INDUSTRY THREAD

>1. Position:
>2. Years in the industry:
>3. What sort of shit do you make at work:
>4. What's the type of shit you make at home:
>5. Favorite after work drink:
>6. Favorite dish served at your job:
> tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc

>1. Position:
Assumed.

>2. Years in the industry:
36

>3. What sort of shit do you make at work:
I don't work.

>4. What's the type of shit you make at home:
A mess.

>5. Favorite after work drink:
Water.

>6. Favorite dish served at your job:
Round.

> tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc
The government put bees in my attic so people wouldn't listen to me when I predicted the market crash of 2008.

>Utility
>2
>I mainly wash dishes but when I do cook work I make small stuff like salads and pastries.
>I like making burgers and other dumb stuff with ingredients I find. I usually microwave tendies and eat them.
>I don't drink I smoke.
>everything we make is fucking amazing, well most of it.
>someone cut their hand open with a plastic butter knife slicing roles and fucked their hand up bad. Another dude I know walked into a knife with the point sticking off the edge of a table.

1. Server/bartender
2. 5, 2 BOH, 3 FOH
3. Margaritas
4. Double Margaritas
5. Beer
6. Filet mignon
7. I went to check on this lady's food and she'd scraped off the topping off her margarita pizza (which was just tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil). So I asked her if something was wrong with the dough, and she said she was "gluten free". So I started worrying, asking her if she'd ordered gluten free and one of my idiot coworkers fucked it up (not how I phrased it) and she said "oh, you do gluten free pizzas? oh good, next time I'll order one of those".
Anyway I wrote all this just to share that one story.

>1. Position:
Currently I'm on the pastry crew, my main job being the bread maker/Boulanger chef de partie
>2. Years in the industry:
3
>3. What sort of shit do you make at work:
Reaaaaaalllll fancy shit. We're a 3 Michelin star spot so everything is ridiculously cool and fancy. A lot of it is new American/french influenced, but we also have some dishes with various Asian influences as well. Personally, I make all the doughs, the gougeres, these dope laminated butter rolls that are like a weird combination of a croissant and a brioche, basically anything bread related is all me
>4. What's the type of shit you make at home:
I used to work savory at my old job so if I'm in the mood to cook or I wanna impress someone I'll do risotto, steak, or some sort of meat, usually lamb or chicken, braised for a million years in red wine. If I'm lazy usually I just go to bed
>5. Favorite after work drink:
Magners and a shot of jameson.
>6. Favorite dish served at your job:
Our dry aged duck will always be my fave
> tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc
So I make bread but once a week I work w the chocolatier in this teeeeeny chocolate room hand dipping or enrobing chocolates. And we're usually stuck in there for like at least 8 hours. So we pass the time by singinggod awful songs. At one point we're attempting and failing to rap that song Wobble, and we hear a gentle tap, and as we turn to face the door our head chef is standing there, face right against the window, and as the door creaks open he whispers

"You should sing some Justin Timberlake"

1 Lunch line, junior chef

2 3 years, still pretty green

3 Southern contemporary/American

4 Decidedly Southern. Some traditional French stuff.

5 Water.

6. Favorite dish is our Pan roasted chicken, pic related. 24 hour brined shicken. Pan seared and then thrown in the oven. That base is some chicken confit with a decent amount of garlic and lemons, braised lentil, melted leeks, fine herbs(chervil, terragon, chive, parsley) decent amount of crema, LJ and salt. Garnished with some pickled mustard seed, radish, chervil, chicken/mustard jus.

6 We sell a marinated olives (lightly heated in olive oil, rosemary, lots of various citrus fruits and then chilled in that solution until heated and sold), customer asks for green olives only "uh, okay". Pick out all of the green olives and sell that shit. Gets sent back because the customer wants castelvetrano olives specifically. "Are you fucking serious", go get those olives and just heat them up in some olive oil and sell it. Guest loves it.

Second favorite dish I sell right now is our fried chicken.

