Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Sous Chef to Executive Chef: Navigating the Leap Ep. 50

Transcript

Sous Chef to Executive Chef: Navigating the Leap Ep. 50 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs. This is chefs, PSA podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host Andhra natera. On today's episode, we're going
• 0:06
  to be going over going from a sous chef to an executive chef
• 0:09
  stay tuned. So first, let me give you a
• 0:24
  brief update. I'm going to be doing a dinner
• 0:27
  on June 26th, in Dallas, Texas with chefs Anastasio, Canon has
• 0:33
  from Jose restaurant, Philip Speer from Commodore here in
• 0:36
  Austin, Texas, that's where I'm recording.
• 0:39
  Chef Rick Lopez from La condesa also here in Austin and the four
• 0:44
  of us are getting together some of Texas Finest.
• 0:47
  So we're all excited to be cooking at Jose restaurants.
• 0:49
  If you happen to be in Dallas, you're not going to want to miss
• 0:51
  this dinner. Make Sure, that you go and buy
• 0:53
  tickets. There's a link in my bio on
• 0:57
  Chefs, PSA Instagram page. You could also follow the Texas
• 0:59
  Food & Wine Alliance and there's a link also in their bio.
• 1:04
  So if you're in Dallas and you want to have some good food,
• 1:07
  we're going to be celebrating Mexican Cuisine.
• 1:09
  I'm on the hot Seafood. Course, I got to remember how to
• 1:12
  cook. I've been retired for a bit but
• 1:14
  I think I'll be fine. So, make sure that you are there
• 1:17
  and if you want to do a chef's, PSA meet up and you want to
• 1:20
  smoke a cigar, and maybe we could have a cigar Sunday while
• 1:22
  I'm in Dallas. Maybe we could organize that I
• 1:25
  think would be fun. Anyway, I also just released the
• 1:29
  restaurant opening guide critical path, companion to the
• 1:32
  podcast two-part series, if you like that series, you'll like
• 1:36
  this companion. So for people that are thinking
• 1:39
  about opening up a restaurant, there's a lot that goes into it.
• 1:41
  I think it's a bigger process than I think people realize.
• 1:44
  It's not just, I have some money.
• 1:45
  Let me open up a restaurant or I have an idea.
• 1:47
  Let me open up a restaurant. So, this critical path is
• 1:50
  basically, I took all the information from the two.
• 1:52
  Podcast episodes and combined them into a critical path
• 1:56
  document which critical path. For those of you that don't
• 1:58
  know, is a step-by-step, how to go from point?
• 2:01
  A to Z and every step in between obviously, there's things that I
• 2:05
  didn't include, but it's free. If you have no starting point
• 2:08
  to, this is a great frame of reference, listen to the to
• 2:10
  podcasts and get the critical path.
• 2:13
  If you have any idea brewing in the back of your mind that you
• 2:17
  want to open up a restaurant. That's something that you
• 2:19
  probably want to do. The last thing I've been up to
• 2:21
  probably doesn't really matter. Better for you all.
• 2:23
  But I've been redoing my website and I've probably been working
• 2:26
  on it for about two weeks. At least I probably been talking
• 2:28
  about it for two weeks and I'm fucking done.
• 2:32
  I'm so frustrated with it but I think it looks good.
• 2:37
  I was finally done with it and then it's on a staging site.
• 2:41
  So all I got to do is hit go, and then it goes and then the
• 2:44
  whole thing crashed. So I've been working on it for
• 2:46
  two weeks. Probably about 30 to 40 hours
• 2:49
  staring at a computer screen, trying to build this website and
• 2:52
  then it just crashed. And I think I may have lost
• 2:54
  anything. So anyway, I'm a little
• 2:55
  frustrated, right? That all happened like an hour
• 2:58
  before I started recording this podcast.
• 3:00
  So I was hoping I'd be announcing my new website.
• 3:03
  There's no new website. There might be, I don't know.
• 3:05
  Check tomorrow. We'll see how this will see if I
• 3:06
  could recover this. Anyway, these are some of the
• 3:10
  challenges when you work alone, so a lot of people don't know
• 3:14
  this, but I work alone. There's no one else on the
• 3:16
  chef's PS a team, but me it's just me.
