Knife's Edge - Restaurant Rants & Raves

Maybe if We Called Them Mini Trout

As I predicted the sardines were not the major seller. Even the GM wouldn't go near them. However, it was D-E-A-D last night. So much so that we left early. We did sell one order of the sardines and I thoroughly enjoyed mine.

Tonight there are a number of events going on in and around town. A circus south of us, a "pops" concert in town and a Yucatecan dance performance. The young hipsters will be at the first, not sure who will be at the second and all the kitchen workers in town will be at the third. So we have no idea what to expect from tonight. Either another dead evening or slammed.

Tonight we've got quail to work with, the sardines and 12 oz bone-in NY steaks (also known as a club steak). I thinking grilled quail with fava bean ravioli. One of the advantages of having a new prep guy is I can do ravioli now. It's a time consuming process and one I do infrequently because I never had enough hands.

Last night I also made a rose (that's ro-zay, not roz) gelee to put on our strawberry shortcake. We'll see how it comes out.

The GM is back from reuniting her mom and sister. It went well but I think it took a lot out of her. Now she gets to sort out all the mess created by the waiters and I in her absence. I at least tried to have the house semi-clean when she got home.

Sardines should be here today. On one of our first dates (at Aqua) the GM had sardines for an appetizer. Her grandmother had told her she should eat them because they were "brain food". We'll see if she gets within 10 feet of a sardine now. Not that she had a bad experience at Aqua, she's just not typically a fish eater.

I got a price fax from Monterey Seafood to check availability of things. The item my seafood guy shorted me on wasn't on the list and their prices are higher on the items he sells me so while he's not off the hook, he's not at the moment being reeled in.

I had a meeting in our wine producing valley yesterday and decided I would distribute menus to the inns south of here on my way home. Walking around town, in spring, looking at the ocean was great. I hadn't really noticed things in a long time. I do live in a beautiful spot.

After the weekend we're going to have to sit down with my two long-term cooks and give them a critique. We usually only use employee evaluation forms for disciplinary purposes so this is new behavior for us. Shuna had told me about a chef she worked with who gave his crew personal growth assignments to be met otherwise they'd be let go. We've done this only when employees have crossed the line.

My sous' assignment will be to be more conscious, organized and involved. I can no longer pay a sous wage for a sloppy line cook. He needs to use his intelligence in a positive way and to assume the responsibilities of his position. The other guy needs to speak English. This will be hard for me also since I affect a Spanglish dialect when speaking with him, so I have to drop that.

The Spanish speaker will be easy. The sous I'm not looking forward to sitting down with.

Something Fishy

My seafood vendor just called to tell me he's shorting me on part of my order. He's been having a difficult time finding things for me lately so I'm doing a little investigation. A few months ago he seemed like he was heading away from being someone I could rely on for specialty items and heading more to the mainstream so I called him on that and told him I was looking at some other companies. After that he seemed to get on the ball a little more but he's sliding once again.

It's tough for him. He's a little guy like me and can't afford to buy on spec and unfortunately for me my own orders are pitifully small in the world of wholesale. So I don't end up getting fun stuff to play with as often as I'd like. He, however claims the stuff isn't in the marketplace which I know is at least partial bullshit because whenever I'm in SF I see all kinds of things at Chinese markets.

I like the guy. We used to work together at another restaurant years ago and have always had a good relationship so I don't want to cut him out, but I did resume talks with Bay Area purveyors to see what really is out there.

He used to be a chef. He knows you get bored with the same old stuff. Perhaps when my orders drop he'll come around. Or maybe I'll find out he's telling the truth.

Seafood is getting very tricky. It's an under-regulated, minimally inspected industry which is just starting to discover the impact it has had on our oceans. So at this point dwindling stocks, questionable fishing practices and mercury levels undermining consumer confidence coupled with most of our country's complete unwillingness to eat fish which are in the faintest way unfamiliar leaves chefs like me high and dry.

I'm bringing in some sardines which I'm sure I will be eating. Both literally and figuratively. But I can't continue to serve a range of 5 or so fish and continue to have fun. I know, I know. You're going to tell me you eat everything that swims. Good, move up here. I'll feed you.

