As I have talked about before, there needs to be a burning desire and passion to be a professional cook. There needs be an innate calling for you to punish yourself to the hours and the stress and everything else that goes along with the job. But, there is a unique set of people that are just a different breed to the rest of us. The have a skill set that I have never fully developed; Banquet Cooks and Chefs. These are the people that set up buffets for hundreds and plate weddings and the like. They have different way of organizing themselves and the food they cook, they just have a different way of thinking about their cooking. They know exactly how many people that they need to feed and exactly how much food they will need every night of the week. The hardest part for me is the hurry up and wait aspect, hustle, hustle, hustle, get all your prep done and then stop, wait for the guests to be ready for the first course, second and so on. I have never been good at standing around and waiting to get busy, I lose focus, I get antsy, I lose interest more then anything else.
This comes from what I have picked up from the people that I have worked with and the places I have worked. My first job out of school was a crappy little cafe in a tiny little college town that had no real market. It was too expensive for the kids but not nice enough and no table service so it didn't attract the adults in the town. I worked more there then I have ever worked any other place, 8 weeks with out days off, minimum of 12 hours a day. This is where I started to pick up the stamina needed for when I was at a much busier and more demanding restaurant. I moved back home to Baltimore and started working for the Charleston Group. I was originally at their flagship restaurant, Charleston. It was was the kind of restaurant that I had thought that I had wanted to work at, the fine dining place in Baltimore, expensive ingredients, expensive bottles of wine, but in the end the more I worked there the more I realized it wasn't really for me; but I picked up one of the most important lessons, professionalism. Working everyday at the highest level, demanding more out of yourself and the people you work with. When I moved from Charleston to Louis, I was really down on the idea, I seriously considered moving somewhere else, but in the end I made a great decision to stay. I was absolutely terrible when I started, I fought hard to get better and I have two people to really thank for this. Jesse "Chica" and Brandon "Holmes". They taught me how to be a line cook, really took me under their wings and showed me the way. I learned that the adrenaline of getting your ass kicked on Saturday night is addictive, I also learned how to not manage people from some of the other people that I worked with there. There is no place for passive-aggressiveness, jealousy and back biting in a successful kitchen. I don't think that it is a coincidence that my enjoyment went way down hill once they left. Where my management skills really came full circle was at my next job, slt in NYC. With it being a union property with cooks that have been at that property for longer then I have been alive, it was a huge challenge just for me to get some of these cooks to take me seriously and really gain their respect as a chef. It took a big effort on my part to show them that I really did have their best interests at heart and really have a way to make the restaurant busy and successful. Here the passive-aggressiveness from Louis was quickly eradicated. In its place was an a policy of openness and collective-ness that allowed me to tackle the biggest challenge of them all at silverleaf, finances. I had never before seen a Profit and Loss Statement, let alone knew how to read one and have an effect on it. My second day of work I sat with the person who would become the Senior VP of all restaurant operations and read one with the rest of the management team from the property. It was a steep learning curve. It was atrocious, costs so far out of line that I was embarrassed for the people sitting around me that were responsible for it. Things needed to change, and fast. Things did change, not as fast as I was hoping for and not as all encompassing that needed, and still needs to. I had never had to worry about invoices or budgets, I never had to think "Do I have enough money in my budget to order a case of milk or can we skate by on what we have till the first?". I loved it, too. It was such a fresh challenge and one that I was totally enthralled with. When I moved to Philly with the same company, I was working with someone who I had a ton of respect for and really showed me a new way to think about how to cook. He exposed me to new ingredients and opened my eyes to more global ingredients and how they all fit together. He pushed me to see a new level of cooking and enthusiasm for cooking.
None of this gave me the skill to be a banquet cook. I was talking about this with Jesse just the other night and she doesn't understand them either. I spent the weekend back with my family in Baltimore and had the distinct pleasure of helping my mom put together a family barbecue. All of the organizational skills that working in a busy place like Louis and the place in Philly came out, unintentionally at first. Once we got organized, it came down to execution and keeping on task, two things that are the hardest to accomplish in a home setting, too many distractions and the lack of that natural motion and momentum that professional kitchens have. There is a Zen to the the party prep, as much as setting a buffet up. Peel and dice two canteloupe and one watermelon for fruit salad, dice mango for salsa, cook corn and black beans for the other salsa, calm down mother that, yes, four kinds of chips and crackers will be enough for 25 people, cut fruit for sangria, yes, mom, 2 gallons will be enough, slice tomato and onion for burgers, form burgers, cut rolls, julienne peppers and onions for sausages, julienne peppers for salad, cut carrots for salad, make salad dressing, all of this is done with cats around your feet, family calling, the TV on and substandard knives. But, it was how I fell in love with cooking in the first place and what continues to bring me more happiness then any other skill that I have learned and will learn.