• 3:18
  So the podcast the editor, the video editor, the person that
• 3:23
  makes the cartoons, the memes, the post, the writer, the
• 3:26
  editor, the graphic designer, The person that answers the DMS,
• 3:32
  that's all me. There is no other person.
• 3:34
  So every day I'm learning something new, which is fun, but
• 3:37
  sometimes it can be frustrating. So this ties into today's
• 3:41
  podcast, what I was telling someone the other day is that
• 3:44
  sometimes when things are on Easy Street, when you've been
• 3:48
  doing something for a long time, like for me, be running.
• 3:50
  A kitchen is Easy Street. I could go into the kitchen, I
• 3:52
  know exactly what to do. I did an event this past
• 3:54
  weekend. I wasn't one of the featured
• 3:56
  chefs but I was part of the organization of the event and I
• 4:00
  10. And I was helping with some of
• 4:01
  the cooking and the organization, and like the chef
• 4:04
  kicked in right away. I was working with some students
• 4:06
  from escoffier and the old Chef kicked in.
• 4:08
  I was like they were all buttoned up anyway.
• 4:12
  It's easy for me to be a chef because I could do that without
• 4:15
  thinking, but sometimes it's much more difficult to do
• 4:18
  something that you don't do every day.
• 4:21
  For example, building a website, what I do right now is Chef PSA
• 4:25
  besides talking about Chef things every day I'm working on,
• 4:28
  something usually that I don't know how to do, and I don't have
• 4:31
  an assistant. So when I joke around and say
• 4:33
  I'm going to fire my assistant, there is no assistant so it's
• 4:36
  usually me that I'm going to go get mad at myself.
• 4:40
  And what I find interesting about this process is because
• 4:43
  everything that I'm doing is new every day.
• 4:46
  I'm in a constant state of learning.
• 4:48
  Now I'm going to do a podcast mini episode on YouTube about my
• 4:53
  morning routine because someone was asking me about it if I
• 4:55
  could expand upon it. And for those of you that don't
• 4:58
  know, have like an OCD 3, our morning routine, I'm going to
• 5:01
  expand upon it. I've already recorded the video,
• 5:03
  I just got to do some edits, but that'll be on YouTube.
• 5:06
  But everything that I do point being everything that I do is
• 5:09
  designed for learning. And growth and Improvement.
• 5:11
  There is a quote that I like and that is when growth stops Decay
• 5:16
  begins, that's an interesting quote because we're going to
• 5:20
  talk right now about going from sous-chef to executive chef.
• 5:25
  Now, I could tell you that. I've helped a lot of chefs go
• 5:29
  from sous chef to executive chef I was doing the math the other
• 5:32
  day and I think something like I've had 50 people that have
• 5:35
  worked under me. That I've gone from sous-chef to
• 5:36
  executive chef. I was counting in my career.
• 5:38
  Now granted aside from my Youthful appearance, I've had a
• 5:41
  long career. I've been an executive chef, I
• 5:43
  think since 2004. So almost you know if I was
• 5:46
  still an executive chef that would be about 20 years of head
• 5:49
  chef experience. Now let's not get caught up on
• 5:51
  the term executive chef because we're calling this episode going
• 5:54
  from sous chef to executive chef.
• 5:56
  Sometimes I get these DMs like that's not a real executive chef
• 5:58
  you mean Chef De Cuisine. I mean the head chef going from
• 6:01
  sous chef to head chef but we're going to call it executive chef
• 6:04
  right now because I think a lot of people understand that term
• 6:07
  in a lot of places sometimes the chef de cuisine reports up to
• 6:10
  Executive chef for the chef de cuisine.
• 6:11
  Reports up to the chef owner and I understand that, but for the
• 6:14
  sake of context, this is what we're talking about.
• 6:17
  So some of the topics that I want to cover today, are when
• 6:20
  are you ready to go from sous chef to executive chef?
• 6:22
  How do you know when you're ready?
• 6:24
  What are some of those things that you need to expect when you
• 6:26
  get into that position? What is completely different for
• 6:29
  you when you become the head? Chef?
• 6:31
  What are some of their bigger shocking things that you'll
• 6:33
  discover as a head chef and things that like a peek behind
• 6:36
  the curtain that a lot of people don't know and how will you
• 6:40
  view? Oh, the kitchen differently.
