Constant Motion - The Art of Working the Line

Even if you’ve never been to culinary school or worked in a restaurant or seen cooks putting out food in a commercial kitchen, you’ve probably eaten in a crowded restaurant and wondered, “How do they keep track of it all? How can they possibly feed all these people without screwing up or serving cold food?”

The answer is organization and division of labor. That is a deceptively simple answer, not simple in the sense of “easy,” but simple in the sense of “basic.” I’ve been back there and seen cooks hard at work during a busy dinner service. Even from a layman’s point of view, it may be basic, but easy, it ain’t.

The backbone of any service—breakfast, lunch or dinner—in a restaurant is “mise en place”. Each cook at each station is responsible for getting every component prepped for every dish that comes off that station. The trick is to make sure that, once tickets (orders) start coming in, the cook has everything he needs to fill those orders without ever having to leave his station. This can get very murky for a novice. Let me explain by illustrating.

Say a cook works the Panini station. (For those not familiar with Panini, it is a sandwich served hot or cold but most of us are more familiar with toasted Panini.) On the menu is a grilled vegetable Panini with goat cheese and herbed aioli on focaccia, a grilled Portobello Panini on ciabatta, a Cuban sandwich on Cuban bread and a bacon, lettuce and turkey Panini with Swiss cheese on seeded rye. All items come with fries, potato salad, side salad or chips. That doesn’t sound like too heavy a load, but let’s look at the mise en place for that station:

Pre-slice, pre-toast breads
Make vegetable marinade
Marinate vegetables
Grill vegetables
Make herbed aioli
Prep goat cheese
Make mushroom marinade (if different from veggie marinade)
Marinate portobellos
Pre-grill Portobellos
Slice cheeses
Slice some cheddar—there are always substitutions
Slice pickles (or stage pickles)
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Cook pork shoulder
Slice ham
Cook bacon
Wash and stage lettuce
Slice turkey
Make potato salad
Have chips ready
Oil for Panini press
Salt and pepper
Chop herbs

Being Prepared For Anything

Not only does the cook need to make sure that everything is prepped, but he has to make sure that he has enough of everything to make it through service. While it might be no big deal to send someone back to the walk-in cooler to get another dish of mustard, it’s a huge deal to need more grilled vegetables when the grill cook has the grill full of hamburgers. Often the cook will have two pans of their ingredients ready - ones at the station to start service and ones in the walk-in or in the low-boy under the station for back up.

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Chef Walter Scheib Cooks With The Celebrity Chef Tour

Once again I have the opportunity to share with you a very informative interview with a top American chef. This time with Chef Walter Scheib, an extraordinary person who was the previous executive White House chef for President Bill Clinton and President George W Bush. Not only did Chef Scheib give interesting responses about his time in the White House, he also offered incredible insight to anyone thinking of going to culinary school and entering the food industry. He also provided some great tips for home cooks who are afraid of trying new ideas at home. Read the interview here.

The Celebrity Chef Tour

Like my previous interview with Chef Marc Vetri, I was given the opportunity to interview Chef Scheib by the folks marketing The Celebrity Chef Tour, an organization that showcases the talents of James Beard Award Winners by presenting them throughout the country to prepare award winning dinners to raise money to benefit the James Beard Foundation. For those of you who don’t much about the James Beard Foundation, its mission is to "celebrate, preserve and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence."

Chef Scheib will be the "celebrity chef" this Thursday, April 23, 2009 at The W Hotel in New York City. The event takes place at 7 P.M. and costs $185.00 per person. You can contact them for more information at 720-201-1853.

The event menu will include Mojito Spiked Sweetwater Prawns, Avocado & Pin apple Salsa with Plantain Chip, Chorizo Wrapped Scallops with Pepper Relish, Maryland Soft Shelled Crab, Corn and Bacon Chowder, Pepper Seared Duck, Glazed Shallots, Short Grain Risotto, Crisp Cactus Sorbet, Smoked Angus Beef Tenderloin, Green Chili and Hominy Casserole. The dessert will be Triple Chocolate and Espresso Ice Cream, Banana Rum Compote & Short Bread Cookies. Wow, what a menu!

More About Chef Walter Scheib

Author of White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, Chef Walter Scheib is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and as he says, ""For the last eleven years, I have had the honor of doing daily what most chefs would be lucky to do once in their life time. That honor was serving the First Family of the United States.”