Bittersweet

Last night a former employee came to visit. He left last year because his girlfriend was going to be going to nursing school a few hours north of here and he was going to be going along with her.

He was a great cook and really passionate about food, probably one of only two really thoughtful, committed cooks I've had in this kitchen. When he left it was rough for all three of us (him, me and the GM), he cried when he told us he was giving notice and we were close to doing the same. but it was the right thing for him to do.

He and his gf are getting married this summer which is wonderful. They'll be having the ceremony down here since this is where she's from and her family is here. In the meantime he's working in a kitchen north of here. He told me he's working with a bunch of people around his age who are all passionate about what they're doing, that there are an amazing number of farms they're dealing with and he's having a really great time. They found a great place for affordable rent a few blocks from where he works.

This is all great. I'm really happy for them. But his girlfriend didn't get accepted to the nursing program so there was no reason for them to leave in the first place. I know it's the thing for him to be doing but I miss him in the kitchen and I know the rest of the crew, particularly the waiters miss him as well.

My Northern California Lifestyle

I get to trade my vegan masseuse meals for massages. She'll be here in an hour. If George Bush Sr. thought people in Marin were a bunch of misguided hot-tubbers he should get a load of us up here.

I'll post more after I'm relaxed.

Man in Uniform

Yesterday, for the first time in many years, I went to work and did not change into my whites. I'm still feeling weird about it.

The GM is visiting her sister and I'm filling a bit of her role. Payroll mostly, but other office work as well. Nothing I didn't used to do, before she was gracious enough to take this grossly underpaid position, but things I haven't done in a while.

I'm trying to be out of the kitchen some while training, especially in the day so my guys can learn their rhythm and set their priorities which will give me more time to play with food. So I set about payroll and then dealing with little loose ends and our ongoing Micros dilemma. At this point I will have to either ship or bring the machines in for Micros to repair. We'll be heading to SF next month so I'll see how the GM feels about being with one machine for that long. Seems like it would be cheaper to bring it in on our regular trip but with the price of gas who knows?

By staying in my street clothes I was able to force myself to do some rather boring tasks like reconciling 6 months worth of bank statements. If I had changed my clothes I would have started some kitchen project and tried to go back and forth from kitchen to office, burning everything and royally screwing up the statements.

I love my uniform. Not in a fetishistic way (an instructor of mine said if anyone fell in love with you who had seen you in your whites, marry them because they are some of the least flattering clothes in the world) but in a functional, utilitarian way. I like the idea of changing my clothes when I arrive at work. It puts mind and body on notice that I am now something other than myself. This is why we have insisted the waiters wear uniforms. First, I didn't want to put myself in the position of arbiter of taste and second, I believe putting on your uniform does produce a different mental state.

I do however, have to transcend the working chef role I have filled for years and move toward one where I am supervising more and cutting onions less. Not that I don't enjoy cutting onions, I do. But at this point I am more valuable to the restaurant for other things. Staying out of uniform will keep me focused on that goal.

This does have a price. After baking the shortcakes my day prep guy had done, we saw there was something radically wrong with the results. I'm not sure what he did so I'll have him show me today. Sometimes my recipes confuse new cooks because I write my fractions as decimals so 3/4 cup becomes .75 cup. Until they get used to this mistakes happen. I started doing this because MS Word changes at least some fractions to smaller type and when emailing recipes to people their fractions weren't displaying. I know there's a way to change the setting but I always forget to do it and have developed a different habit. Plus, after one mistake a good cook will pay more attention to the entire recipe.

I probably should start maintaining recipes in a spreadsheet so they can be scaled up or down easily, but that's going to be a major project and I don't know if I'm prepared to be in street clothes for that long.

Mrs. Goutfire

The full moon passed without incident and was actually pretty enjoyable. We did a reasonable amount of business. As an owner obviously more is better, but with our least experienced waiters on and our GM out of town, I was a little nervous.