• 6:42
  Now that you're an executive chef versus before when you were
• 6:45
  a sucia. So, let's start with the first
• 6:47
  point. How will, you know, when you're
• 6:49
  ready, the fact of the matter is, sometimes you're not going
• 6:51
  to be ready. There's a couple of different
• 6:53
  ways that people get their first executive chef job, sometimes
• 6:55
  you're clearly ready, everyone knows it.
• 6:58
  The opportunity presents itself. And someone Taps you on the
• 7:00
  shoulder and says, I think you should apply for this job.
• 7:03
  It's yours. It's given to you.
• 7:05
  So a lot of times you're ready, just because maybe you're
• 7:08
  punching below your weight. You've been a rock star.
• 7:12
  Maybe your outshining your current head chef.
• 7:16
  And that happens a lot sometimes there's a really fantastic
• 7:19
  sous-chef or executive sous chef that is doing the work of the
• 7:22
  person above them. And everyone recognizes it.
• 7:27
  Sometimes this is when you have a troubled head chef that maybe
• 7:30
  has a problem or doesn't show up to work often.
• 7:32
  There's basically checked out and winding down their career
• 7:35
  and the executive sous chef for the sous chef is just hungry and
• 7:38
  ready and everyone knows it and they get the job.
• 7:40
  That's one way to know that you're ready another way and
• 7:43
  this this happens very frequently your sous chef in a
• 7:46
  restaurant the chef Leaves last person standing you're promoted.
• 7:51
  Are you ready? Doesn't fucking matter.
• 7:53
  There's no one else. It's no one's applying in the
• 7:55
  restaurant has to stay open and the ship has to keep going that
• 7:57
  way. And when that happens you just
• 7:59
  get thrown in the position. You got to figure out sink or
• 8:02
  swim. It doesn't necessarily set you
• 8:04
  up for Success. A lot of owners are notorious
• 8:06
  for doing this. Just promoting people because
• 8:08
  they're the only people available and a lot of times you
• 8:12
  know ownership will be like, well I'll just step in and cover
• 8:14
  the areas where they may have some weaknesses.
• 8:16
  This isn't necessarily the best thing because you want to grow
• 8:20
  in your position with a little bit of a safety net, there's a
• 8:23
  greater risk in Going into an executive chef or a head, chef
• 8:26
  position like this, because the chance of failure is pretty
• 8:29
  high, but if you succeed, you're a rockstar because everyone's
• 8:33
  like Against All Odds, they did it.
• 8:35
  And then another way. It's just sometimes you just go
• 8:39
  for it, right? You might not be ready but it's
• 8:41
  like let's let's just jump in and figure it out and maybe you
• 8:45
  apply for the job and you get it I'll tell you a funny story when
• 8:48
  I was really young, I don't know.
• 8:51
  It's like my first my first or second cooking job and I had to
• 8:54
  been my third cooking job. I was working at a place and I
• 8:58
  told my executive chef, at the time I said, hey, I got a job as
• 9:02
  an executive chef and I did. So I went to this country club
• 9:05
  where one of my friends was working and they They got me a
• 9:07
  job as the head chef. Now the head chef there, there
• 9:11
  was only two employees, it would have been me and my friend and I
• 9:13
  had more experience in a culinary degree and he did it
• 9:16
  and so I would have gone in and been the executive chef.
• 9:18
  I think I was I don't even think I was old enough to drink.
• 9:21
  I think it was like maybe 18 or 19 and the menu consisted of
• 9:26
  like hot dogs and chicken tenders and maybe like frozen
• 9:29
  hamburgers and club sandwiches and things like that.
• 9:32
  It was for a golf course at a country club.
• 9:35
  The little Food Shack that they had.
• 9:37
  And they needed a chef and I would have been called the
• 9:39
  executive chef. So I went to my Chef.
• 9:43
  And I told him that I was going to be an executive chef, and I
• 9:45
  remember the conversations, like, oh, you're gonna be an
• 9:47
  executive chef and he's walking me through the process.
• 9:49
  Like, how much are they going to pay you?
• 9:50
  And I was super proud as like they're going to pay me seven
• 9:52
  bucks an hour, seven dollars an hour to be the executive chef.