Got any pics of the kitchen or did they skimp?

they don't really let us have our phones on us but this is a pic I took a million years ago on my second day

Word man. Yeah cant really see much but those copper pans certainly set the tone for what that kitchen puts out lol. Our kitchen is open so they spent quite a bit purely on design shit. Were totes allowed to have phones out. Its a nice kitchen.

Reverse

AND YOURE GODDAMNED RIGHT THATS A WINDOW

Holy shit so you actually remember what the sun looks like?! That's wild

I don't have many pics of our kitchen but here's a super dope dish we're doing for our last menu before we close for a 3 month kitchen renovation

I never knew how wonderful popcorn ice cream could be till I made it here

Yeah were not even close to sending that kind of shit out. Still objectively fancy but man, Id die to be able to send that kind of shit out.

Were the 25-40$ entree "fine dining" restaurant

>1. Position:
line cook
>2. Years in the industry:
7
>3. What sort of shit do you make at work:
I mostly work pantry, so salads, deep fried stuff and desserts. burgers, grilled stuff on grill.
>4. What's the type of shit you make at home:
anything we have to cook. usually scrap meat I bring home from work with beans/rice/veggies. making Pollo asada tacos tonight. had salmon belly last night.
>5. Favorite after work drink:
water, sometimes beer/liquor on the occasion
>6. Favorite dish served at your job:
our signature burger, we grind our own beef in house, salt/pepper on the grill. buns brushed with beef tallow and toasted. bottom up; black garlic aioli, in house made pickles, Applewood smoked bacon, Patty, white cheddar/parmesan mix, Bleu cheese, red oak lettuce tossed with balsamic vinegar, red onion, tomato, caramelized onion marmalade. best burger I've ever had
> tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc
I quit my job as a teppan chef because I was 3 paychecks behind, and the check he gave me bounced. also the teppan cooler was broken for two months so all the chicken, meat, seafood and veggies was shoved haphazardly into the main walk in, which never dropped below 45 devrees. first one in the building so I checked before opening it. never.

1. Position: Just dishwasher now. Had another job on the line, but recently quit to have time to do other shit. My dishwashing job actually pays more than the line job did haha.
2. Years: 16
3.Shit I make at work: Nothing. I just wash dishes. I guess I make coffee too. I was making pizzas at my line job.
4. shit I make at home: Whatever I'm in the mood for. Lots of different shit.
5. After work drink: Rootbeer. I'd rather have a bong toke after work than a beer.
6. Favorite dish: Fine dining so menu always changes.
One time when I was making pizzas a customer told one of the servers that a margherita pizza is supposed to have pesto and he flipped out when he was told that he was wrong.

what's the big wheel thing?

1. I've moved on. Last position: Sous

2. 6 effectively.

3. Usually calling the shots and grilling things, it was... upscale roadhouse nonsense at the last place? Chef fucking Ramsay Jr. tried to take a French approach to Italian wine and decided to pair it with what I can only describe as bastardized midwest barbecue with as much hipster flair as possible. Utter garbage.

4. All over the place, a lot of Italian, Indian and Creole/Cajun... depends on who I'm cooking for and how long I want to spend paying attention to it.

5. Beer usually, sometimes a martini or a manhattan.

6. Sambuca, thai basil and blood orange shrimp tagliatelle.

Gordon's more irritating clone pushed the general manager to start up ladies nights on Tuesdays with half priced drinks for women... I had to escort a lot of drunken cougars out of the kitchen.

rotisserie

post kitchen pic

I don't feel the need to constantly take pictures of everywhere I am or everything I do, so I don't have any.

>3 Michelin star shop
>letting a newbie with only 3 years experience touch anything in the kitchen
pls

I didn't take any photos of that place. I was actually kind of embarrassed to work there. Until the last month or so, the money almost made up for the verbal abuse and what we were doing to what could have been great food were it planned by someone with taste. There were some gems on the menu, but they'd get phased out eventually, regardless of how well they sold.

