Little backstory:
I'm in my early 30s, currently the Executive Sous. One of the line cooks (45 years old, claims he's "old school trained") has been throwing shade and saying he should have my position.
Today he brought me his fine dining filet prep to "show me how it's done."
Here's what I got:
Barely trimmed beef cubes that look like they lost a fight with the seasoning bin
Sitting in a questionable yellow puddle (butter? broth? broken dreams?)
Cling-wrapped tighter than his hopes of a promotion
The outside feels like sandpaper, the inside's still mooing — like a reverse beef jerky situation.
If you walked into a kitchen and saw this masterpiece chilling in the walk-in, what would you honestly rate it out of 10?
Bonus points if you can name the yellow liquid without losing the will to live.
Pic attached.
by DealRight
49 Comments
Checks out. People who spend a lot of energy throwing shade often suck at their jobs.
Yeah that looks like shit 🤷🏻♀️
I hope he’s better at facing defeat.
This is a “good enough” example of something. If he wants your job, he needs to learn how to recognize what he can do to improve on his own accord and strive to do better every day.
I’m not sure what it’s supposed to look like but I’m still 99% certain it’s not supposed to be that
What the actual fuck
Weigh each portion for him and then talk food cost.
Garlic? Or possibly even ginger?
Did he use his dog to trim and portion that?
I think you’re both lame as fuck
Looks like he rinsed them, didn’t bother to dry them, lathered them with oil, and called it a day
God, I think that’s a “marinade” of butter, salt, and shitty “dried whatever herbs.” and from your description of the texture? I suspect added lemon juice as well.
The yellow liquid is obviously better and a bit of condensed milk to thicken it up a little.
how can people be so confident when its clearly not good? weird colleague you have lol
All that cardboard in your walk in and the cambro on the floor tell me none of you are as “fine dining” as you think you are
You’re an absolute moron. That is clearly a milk steak. The issue is you haven’t plated it with the jelly beans. Jesus… …amateur hour over here.
I’d be more interested in seeing what it looks like after he’s actually cooked it.
Doesn’t look like good prep in the picture. Like watery and oily inconsistent chunks of beef with garlic powder and some mysterious butter/ghee liquid that is somehow a liquid and not solidified.
Weird.
Adobo garlic powder margarine and vinegar?
0/10
Unless you can use it for something like a special?
Kind of depends how it’s supposed to look like.
You not knowing what he seasoned that with, tells me line cooks do whatever they want with the menu and allergens don’t matter.
I’m choosing option C- you both suck.
What even is this? If you hadn’t said it was butter I would have assumed he just left it to rot. Oh boy, are you implying the liquid is of the urea variety?
Looks fit for an Iowa pot roast.
You have nothing to worry about .
If he’s working your line how good is your food really
The liquid is butter maybe and the meat looks green. Nope.
I’ll take the down votes but linecooks over 40 are line cooks over 40 for a reason
They’re not even uniform? Is his brain made of grilled cheese?
this would be fine dining at the sort of place your grandparents think is fancy because it was the fanciest place in town 50 years ago.
If you’re a 45 year old line cook, and this is the best you’ve got, you deserve to just be a line cook.
I made a promise to myself at 20 that I wouldn’t be a line cook at 40. I moved up and out of the biz by 38, so I consider that a success.
Can he do dish pit ?
Not only can I still see all the tendons, is it really that hard to make a round roll and make similar weight portions?
Zeroteen
Like…what DID he do to them? They look terrible.
That yellow liquid is a broken bearnaise?
Not willing to rate this film. Out of 10, it’s a tax write off that never made it theaters.
It takes the produce out of the boxes or else it gets the milk steak prep again.
You don’t know where those boxes have been on their journey to your walk-in. Throw em out and put your produce in clean containers.
Do people actually want their filet pre buttered? I highly doubt it. Tell him to know his place. Older people in the kitchen are either great or they’re always out to prove they’re better than you. There is no in between.
If I saw this in the walk in I would assume it was leftover prep from some event the owner threw without my knowledge, because it’s definitely not for service. And then I would use it for family meal.
Dog shit portioning aside, the yellow “liquid” is probably olive oil. Preseasoning for much longer than 15-20 minutes beforehand is a great way to cure the surface, guaranteeing a grey band around d your steak no matter how perfectly it is cooked. That’s the beef jerky texture you experienced.
I don’t even understand this process. What stage is this in? Did they sear it and then put in the cooler?
It looks like something you’d see on kitchen Nightmares.
Filet minwrong
You’re real generous to give him a filet, but even for family meal he should have portioned respectfully.
If you have time, leave it in the walk-in and prep your own. When he gloats on how great they look during service as they’re plated and served, bring him back to the walk-in and show him his errors and tell him *then* that these are useless to you and not to help prep again.
Looks like he marinated using a lot of EVOO, which is what solidified. Rookie move, it’ll burn and be bitter if seared. What a waste.
I genuinely thought this was scrap at first.
Next time he claims he’s old school trained remind him that the Boomers who trained him are from a generation with notoriously shitty taste and are known specifically for ruining steaks.
If I walked into the kitchen and saw this, I would ask my Sous, “ we running a fucking beef stew special no one told me about or is someone losing their prep privileges?”
Not a single one of those is a consistent weight. I’m no fine dining master chef, hell even if I had the title I’ll call myself a cook at best, but I could hand cut filet and knew what 10oz felt like in my hand and I don’t presume it makes me qualified for a Sous position.
That shit looks like nothing but a thanksgiving pan of food waste that I’ve seen people fired for less.
Should they not be all about thr same size?
Nah, yeah. If someone orders filet mignon and i go back to grab some and it looks like this, I’m def asking my boss if they want me to serve this. And if so, which pieces exactly.