• 9:55
  Again, this is a while back. Thank God.
• 9:58
  My chef talked me out of it. And said look you might think
• 10:01
  you're the executive chef but you're really not an executive
• 10:05
  chef. Like there's different levels to
• 10:06
  this game and that's like That's not it.
• 10:12
  This is basically what what he said, and that's what I would
• 10:15
  tell, a lot of people like, yes, the someone asked me, what's the
• 10:18
  fastest way to become an executive chef by a restaurant
• 10:21
  and promote yourself? Like, you don't, you don't need
• 10:23
  anything. Nothing stopping you from
• 10:24
  becoming an executive chef by the restaurant promote yourself.
• 10:26
  It doesn't mean you're going to be a good executive chef.
• 10:29
  So being in that role of sous-chef the longer you're in
• 10:33
  that role and have a good Mentor and someone guiding you.
• 10:36
  And and you know, when I say a good Mentor I mean a good
• 10:38
  Mentor. I don't mean someone that's your
• 10:40
  dangling. A carrot say?
• 10:40
  Oh you're not ready yet. You got to do this and then you
• 10:42
  do that. Was you still not ready yet?
• 10:44
  You got to do that. I'm not talking about that type
• 10:46
  of Mentor, I'm talking about someone.
• 10:47
  That's really trying to develop you so that you could become an
• 10:51
  executive chef, they should be the person, helping you get that
• 10:55
  first position. Maybe it's a succession plan
• 10:57
  where they're preparing you to. Place them or maybe they're
• 11:03
  helping you grow into a position within the brand or another
• 11:06
  company or a chef friend that they know either way someone
• 11:11
  should be shaping your career and you should have that
• 11:13
  guidance because having an executive chef, as a mentor
• 11:16
  before you become executive chef it's it's worth its weight in
• 11:20
  gold because when you get into a job and we'll get into this,
• 11:22
  there's gonna be a lot of things that you don't know.
• 11:26
  It's the unknown unknown, you know what?
• 11:29
  You know, but then you get there and it's like, oh, I didn't know
• 11:31
  they dealt with this. Like how do I how do I figure
• 11:33
  that shit out? So let's talk about what to
• 11:35
  expect when you finally become the executive chef.
• 11:39
  I think the biggest thing that a lot of people realize is when
• 11:43
  you become the executive chef, you think that you're going to
• 11:45
  have this complete autonomy over everything and it's not true.
• 11:48
  You become the executive chef and less, you're the chef owner.
• 11:50
  There's usually someone that's still your boss and there's
• 11:53
  usually someone still involved in what you're doing.
• 11:56
  And having an opinion and depending on your relationship
• 11:58
  with them, that opinion might be more than you're ready to deal
• 12:01
  with. It might be the restaurant owner
• 12:04
  that fancies themselves a chef and tells you how to cook.
• 12:07
  It might be a GM somewhere that wants to dictate what's on the
• 12:11
  menu. You never know but unless you're
• 12:15
  the owner, you probably still have a boss.
• 12:18
  And if you're in a bigger operation, there's a lot more
• 12:20
  people that when you discover that there's a lot of people
• 12:23
  that have opinions about what you're doing and when you're a
• 12:27
  sous chef, sometimes you look up and say I would just do this and
• 12:29
  I would just do that. It's not so easy.
• 12:30
  When you get up there, when you realize it, go sit in a room and
• 12:33
  there's a table of 10 people that are all stakeholders in the
• 12:35
  restaurant. It's no longer just you.
• 12:37
  Yes, you're the face. Yes, you're the one driving the
• 12:40
  operation, but maybe there's a sales director.
• 12:42
  Maybe there's a marketing team, there's ownership, there's
• 12:45
  investors. There's a lot of different
• 12:47
  people that are involved with the decisions of the kitchen and
• 12:52
  the restaurant that you're running that.
• 12:54
  Sometimes you got to just say like oh shit you thought you
• 12:56
  were going to have carte blanche and then you realize you don't.
• 13:00
  So I think that's a big shock that a lot of new chefs realize
• 13:03
  when they get in another big shock that I don't think people
• 13:07
  fully think about is that you have a co-responsibility with
• 13:11
  every single person on your team.
