't be selfish.
Go get the books. I have right now.
Culinary leadership fundamentals, that will teach
you how to become a chef that will teach you how to manage a
kitchen kitchen, Art of War, that teaches you strategy line,
cook survival. Manual that teaches you how to
work efficiently as a line cook and how not to be the biggest
idiot in the kitchen. Well, self-explanatory, that
basically teaches you, the unwritten rules of working in a
kitchen, go to chefs PSA, you can get everything, and thank
you very much. See you all next week.
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