. Position:
Prep Cook

. Years in the industry:
1/4

. What sort of shit do you make at work:
Soups, stocks, jams, portioning, cracking eggs, making quiche, cooking bacon, wash produce, running food to the line, etc.
Idk prep stuff.

. What's the type of shit you make at home:
eggs, pasta, french toast, sometimes what I make at work.

. Favorite after work drink:
Cranberry juice

. Favorite dish served at your job:
Bread pudding french toast

>>tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc
None to really tell yet

Most kitchens are happy, certainly pastry departments, right now to hire and train inexperience as a way to drive down labor costs. None of this shit is rocket science and if you work hard enough any restaurant will be happy to teach you the super swanye way to do it.

I was going to say, if you can't learn how to cook in three years at that kind of pace, you probably need remedial courses of some kind.

Im sorry you had such a shitty experience there. Always hate to hear the jaded side of the industry. Honestly it makes value every day that I get at the kitchen I work at.

Right? Its not like youre being asked to create menu items. Just execute whatever the hell the exec chef comes up with. And by year 3 at any kind of legitimate establishment you probably see all kinds of repetition on very legitimate techniques. Like straight on special needs if fuck that up.

if you fuck that up*

Right now I make enough at my job that I can work 3-4 days a week. Sometimes the workload is such that I can't in good conscience say no to a 7 day work week, but a lot of the time I take the 3 day weekend.

So I get to entertain - I cook for friends and family. Sometimes I'll get asked to help/oversee the catering of an event, but I keep my price low on that, because I actually enjoy doing it.

>you fucked that up

fuck you

Do you have any advice to getting into a pastry cook position without pastry experience. I have three years of line cook experience. It seems like most places want me as a line cook.

I mean, keep looking for places looking for pastry assistants and be willing to be paid under 12 an hour.

I already get paid less than $12/hr so that is no issue.

Devise an interesting pastry upon which to write your resume in chocolate?

I got the job at the hipster brothel trattoria by showing up with a murgh tikka and paneer naan-crust pizza with the words "I am willing to learn" scorched in half inch letters around the crust with carefully brushed on starched eggwash.

Wtf i thought /ck were all about fatties talking about junk food

>1. Position:
Currently chef de partie
>2. Years in the industry:
5 years or so
>3. What sort of shit do you make at work:
Currently I'm working at banqueting section in a hotel so it could be anything depending on the function excluding pastry and bakery stuff
>4. What's the type of shit you make at home:
Asian dishes mostly stir fried stuff
>5. Favorite after work drink:
Water obviously or recently I've been drinking this cheap bottled green tea latte brand
>6. Favorite dish served at your job:
Duck confit and we also make authentic peking duck, both are really good
> tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc
So when i was working in germany cruise ship the sous chef from another department ordered too many tofu and they ended up with 20kg 6 months expired tofu, he pushed me to use them all ignoring the 6 month expired tag because apparently tofu is expensive in germany, i refused but he brought them himself and put them inside my walk-in chiller, i didn't want to use them at all so i threw them all, he was so pissed at me and we didnt talk for like 3 months lol

1. AGM
2. 1.5 kek
3. i have to bartend sometimes, my fave drink to make is a sazerac
4. mostly vegan stuff for health... rice and wok-fried veg
5. Pint of the black stuff at industry bar next door
6. Nothing atm but i used to work at a place with bombass family meal and my favorite was a roasted veg salad eith corn, spinach, asparagus, pastas, shaved carrots, and leftover herbs
7. My first boss was a party-fiend and on my second night working he got trashed and invited me out along with some staff members and other owner. I passed and never got same respect again. The longer i worked there the more i learned that he was feeding coke to our GM who was also a sex addict and alcoholic who fucked 4 BOH staff members, and almost any dude guest that was remotely interested. Business started failing after 4 months of intense traffic, and they started handing out hand-written checks that were significantly smaller and sometimes would bounce

Yeah, it's called walking into a kitchen, asking for a trail, and just kicking ass during that. Be fast, efficient and do whatever they tell you to do and you're solid.

