I'll start – Paneing crab cakes for the first time when the head chef, as friendly as anything said "just need to do them a little bit better chef", silently threw the whole tray in the bin, cleaned the bench, set up a new station pulled out the backup crab mix from the fridge and said, "there you go chef" and silently walked off.
There was no malice, no anger, but I felt about 1 inch tall and then every new thing I have to prep, I always think "you need to do them a little bit better chef" 😂
Surely we've all got one of these? The chef that we no longer see, or maybe still do whos words still linger day to day
by NarrowPhrase5999
35 Comments
Never catch a falling knife
As a cook early in my career, I was working a garde manger station at a high end restaurant. I was still pretty new and I was nervous because I was playing an elaborate dish for some very VIP guests. I put the plates up in the pass, the exec chef came over, looked at my work and said (with a smile and a wink): “Looks great ****, sun shines on a pile of shit once a day, right?”
I think about that all the time. 😂
Mine is just the standard exasperated sigh as I wonder what deity I upset in a past life.
Its my fault though really. The two things I’m not tremendously good at are hiring and training.
My fourth grade social studies sub (under the influence in retrospect) drew two circles on the board. A minuscule one and a massive one. “This tiny circle is you. This massive circle is the world. Despite you being the center of your world – You actually matter very little in comparison to the scale of the world”
Seared into my 11 year old brain for decades.
The phrase “this is unacceptable.”
“Be smarter than a Vitamix”
When overheating the Vitamix making a chickpea spread with rendered guanciale/pancetta/bacon fat. Every ingredient had to be warm-hot and ready, and you needed more liquid than you thought because of how thick it would get.
But when I got it, I got it
“It’s mind over matter. If you don’t mind, then it don’t matter”
Said by my first chef regarding developing your hot hands.
“try to get as fast as you can, as fast as you can”
I use this in some capacity regularly now for some friendly ribbing, but I genuinely had a KM (I was AKM at the time) look one of our guys dead in the face after an opening service and go “if your home looks like your station, I get why you’re alone.”
“At some point you got to take ownership of your mistakes”
My chef to 19yo Me after I’d sent out burned fries for the 10th time and for some stupid reason was acting like it wasn’t my fault.
Ah, youth.
‘You’re late, and that means you’re not working today. But it’s not all bad news – the potwasher can’t make it at my other restaurant so you get to go down there and work the evening service. Don’t be late, the chef there is a really grumpy bastard not nice like me’
Time to lean time to clean. If you’re not ahead (on prep/mise) you’re behind. Oh and my fav from culinary school “Who’s making a water reduction over here?!”
“The guy who was supposed to bring the whole pig for tomorrow night’s event just backed out but we sold tickets, so we went and got 90 lbs of pork shoulder and butt for you to work on. Hope you can get it done in time.” And thus began the 22 hour shift because everything had to be done in turns due to limited equipment
When I was in third or fourth grade, I was looking at the map of the earth and said something like “Don’t all of the continents seem like puzzle pieces and they use to fit together?”
Teacher: Laughs really loud “continents can NOT move, that is the silliest thing I have ever heard”, very loudly that the rest of the class could hear.
Turns out that dumb bitch didn’t know a fucking thing, did she?
Do you know the difference between Jelly and Jam, well I couldn’t Jelly my dick in your ass !
It was in a programming class. We were making a POS for a store. He asked for items to add that you would buy at a store. I jokingly shouted out “Rubbers!” and prof replied without missing a single beat “Why, they’d just dry rot before *you* used them”
“The food will come out eventually” said to me by my manager who saw I was getting really frustrated trying to keep up
My 4th grade teacher Ms. Sloane was power tripping. Theres discipline, then there’s getting off on controlling kids. If you spoke in her room at all after the bell rang, without raising your hand and being called on, she would take your chair for ten minutes and you had to stand at your desk. My friend Alan started talking once and I turned to tell him to raise his hand first. Ms Sloane came over and took MY chair, not Alan’s, and when I tried to argue that I was just trying to help him remember the rules, she said there I go again talking. So she sent me to the principal and got written up and my parents called.