• 13:13
  Meaning if someone makes a mistake, they made a mistake,
• 13:15
  you made a mistake. Someone burned a steak, they
• 13:17
  burnt the steak you burnt steak, even if you have nothing to do
• 13:20
  with it because you have to answer for every little bad
• 13:23
  thing that happens, you're constantly dealing with
• 13:25
  problems. Like when you walk in, like I
• 13:27
  remember when I was a chef, I'd walk in.
• 13:29
  It was like problem, say hi to someone.
• 13:31
  What's the problem? What's the problem?
• 13:32
  What's the problem? And I would go through most of
• 13:34
  my day, it's never, it's never the fun stuff.
• 13:39
  Why people want to talk to you, and I'm not saying that doesn't
• 13:42
  exist, but the majority of the time, when someone wants to talk
• 13:45
  to you, it's because you got to solve this issue.
• 13:46
  How are we going to deal with this?
• 13:48
  And so your constant mitigation mode constantly figure this out,
• 13:51
  figure that out, which means you have to be super sharp mentally
• 13:55
  and you have to have a high stress tolerance level.
• 13:58
  Now, a lot of people like this kind of used to annoy me like
• 14:01
  because I used to do the same thing.
• 14:02
  I would look at myself and say that looks these.
• 14:03
  What do you do all day? Just talks to people or just
• 14:05
  dealing with this looks easy, and until you're in the position
• 14:09
  and it's like oh shit, you know, how draining it is to be in the
• 14:12
  office, fighting with someone or convincing someone not to quit.
• 14:16
  Or listening to someone tell you why they need a raise and you
• 14:20
  having to explain to them, that there's no money.
• 14:23
  Or dealing with an owner that's upset.
• 14:25
  Because food cost isn't in line. Like, your whole day is that and
• 14:29
  everything that you're going up against, sometimes it's just an
• 14:31
  argument in your budding heads against everyone, that you go.
• 14:34
  And I think that's that's kind of like one of the biggest
• 14:36
  shocks that I think people are not prepared for is the amount
• 14:39
  of problems that you have to deal with on a daily basis.
• 14:42
  And like I said that ownership of anything that happens when
• 14:47
  you're a sous chef, not all Sous chefs do this but a lot of Sous
• 14:50
  chefs do like what went wrong. They did it.
• 14:53
  So And so did it and they're quick to point the blame, but
• 14:55
  when you're the executive chef it's like what went wrong.
• 14:59
  And then if you say so and so did it's like well then fire
• 15:01
  them. Because if you don't then you're
• 15:04
  the problem. You get paid to know you get
• 15:07
  paid to deal with the difficult things.
• 15:09
  So you got to be very careful about passing the blame.
• 15:13
  When you're in the head chef position, you know, there's that
• 15:15
  whole notion of extreme ownership fish stinks from the
• 15:18
  head when something happens you have to own it completely.
• 15:22
  Another thing that I think is shocking to people is the
• 15:24
  financials like a lot of people get really nervous when you go
• 15:27
  from sous chef to executive chef, you think it's all about
• 15:29
  the financials and a large part. It is maybe your checking and
• 15:33
  invoices, you're auditing them. You're on the phone with
• 15:35
  vendors, you're looking for the best price, you're checking your
• 15:38
  food cost daily, and I would say it's very important.
• 15:41
  It's important to stay on top of it, but it's not the most
• 15:43
  important thing because it's not as difficult as I think people
• 15:47
  make it out to be, unless you're really struggling with math.
• 15:49
  It's basic math, cost divided by Sales Plus, this minus that,
• 15:54
  it's basically food and labor cost the formula doesn't change.
• 15:57
  There's productivity formulas. There's food cost, there's
• 16:02
  labor, koster's, miscellaneous expenses outside of that.
• 16:05
  It's not really too difficult. As long as you know how to work.
• 16:09
  A basic Excel spreadsheet, you should be okay.
• 16:11
  And with chat GPT you should be able to build Excel spreadsheets
• 16:17
  relatively easy. If I could do it, you could do
• 16:19
  it. So, food cost is important but
• 16:21
  really, where you're going to manage food cost is, it's not
• 16:24
  from the computer, it's not from the desk.