I actually wrote to them that I have no experience at all, but after trailing the exec sous was like "so, I know you are still looking at places, but if you'll have us-"

And I had to interrupt them at that point to be like "holy shit obviously I'll have you jfc"

I was also lucky as the chef kinda saw me and assumed I'd be good at bread, despite not knowing shit about it. Surprisingly, she was totally right. 8 had that shit down pat in 3 days.

It's been over a half a year since I started working there, and I still can't believe they put me on one of the most important and easy to fuck up stations, straight from fucking PM production too, which is like the lowest station on pastry. Honestly though I can't even believe I got hired in the first place.

I'm kind of in disbelief about a lot right now. We just achieved something huge yesterday and I'm kind of numb as shit in the best way possible

That was like my last job! No shame in that, I love that kind of food

Our foods that fancy once in a lifetime sort of thing

You're lucky, you get to have regulars, and that's amazing.

(Our only regulars are like billionaires and I think Leonardo DiCaprio. He's been there quite a few times since I've worked there)

Demi Chef

3

Oyster dressings, pork cheek confit, rilette, potato and ricotta galettes, cheese malakoffs...A bit of everything, really.

Lots of curries (Thai and Indian mostly, but I tend to go pretty freeform with it). Ramen, stews, hearty stuff like that, which can be used over multiple days with ease.

Feral Hop Hog, Little Creatures Pale, just about any whiskey, but Buffalo Trace is a favourite.

Pork cheek lyonnaise

What an angel, sounds like something my girlfriend's mum might do.

Oh yeah, story.

So I'm cleaning a whole shit tonne of octopus tentacles, removing the slime, squeezing them and running my hands along them under a running tap.

My sous chef, an older British guy leans over me and asks "do you have a bath at home?"

This turns into a very whispery, long winded tutorial on how to masturbate, keeping the head of my penis above the water, tearing the wings off a fly and letting it crawl all over it.

He left on that note, not a word or even a smirk after. It was the hardest I've ever laughed without breaking silence.

1. Bartender
2. 5 years
3. standard cocktails, ranging from the simple to middle of the road shit that people rarely order.
4. a lot of Italian food because its easy as sin and good, generally try to make dishes that require a minimum amount of cleanup.
5. I usually have a jameson on the rocks before drinking garbage.
6. Chef makes a bangin' polenta

Too many stories, I forgot a lot of them over the years. something that was shitty is that our only elevator in the restaurant broke for three months, so I would have to help carry wheel chairs up 2 flights of stairs with some other guys, as well as carrying ice around in painters buckets because we couldn't get the wheeled bins around.

Local meat vendor came in today to try and get our business. Brought samples. After they left chef cooked up all of them and had us try them and vote on which one was the best. The ribeye and the tenderloin sucked. That first over from the ribeye, the first strip, was dry-aged and really really nice. Got the unanimous vote which pissed chef off because it was the most expensive one. There were like 6 of us and we all pretty much got a whole serving of steak.

Goddamn I love my job.

. Position:
Server

. Years in the industry:
Over 2 years serving. 4 if you count delivery.

. What sort of shit do you make at work:
Nothing bc theres no employee discount where I work and everythings expensive. Head chefs don't like anybody making alterations to the food.

. What's the type of shit you make at home:
I honestly don't cook much

. Favorite after work drink:
Tea. I stopped drinking alcohol when I switched to pot.

. Favorite dish served at your job:
Chargrilled oysters.

>> tell a crazy service story/dumb customer story/etc
Old serving job was at a late night sports bar. Super busy drunk rushes. Couple would bring in super drunk college kids who'd sit at random peoples tables and eat their food off their plates and I'd have to kick them out. Just to be clear, they weren't being dicks. They were just so drunk they had no idea where they were and just sitting down at a table and helping themselves to some strangers fries and wings made sense to them. Being in that environment was also a factor in me cutting back drinking a lot.

I can't imagine being drunk enough to go sit and someone's table and eat their food

I've also seen people go to empty unbussed tables, pick up half eaten wings, and suck the rest of the meat off the bones.

College kids are stupid.

I like you a lot