Ill never forget how mad my Mom and Dad were at the school and not me. I was not punished at all. But Ms Sloane told me she hoped I learned my lesson to watch out for myself and not for others.
That definitely stuck with me my whole life. I rejected that notion so hard, and I doubled down being as helpful to others as I could.
My calling was working with and helping people.
Fuck you, Ms Sloane, you lonely, crusty, nasty ass cat lady.
When I was young because of certain circumstances of life I ended up living with my cousin for about five years, and let’s just say she didn’t really care too much about my education, and I had a teacher in 6th grade that loved reminding me every day of that… he would always ask me to stand and tell the whole class “now that’s a boy whose parents don’t care about him” and proceeded to compare me to other kids in class that were doing better than I was…
Whenever a ticket would come in that said “VIP”, our kitchen lead would say, “VIP! EVERYONE’S VIP”. He was honestly the best. Great energy, positive attitude. Never got mad. He passed a couple years ago. Not sure how old he was, but I’d guess he was only in his 40s or early 50s.
EVERY SECOND COUNTS
lol just kidding- I worked with a JB-nominated pastry chef and she was cool as hell. Whenever something turned out (that we were expecting to fuck up) she would say “we might just fool em again”. And I have that attitude about everything now
I would rather have 3 thermomixes, but you are cheaper
Worked my first grill shift without flaw. Got a couple good jobs from people who had watched my struggle to keep up on the cold line a year earlier and were happy to see me performing well. Chef says “is not a good job, it’s just the job.” What a prick.
I was passed up for a kitchen manager job, the guy out of the restaurant they hired brought on some of his friends. None of them knew how to cook a sunny egg, dead ass a sunny egg. I was yelled at by said manager for allowing a scrambled egg to go out in place of the sunny egg. Needless to say when I explained I didn’t make the egg and that I would love to “learn” from him how to make one, things didn’t go well.
Getting a telling off by the head teacher for something or other. He asked why I’d done it. I said “I was just being stupid”
Teacher: You’re not stupid… You’re just an idiot.
I did not know I was supposed to brush my tongue while toothbrushing through elementary school. In 7th grade I had English lit and English language taught in back to back periods by the same teacher. I went up to her to ask her a question at the end of the first period, easy peasy. Then, at the very beginning of second period she stood up in front of the class and asked how many kids knew they needed to brush their tongues in the morning. “It came to my attention during my last class that many of you might not know this as a student’s breath was absolutely revolting…”.
My first grade teacher wrote in my report card that I have a mind of my own. Which doesn’t sound so bad, but she meant it as an insult and that I wasn’t good at following directions.
“how is everything you do almost right?”
Was having a stressful day/shift and an older chef came over and just quietly said…
“Just a little reminder, everything your getting frustrated about right now – if you do it right, will be sliding out some rich cunts arsehole in about 12 hours…. just thought you might like to know.”
“There are only three reasons you would do what you did:
1. You’re stupid
2. You’re lazy
3. You don’t care.
I hired you so I know you’re not stupid. You show up every day and work, so I know you care. I guess you’re just lazy…”
“Hot things are hot” I think about that every time I see any pan on the stove or anything on the grill. Even on a hot summer day when I get in my car and it’s boiling I think f*ck hot things are hot. I was 16 when I heard my sous tell me that.
My chemistry teacher would always say there is more than one way to skin a cat, then would proceed to pretend rip the flesh off of a live cat while screaming tortured cat noises as loud as possible lmao
Overheard from the exec talking to an apprentice:
“I can teach you all this but I can’t make you learn it.”
same chef: “you don’t want to be here when the clusterfuck hits the fan.”
Being a dishwasher and the chef having to explain to me what intrusive thoughts are and to keep it to myself.
Do you guys know what a rhetorical question is?