• 16:27
  That's just looking at big numbers where you really going
• 16:29
  to manage food? Is in the kitchen is by being
• 16:32
  aware of what's going out and having good practices in the
• 16:35
  kitchen culture. So I think a lot of chefs get
• 16:38
  that wrong initially when they first start as an executive chef
• 16:41
  is, they think fixing all the problems happens in front of the
• 16:43
  computer when that's the furthest Furthest Thing from the
• 16:46
  truth. Fixing all the problems actually
• 16:48
  happens in the operation is going in there and seeing what's
• 16:51
  happening and then making small adjustments and seen what impact
• 16:55
  those things make. When I first got my executive
• 16:58
  chef role, My former executive chef was still in the building
• 17:03
  so he got promoted up and then he brought me up.
• 17:05
  So I was in my first chef job with training wheels and I
• 17:09
  remember him telling me because I went in and I wanted to be a
• 17:12
  Hotshot and be like I'm going to cut food cost.
• 17:15
  I'm going to be like a star and he pulled it off to the side and
• 17:18
  said be careful, cutting food costs solo because eventually
• 17:22
  you're going to give everything and they're still going to ask
• 17:23
  for more. You cut it to 20%, they're going
• 17:25
  to want 19, you give them 19. They're going to want 18 and so
• 17:28
  on and so forth. They're always going to Want it
• 17:30
  to go lower, so if you give them that they're going to ask for
• 17:33
  it. And then you're going to have
• 17:36
  nothing to give because you've shown all your cards.
• 17:40
  He said no one remembers and I'll remember this.
• 17:43
  So this is this is like an important lesson.
• 17:45
  So if there's one thing that you take from this podcast that's
• 17:48
  what I'm about to say next every great chef out there.
• 17:52
  That's a household name. The Kellers the Bocuse, the
• 17:56
  escoffier Ferran Adria Rene redzepi, although chefs that you
• 18:00
  know their name you don't know their name because they have
• 18:03
  good food cost, you know their name because of the food that
• 18:07
  they create. And I think that sometimes gets
• 18:10
  lost on people is that they think it's about the finances.
• 18:12
  And I'm not saying that it's not because if you're not running a
• 18:15
  good business, your business is going to close But if you're not
• 18:19
  serving great food, they're not even going to come back.
• 18:22
  So understanding create a great product with shrewd business
• 18:27
  Acumen. So it's profitable, right?
• 18:29
  But at the end of the day it's about creating great products
• 18:31
  that would be one of the most important things I would tell
• 18:33
  you. When you first get your head
• 18:35
  chef position, what are some of the biggest shocks?
• 18:37
  That I think people don't realize about the head chef and
• 18:39
  we talked about, you know, you're not fully in control even
• 18:42
  though you people think that you are I think a lot of people, you
• 18:45
  know, we're talking about finances, I think, when you're a
• 18:48
  sous chef everything's easy, just by this, spend the money.
• 18:51
  But when you become the executive chef, you also become
• 18:53
  a little bit more business savvy.
• 18:57
  And every decision that you make now is for the better of the
• 19:00
  restaurant and not necessarily for the betterment of the dish
• 19:04
  or the one individual person on the team.
• 19:06
  So, every decision you make as a chef, might not make sense to an
• 19:10
  individual, but it does make sense for the success of the
• 19:13
  entire restaurant. To that might be ownership
• 19:15
  Financial. Customer experience, or good for
• 19:21
  the entire team. So, There's your decision making
• 19:26
  process starts to evolve. You see the bigger picture?
• 19:29
  You understand the bigger picture a little bit more and
• 19:32
  things that you wouldn't have done.
• 19:33
  When you were a sous chef, you might the light bulb may go off
• 19:37
  and say, oh now I understand why Chef didn't allow me to do that.
• 19:42
  Things change up a little bit. Here's another big shock, your
• 19:46
  culinary skills, get rusty, and I think that's like, one of
• 19:49
  those things that like, people don't realize that if you're not
• 19:52
  in the kitchen every day and a lot of chefs They are but a lot
• 19:54
  of chefs aren't you know, you get caught up in meetings, you
• 19:57
  doing paperwork, you're doing the ordering and maybe you just
• 19:59
  cook just a little bit of your on the past running Expo and
• 20:03
  you'll start to notice that what you used to be able to do on the
• 20:05
  line. And you haven't worked the line
• 20:07
  for quite some time. Like you go back, you still know
• 20:09
  what you're doing but you're not as fast as your best line cook.