The new batch of guanciale is close. I may try a piece today to see how much longer we should hang. It appears though all this high living is taking a toll on a few of us. I see that the fellow at Meathenge is, like my sweetheart, suffering from gout. It will be interesting to see what dietary changes this brings.

Dealt with one of the trickier service issues last night. A table of three, one of whom is a semi-regular ordered three desserts, two new ones and one old one. Two of the people didn't care for their desserts (ate about half) and ordered a banana split to share instead. Since one of the desserts was new I was interested in feedback. It is of course my current favorite and that of one of my Mayan cooks, but we both like desserts that aren't overly sweet. It's also a little strong on cardamom.

The customers couldn't be specific about what they didn't like about them. In other words, there was nothing wrong with them, they just weren't to their liking. I hate this situation. I want the people to leave happy and I don't want to give away food because my palate is different than someone else's.

What I did was give them two free desserts on their next visit. I was happy with this solution since it brings them in again. I hope they felt good about the offer as well. Desserts aren't as expensive ingredient-wise as entrees, although with multiple components the labor cost begins to climb, so perhaps I should have just comped them then and there. Still, if the dish is executed the way it should be and it tastes the way it should taste I'm not sure that giving something away is the right thing to do.

What do you think?

Full Moon Feast

An email from a friend let me know we're not the only ones experiencing mechanical weirdness. She attributed hers to the full moon. Anyone who works with the public knows the effect la bella luna has on us. My younger brother's first sign (he's deaf) was "moon" and he would absolutely flip when he saw the full moon, hopping up and down and making the sign excitedly.

Let's hope the weird stuff has passed. Yesterday I did what should have been a relatively simple test of our previously mentioned Micros machine and rapidly reduced it to a state worse than its original malfunction. Fortunately my habit of saving little scraps of paper, in this case the cell number of a Micros programmer, paid off. We're now down to only one working terminal, when I started we had one fully working and another working if you didn't need to see the display. I'm not touching it again until Monday.

The night before in the middle of service one of the ovens went out. I got it back up and wrote a note to myself to get a thermocouple. I checked it yesterday, it was running and I was in the middle of computer hell so I didn't do anything. Of course at 5:15 the oven goes out again with two full trays of bread baking and orders coming in. I run across the street to the hardware store to buy a thermocouple and hope that is the problem. Mind you, I'm no repairman and have never installed a thermocouple.

I quickly yank the oven apart and as I'm lying on the floor wrestling with the thing I realize I have turned into my friend AK. I used to work for him years ago and the joke among the kitchen staff was that he would decide to take some piece of equipment apart right in the middle of service. So there he'd be lying on the floor, fiddling around with god knows what, orders pouring in, I'm trying not to step on him and figure out how to cook with equipment out of service. Now it's me lying on the floor, wishing I had been smart and gone to school to become a banker.

Voila. It works. The oven seems better than ever. One of my Mayans is getting a tan every time he reaches into it.

Oh, did I mention we changed the dessert menu last night? Really more a restructuring. Strawberries are finally approaching flavor so we're doing a shortcake with balsamic-pepper ice cream. I had to put that ice cream on the shortcake because it's odd enough to throw a good portion of the clientele. If that wasn't there we'd sell nothing but shortcakes. Our buttermilk panna cotta is now getting roasted pineapple and fried angel food squares. This will only last until the panna cotta which was already made is gone. The bruleed cheesecake is now getting candied ginger sauce and diced mango. We're also running a forbidden rice pudding with white chocolate mousse and mango-mint coulis and a coconut-banana cream pie with caramel. At any rate, I'm training the pantry guy as orders are coming in. He's a dishwasher who's recently been promoted and he's doing really well. His replacement on the other hand is s--l--o--w. He seems to have a backlog of dishes all night.

The GM is getting ready to go to Idaho to visit family. Lucky her. Her mom isn't speaking to her sister and it's her sister's 40th birthday. I get to stay here. Lucky me.

So, she's gone. The full moon is here. We have our least experienced waiters on the floor tonight, one terminal, and a hopefully repaired oven. I will have to offer some fabulous feast to Selene, Artemis and any other moon goddesses you can think of in the hopes of clemency.