He was chosen to be the First Family executive chef after he impressed First Lady Hillary Clinton with the spa menu he developed while working for the Greenbrier resort. She personally hired him in April of 1994. Chef Scheib is a big fan of incorporating American products into his menu including local bread, artisan cheese, seasonal produce, US breed meat and local fish. He says, "America is rich in amazing produce, meats, and fish, using just a few excellent ingredients, anyone can make a perfect meal with very little formal training.”

Chef Scheib’s new corporation, The American Chef, allows him to share his knowledge, experiences and cuisine to audiences across the country. The American Chef offers team building courses using cooking a process to bring business leaders together as well cooking demonstrations at our nations culinary schools. Chef Scheib also teaches classes on how to throw a White House Birthday Party.

To learn more about Chef Walter Scheib, I recommend you read my Novice2Pro Interview with him and also check out his web site, The American Chef.

The Importance of Good Service

I always say that a mediocre meal can be saved by great service, but mediocre service can ruin even a great meal. I’m more likely to revisit a restaurant where the service is spectacular but the food is merely good than I am to revisit a multi star restaurant that offers lousy service. And it starts with first person who greets you at the restaurant especially the maître d’.

I specifically remember an experience here in Philly at one of the top rated restaurants where the maître d’ was a jerk and said he couldn’t find our reservation and treated my wife and me like second class citizens. When he finally took the time to check his book more closely and found our reservation, there were no apologies. Almost like he was doing us a favor to be able to eat at the restaurant.

Even though the food was fantastic and our server was perfect, I was so annoyed by the rude maître d’ my evening was ruined. I emailed the owner and told him about my experience and to his credit he made the rude maître d’ call and apologize. Didn’t matter, I have never been back to that restaurant since. There are just too many great restaurants out there who want our business, especially in this economy, we shouldn’t stand for mediocre service.

Being a Waiter Is Not An Easy Job

There are many distinguished culinary schools and restaurant management schools around the country but have you ever asked yourself where do restaurant waiters and servers learn their craft? Most of them learn by experience and are taught by the various establishments where they are employed. Many higher end restaurants require their wait staff to have a number of years of experience before offering them a position so I guess we can say waiters and servers work they way up with on the job training.

I can imagine that being a server is not easy, but I often wonder why there aren’t more good servers or more restaurants that demand good service. So, when “Sarge”, a young man who is a server trainer joined The Reluctant Gourmet Cooking Forum, I asked if he could tell me what it takes to be a great server. After reading his response, it is now clear to me that being a good server takes a lot of time and attention. Just like a football player must memorize the playbook, a server must know the menu and all the ingredients in all the dishes. He must know the numbers assigned to each table and be able to perform every server function in the manner prescribed by his/her restaurant.

I do not know where Sarge works, but based on the server training, I would bet that it’s a great restaurant. I was amazed at the thoroughness of the training. Demanding a 90% competency rate ensures that only the best servers stay on, and I can bet that it shows in the service. Sarge, I will happily eat at your restaurant any time. Next time I’m in Texas, I will look you up!

Here’s what Sarge has to say about the training that servers and server trainers must go through at his restaurant.

Day 1 - Get Acquainted

Servers at the restaurant I work at go through several days of training before they ever hit the floor.  The first day is devoted to learning the way the Host Stand works, the rotation, and learning the map (the table numbers and how many guests can sit at each table). After several hours of this, the trainee is given a detailed tour of the kitchen by a manager, then a brief rundown of the rest of the building.  

Days 2 & 3 - Plates

The next two days are called Plates.  During the first Plate training, the trainee is in the kitchen with a plate trainer (I am one of three in the restaurant) learning the various items we serve, how they are prepared, and how they are correctly garnished.  The trainee has, at this point, a very basic idea of ingredients and such, as they are provided with lists of each item.  

The trainer points out each item as it comes up on the line (all training is done during an actual shift) and describes each one, demonstrates the way to garnish each correctly, and if time allows runs the tray out to the floor with the trainee.  We have three items that require special table-side service, so if any of these items come up during the shift, the trainer will either go out with the trainee, or send the trainee out with the server who ordered the item in order to demonstrate the correct service.  The second Plate shift is a reversal of this process - the trainee will name, describe, and garnish items as they come up on the line.  

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