• 20:12
  Like you want your best grill guy on the grill, you don't want
• 20:14
  to replace them, usually, and I'll tell you a story.
• 20:17
  I was actually, I told the story on my cigar Sunday the other
• 20:21
  day. Someone asked me, what's a
• 20:24
  Something like peek behind the curtain that a lot of people
• 20:26
  don't know. It's like, well, usually the
• 20:28
  best cook in the kitchen. Isn't always your executive chef
• 20:32
  because they are Rusty. So sometimes it's the number
• 20:35
  two. That's usually the driving force
• 20:37
  in a lot of kitchens is usually the chef de cuisine or the exact
• 20:40
  sewer. The Su that might be pushing
• 20:42
  things forward. Sometimes the executive chef for
• 20:44
  the head, chef is shaping, the direction that things need to
• 20:46
  go, but but the person that's implementing and executing as
• 20:50
  usually the number two. So I think that's a peek behind
• 20:52
  the curtain, but I did a dinner with big-name chefs.
• 20:55
  I won't say who and we were we were doing everything in Tandem
• 21:00
  and this is This is a big-name chef, he calls me over.
• 21:03
  And he says, where'd you get the fish from?
• 21:05
  Because I was in charge of making sure that everything was
• 21:08
  set and ready. And I said, why, and I'm like
• 21:10
  nervous like fuck did I did I fuck up the fish?
• 21:14
  And I said we got it from here and just and the others like
• 21:17
  okay great. And then he walks away and then
• 21:18
  he goes on stage and he explains the fish course.
• 21:21
  So it's like, oh shit, he just didn't know where the fish was
• 21:24
  from, because he hasn't, he didn't touch all the food that
• 21:27
  he's here to touch, right? And I've done the same, I've
• 21:30
  gone to events You know, I bring my team in their handling most
• 21:33
  of it and then I like they're like, what is this not like
• 21:35
  Whispering? My number two zeros like well,
• 21:37
  where did that come from again? Because they've done.
• 21:40
  They've done all the ordering in the planning and everything.
• 21:42
  I'd like kind of give them the Big Ideas, like I'm kind of
• 21:44
  thinking this and then they go make sure I look good in front
• 21:47
  of camera, so that happens a lot is like your executive chef.
• 21:51
  Sometimes it's just showing up to close the deal right there,
• 21:54
  the They're the closing pitcher in the game.
• 21:58
  Sometimes the executive chef. I was a, I was doing a TV show
• 22:03
  and I was being interviewed on TV and someone had prepared
• 22:06
  pasta, so I was making pasta for for TV.
• 22:11
  We had a standard pasta recipe and I said this many eggs,
• 22:14
  here's the flour dust and the other so, boom.
• 22:16
  When I go on TV, I'm gonna make the pasta Dough's, the way we've
• 22:19
  always done it. And so, I go on TV and I'm
• 22:22
  making the pasta dough and someone else prep this for me,
• 22:27
  because I delegated out the prep has like just get everything
• 22:29
  ready, put it in bowls, whatever, whatever.
• 22:30
  And then when the camera crew gets here, I'm just going to go
• 22:32
  out there. Do my demo, talk about the pasta
• 22:34
  and go on. So while I'm making the pasta, I
• 22:36
  realized mid demo that the recipes wrong. and so, I like,
• 22:42
  Distract them with whatever and I'm like, okay through the magic
• 22:45
  of TV. Here's the finished dough and
• 22:47
  then we roll it out, whatever. So then afterwards, I go up to
• 22:51
  my sous chef and I'm like, did you what was up with the recipe?
• 22:55
  And they're like, oh, I changed it.
• 22:56
  I gave you a different one. I think this one's better and
• 22:59
  I'm like, I'm on TV explaining what we're making and I think
• 23:02
  it's this recipe and when it's not working and I don't know
• 23:06
  why. And then you find out the the
• 23:09
  sous-chef changed it. Anyway.
• 23:14
  That was a frustrating moment for me.