POS Mechanic

I don't want you folks to think my life is nothing but a series of calamities but they're usually more memorable than the successes and hence that's what I write about.

We had a planned power outage up here a few days ago and I, foolishly, did not turn our Micros point-of-sale system off before leaving for the evening. The GM did not call to remind me because she was afraid I'd roll my eyes at her and be annoyed that she would even think I'd forget such an obvious detail. However, power outages are not a rarity here and the machine has fared well in general.

I think you see where this is heading.

Indeed when I went in to check any potential damage to the food or facility the machine was emitting a chirping noise and the screen looked quite different. I tried a few things which did nothing. It's clear there's a database problem. No big deal, we've had this machine for 6 years and though I said it's fared pretty well the power outages often corrupt the database so I'm well-versed in the software repair. It's kind of fun because it's a hex/decimal machine and I get to feel like a bona-fide computer geek.

After database repair and a call to Micros I find what I have is a hardware problem. I remember we have a spare unit from when we had our wine bar across the mezzanine and I should be able to raid it for spare parts. Stupid mistake number 2. Before opening the case and pulling out parts I didn't power it up to see if the unit worked. I'm 99% sure it did but still....

So I swap parts back and forth to no avail. Another call to Micros to order a power supply since that's what seems to be causing the problem. The good news is business has been slower (which is in itself bad news) and we have one fully operational unit. In truth, the malfunctioning one is usable, the display is just split down the middle and impossible to read. So if you really know what you're entering you can use it. But see I'm trying to make the story more dramatic.

Of course, the power supply didn't ship when they said it would. So we're facing the weekend with reservations from a Porsche club and a few other large parties, 4 waiters and 1 pos station. Another call to Micros and know it seems it may be the motherboard. I have a plan for today involving more pirating of parts. We'll see how it works.

Through this, other than the power supply not shipping when they said it would, Micros' support has been great. In all my dealings with them, they have been consistently responsive, empathic and helpful. They should be you're thinking, because these systems are not cheap (we got a quote 2 years ago of $16,000 to upgrade our current system to the newer system) and if you're having problems they damn well better help you fix them.

Ah, but I'm not actually a customer of theirs. While I was going to auctions, getting our equipment, in fact the very first restaurant auction I attended, I purchased this 3 unit system with 3 remote printers, the users and programmers manuals for $75. We did pay a local guy to do the initial programming but he gave us a really cheap rate because he wanted to learn the system.

Because of their support, if I were thinking about buying a new POS (which would only be if an investor wanted to set us up in a swank new place) I'd certainly be inclined to buy a Micros. But as you have guessed, this post wasn't intended to be a testimonial for the company but an opportunity for me to brag about my bargain purchase.

Chef's Kitchen

I suppose if we ever sell our house we could use this description in the come-on. After all it is a chef's kitchen. I have to laugh every time I see this used though in some palatial estate up here. Most chef's kitchens probably look much like mine. I'm not talking about chefs featured in glossy publications. I'm sure they have all the Viking SubZero Aga appliances they want.

My kitchen is a large and basically purposeless room in our house. I have a 4 burner electric Hotpoint stove, an antique toaster oven, a half size Kenmore refrigerator (think dorm room size) and a Kenmore microwave.

Of these appliances the toaster oven gets the greatest workout since most of our "home-cooked meals" are some variant of toast. Replacing the fridge has saved us $30 a month on our electric bill since we were running this huge thing previously that usually had only cream for coffee and some left-over from an Indian meal. The microwave was purchased after my sister-in-law bought me this herbal heat pillow for my neck and we had no way to heat it. So my main use for it is for neck and shoulder aches. I do heat water for tea in it sometimes although the electric stove is faster.

I did however, cook a meal at our house last night. Paneer with Prik Khing Curry, Paratha, Rice and Fried Onions.

This led to a discussion of preference and prejudice. I realized that when eating Indian food I almost always go vegetarian, yet when trying almost any other restaurant I am never attracted to the vegetarian options. I mostly head for pork at Chinese establishments and seafood at Thai or Vietnamese. I'm not sure why.