For a day. Well, not really. Sort of.
With our head chef away for two weeks on his honeymoon, there had been some interesting breakdowns in the supply chain, and the sense that a few shake ups were in the works with regard to our menu. Currently, Dexter's of Thornton Park, my restaurant, is a sometimes strange place to be.
Every now and then management screams about food costs. Nothing special about that, really, as I've seen it in every kitchen I've worked in. Myself, I'm not that interested in food cost. I do what I can to save a penny here and there, but I'm really far more interested in refining my classic techniques as a cook, and experimenting with new combinations.
At Dexter's we run what's known as the "hard" menu, which is the shiny three fold monster that has all the everyday items we serve. Simple, unchallenging fare. Lot's of pastas for the hotline, lot's of sandwiches and salads for the cold stations. To augment that, we run the cafe menu, which is a dozen apps and entrees which allow our chef to flex his CIA trained muscle, and his linecooks, like me, to get our hands on some better products. In the past 10 months I've seen Chef Rhys put together some really nice dishes, but they get expensive, our wait staff can't really sell anything, and consequently the cafe menu doesn't get the action it deserves.
To an outsider, insofar as management issues are concerned, the leadership at the restaurant used Chef's vacation as a good time to make some changes to the cafe menu we had been running. The method they used to balance the costs the cafe menu was generating was to stop ordering the products we needed, essentially to run out what we had on hand, and then, sometime before Chef got back to the kitchen, create a new cafe menu that was more of the yawn-inducing fare that the hard menu has. Would it sell? Probably. It'd be boring as hell, however, and I'd be polishing up my resume quickly.
I strolled into work Tuesday, the day Chef returned, fully expecting a complete meltdown in the kitchen over the menu shake up. What I found was Chef working out a new menu, under orders to dumb-down the food.
Chef, I said, there is really nothing left to sell on the cafe menu. We're out of everything.
Well, he said, you can come up with a special or something, if you want to.
A special, I though, I'll come up with 4. I'll write the cafe menu for tonight. So I ducked into the walk-in cooler to see what there was to work with. Not much, as usual. In 10 minutes I had 4 menu items to run with our primary proteins, got the nod from Chef to go with the specials, and had begun directing traffic on who was doing what and how.
Granted, with only 2 hours to get a day's menu together, it was simple food. Filet Mignon with a crab hollandaise, potato hash and asparagus. Salmon with a red wine demi glace, garlic mashed potatoes and flashed baby arugula. Pork ropa vieja with rice, beans and plaintains. Seared tuna with nori chips, steamed rice and a warm ponzu. The three cooks available that night, me, our sous chef Frank, and Eric pulled the menu together and rocked it out through a fairly successful service.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I get a chance to come up with a completely new dish daily as the fish special, but this was the first time I'd written a menu for a restaurant and served it. It was fun. It was gratifying, and it'll go on my resume.
And to prove that great culinary minds think alike, when Chef appeared later that night with the new cafe menu, it had a filet with hash, a roasted-pulled pork with rice, beans and plaintains. I like to think I had quite a bit of indirect input into the new menu, as it features a lot of sides I've done with recent fish of the day dishes, but I'll keep that and my ego under my hat.
Meanwhile, as we've rolled out the new cafe menu, maybe a little less challenging but still very good, it's been the most ordered cafe menu I've seen in the 10 months I've been with Dexter's. Nice job, Chef.
With our head chef away for two weeks on his honeymoon, there had been some interesting breakdowns in the supply chain, and the sense that a few shake ups were in the works with regard to our menu. Currently, Dexter's of Thornton Park, my restaurant, is a sometimes strange place to be.
Every now and then management screams about food costs. Nothing special about that, really, as I've seen it in every kitchen I've worked in. Myself, I'm not that interested in food cost. I do what I can to save a penny here and there, but I'm really far more interested in refining my classic techniques as a cook, and experimenting with new combinations.
At Dexter's we run what's known as the "hard" menu, which is the shiny three fold monster that has all the everyday items we serve. Simple, unchallenging fare. Lot's of pastas for the hotline, lot's of sandwiches and salads for the cold stations. To augment that, we run the cafe menu, which is a dozen apps and entrees which allow our chef to flex his CIA trained muscle, and his linecooks, like me, to get our hands on some better products. In the past 10 months I've seen Chef Rhys put together some really nice dishes, but they get expensive, our wait staff can't really sell anything, and consequently the cafe menu doesn't get the action it deserves.
To an outsider, insofar as management issues are concerned, the leadership at the restaurant used Chef's vacation as a good time to make some changes to the cafe menu we had been running. The method they used to balance the costs the cafe menu was generating was to stop ordering the products we needed, essentially to run out what we had on hand, and then, sometime before Chef got back to the kitchen, create a new cafe menu that was more of the yawn-inducing fare that the hard menu has. Would it sell? Probably. It'd be boring as hell, however, and I'd be polishing up my resume quickly.
I strolled into work Tuesday, the day Chef returned, fully expecting a complete meltdown in the kitchen over the menu shake up. What I found was Chef working out a new menu, under orders to dumb-down the food.
Chef, I said, there is really nothing left to sell on the cafe menu. We're out of everything.
Well, he said, you can come up with a special or something, if you want to.
A special, I though, I'll come up with 4. I'll write the cafe menu for tonight. So I ducked into the walk-in cooler to see what there was to work with. Not much, as usual. In 10 minutes I had 4 menu items to run with our primary proteins, got the nod from Chef to go with the specials, and had begun directing traffic on who was doing what and how.
Granted, with only 2 hours to get a day's menu together, it was simple food. Filet Mignon with a crab hollandaise, potato hash and asparagus. Salmon with a red wine demi glace, garlic mashed potatoes and flashed baby arugula. Pork ropa vieja with rice, beans and plaintains. Seared tuna with nori chips, steamed rice and a warm ponzu. The three cooks available that night, me, our sous chef Frank, and Eric pulled the menu together and rocked it out through a fairly successful service.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I get a chance to come up with a completely new dish daily as the fish special, but this was the first time I'd written a menu for a restaurant and served it. It was fun. It was gratifying, and it'll go on my resume.
And to prove that great culinary minds think alike, when Chef appeared later that night with the new cafe menu, it had a filet with hash, a roasted-pulled pork with rice, beans and plaintains. I like to think I had quite a bit of indirect input into the new menu, as it features a lot of sides I've done with recent fish of the day dishes, but I'll keep that and my ego under my hat.
Meanwhile, as we've rolled out the new cafe menu, maybe a little less challenging but still very good, it's been the most ordered cafe menu I've seen in the 10 months I've been with Dexter's. Nice job, Chef.