• 23:16
  I don't remember how it ended, but that illustrates the point,
• 23:19
  A lot of times the chef is coming in, and just kind of
• 23:21
  putting the finishing touches on things.
• 23:23
  They might not be as involved in the preparation.
• 23:26
  Anyway, those are some things to look out for when you become a
• 23:29
  new executive chef, sometimes it's Lonely at the Top.
• 23:32
  Your jokes are a little bit funnier.
• 23:34
  You're a little bit. Smarter, your food taste a
• 23:35
  little bit better. Everyone's your friend until
• 23:39
  you're not the chef anymore. So you got to be wise a little
• 23:41
  bit and understand that sometimes it's a relationship of
• 23:45
  convenience. When you're the executive chef,
• 23:48
  you have to be much more Vigilant.
• 23:49
  You have to watch everyone much more carefully because usually
• 23:53
  people that are buttering up to you, have not always, but a lot
• 23:56
  of times they have ulterior motives, it's usually, what's in
• 23:59
  their best interest. It's lonely being the chef
• 24:02
  Sometimes I was joking with one of my friends about this.
• 24:04
  They said, you know, When you're the chef and you walk in and
• 24:09
  everyone gets quiet, you know they're talking shit about you
• 24:11
  but like what you know it's a very you bump into those awkward
• 24:15
  moments all the time and so hopefully you have a good number
• 24:18
  two, you know the sous-chef or the executor of the chef de
• 24:20
  cuisine that you could be your Confidant but you need to have
• 24:22
  someone because it does Get Lonely at the Top.
• 24:26
  There's a certain element of danger when you're in a bar and
• 24:29
  you're about to get in a fight in the person that you might get
• 24:31
  into a fight, is way bigger than you.
• 24:33
  And you start to think, maybe I should have mouth off to this
• 24:35
  person because the sequences are big.
• 24:38
  If I mouthed off, they might beat the shit out of me in the
• 24:40
  bar, right? The same thing.
• 24:42
  Applies as the executive chef, there's a certain line that can
• 24:46
  be cross where you could, you could push them, the worst that
• 24:50
  they're going to do to you is usually quit the worst that you
• 24:54
  could do to them as fire them. So the consequences a lot of
• 24:57
  times are more great on their end and because of these
• 25:01
  consequences what ends up happening is people are afraid
• 25:06
  to sometimes be honest. With you so you need to make
• 25:08
  sure what you know this is my advice.
• 25:10
  You need to make sure when you become the chef that you do have
• 25:12
  a couple of people that can push back on you and tell you the way
• 25:15
  it is. Because if you if you surround
• 25:17
  yourself with a bunch of people that are just going to always
• 25:19
  tell you what you want to hear, that's a dangerous game to play.
• 25:23
  Because you will not know when people are withholding
• 25:26
  information from that is going to eventually hurt you in the
• 25:29
  long run. So anyway, those are a lot of
• 25:32
  things to think about when you go from sous chef to executive
• 25:35
  chef, if I didn't answer a specific question that you had
• 25:39
  on this. If you're watching this on
• 25:40
  YouTube, feel free to comment. If you follow me on Instagram,
• 25:44
  feel free to send a DM and I'll gladly answer it if there's
• 25:46
  something that I missed or didn't cover.
• 25:49
  If you want to support the show, go get the books, bad sooo good.
• 25:53
  Chef is the new book that I just wrote.
• 25:55
  It's a conversation a lot like this one two-way street though
• 25:59
  on a new Chef that has a lot of questions on how to be a
• 26:03
  successful sous chef. So a lot of people ask me, what
• 26:05
  do I need to do to be a good sous, chef?
• 26:07
  This is the book that you want. Get the kitchen Art of War,
• 26:10
  culinary leadership, fundamentals.
• 26:11
  Those are the three books in the leadership series for Cooks.
• 26:14
  Get the line, cook survival manual and how not to be the
• 26:17
  biggest idiot in the kitchen. Go get some more.
• 26:19
  Birch. Hopefully I'll have a new
• 26:20
  website chefs PS a.com updated version of it.
• 26:24
  Thank you so much. Make sure you leave five stars
• 26:26
  if you're watching on YouTube, hit the Thumbs Up Button, hit
• 26:29
  the porno music, see you next week.