Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Correcting Course, Avoiding the Iceberg Ep. 70

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Correcting Course, Avoiding the Iceberg Ep. 70 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello Chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Andre Natera. On today's episode, what we're
• 0:04
  gonna talk about is when things are not going right, how do you
• 0:07
  correct the ship? Stay tuned.
• 0:21
  This episode of Chef's PSA is sponsored by J&R Grills and
• 0:23
  Smokers. Many of you have heard of J&R
• 0:25
  smokers and grills that typically last for decades.
• 0:28
  I've had the pleasure of using them for over 5 years at one of
• 0:30
  the top restaurants in Austin. They're beautiful.
• 0:32
  They gave me the control over technique and the smoke infused
• 0:35
  flavors I wanted. I'm thrilled to have J&R as a
• 0:38
  sponsor. Their commitment over the past
• 0:39
  50 years speaks for itself. They understand your passion
• 0:42
  because it fuels them too. BBQ or upscale cuisine they
• 0:45
  always help you deliver. They build everything in Texas
• 0:48
  and ship to all 50 states in over 50 countries.
• 0:50
  J&R, they'll stand with you. They've always stood with me.
• 0:53
  Go to jrmanufacturing.com to learn more.
• 0:55
  Before we get into it, I'll give you a quick update.
• 0:57
  I'm still doing my chef in residence.
• 1:00
  Things are going really well. The food is clicking,
• 1:03
  everything's going smoothly. I've put up a couple of
• 1:06
  Instagram reels showing some of the food is it's upscale dining.
• 1:10
  So if you all are in the Dripping Springs, Austin area,
• 1:12
  come out and see me. I'd love to have you in the
• 1:14
  restaurant. I'll be there for another couple
• 1:16
  of weeks. I did miss The kitchen, but I'm
• 1:19
  slacking a little on Chef's PSA. I have some books that I'm going
• 1:22
  to get written here pretty soon once I get back to Full Time
• 1:26
  Chef's PSA, and most likely that's going to be a sequel to
• 1:30
  the Bad Sue Good Chef book a lot of people have been requesting.
• 1:34
  It might be a prequel. I don't know.
• 1:35
  I'm going to do like a whole whole trilogy thing, maybe with
• 1:38
  it. But I I like that series.
• 1:39
  I like the conversational style of that book.
• 1:42
  So most likely I'll have that book done.
• 1:45
  I mean, if I'm fast, end of December by Christmas, but
• 1:48
  realistically probably in January or February.
• 1:50
  If you want to support the show, you know what to do.
• 1:52
  If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you hit the like
• 1:54
  button. Hit subscribe.
• 1:55
  Think there's a little bell for notifications.
• 1:57
  I'm not an expert. YouTube, sorry.
• 2:00
  All those things that I'm supposed to say, do that.
• 2:03
  If you're watching on Spotify or listing on Spotify, make sure
• 2:05
  you leave five stars, nothing less.
• 2:07
  This five star podcast. If you didn't leave five stars,
• 2:10
  that would make you a liar and and you wouldn't want to be a
• 2:12
  liar now would you? I don't know.
• 2:14
  People don't like liars. You're better than that.
• 2:16
  Leave five stars. What?
• 2:17
  What's wrong with you? I'm in a secret competition, so
• 2:20
  there's a 5 star podcast out there that I'm secretly
• 2:22
  competing with and I can't wait to have more five stars than
• 2:25
  they do. Go to chefspsa.com.
• 2:27
  You can get all the books, the merch.
• 2:29
  There's free ebooks as well. Which you should get those.
• 2:32
  They're free. How to open Up a Restaurant?
• 2:35
  Critical Path? Food Cost Mastery.
• 2:37
  Culinary Dictionary. For people that are new to the
• 2:38
  industry and maybe you don't know your terms, this is a good
• 2:41
  opportunity for you to learn them without being embarrassed.
• 2:43
  Who to ask? Some basic recipes as well.
• 2:45
  And of course, the print books. Culinary Leadership
• 2:48
  Fundamentals, Bad Sue. Good Chef Kitchen, Art of War.
• 2:52
  Line Cook. Survival Manual, How Not to Be
• 2:53
  the Biggest Idiot in the Kitchen.
• 2:55
  And I forget sometimes. I have a journal as well.
• 2:57
  How are you going to remember? Shit, if you don't write it
• 2:59
  down. You need a chef's PSA journal.
• 3:01
  They come in multiple colors, right?
• 3:02
  Red. Black.
• 3:03
  Blue. Go get a journal.
• 3:05
  Support your favorite podcast. Think I, you think I don't
• 3:09
  appreciate the support. I love the support.
• 3:10
  I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
• 3:12
  But subject at hand, correcting course.
• 3:15
  I've been thinking about this a lot.
• 3:16
  A lot of times, as a chef, you go down a certain path and
• 3:21
  you're married to it. You've committed to it, and it's
• 3:23
  very difficult sometimes to admit that you were wrong.
• 3:26
  Maybe you were punching above your weight.
• 3:27
  Maybe you were too ambitious with your menu.
• 3:29
  Maybe your team wasn't ready, or maybe you weren't willing to put
• 3:33
  in the amount of hard work that it takes to make it a success.
• 3:36
  It could be a variety of reasons, but in the restaurant
• 3:39
  game, it's dangerous. And I want to point this out
• 3:42
  because a lot of people don't really understand how dangerous
• 3:44
  it could be. Now, if you're a chef owner, you
• 3:46
  understand the dangers of not correcting course.
• 3:49
  But sometimes you're just the hired executive chef, an
• 3:52
  employee of the owner or the corporation.
• 3:54
  And when you don't have skin in the game, I can tell you as
• 3:57
  someone who has failed before, I I think I've I've failed just as
• 4:02
  many times as I've succeeded the times when I failed.
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  I didn't act quick enough. The signs were there, the
• 4:07
  writing was on the wall, but I couldn't read the writing.
• 4:10
  And shortly thereafter, Failure is inevitable if you don't
• 4:13
  correct course. Taking action is probably one of
• 4:15
  the most important things you could do, because even the best
• 4:18
  cooks on a sinking ship still sink with it.
• 4:21
  But it also takes the maturity of the chef to recognize when
• 4:25
  ownership is making knee jerk reactions or upper management is
• 4:29
  making knee jerk reactions because they think the ship is
• 4:31
  sinking. So I mean you're walking the
• 4:34
  razor's edge because the fact of the matter is, they might be
• 4:37
  wrong, but sometimes you might be wrong.
• 4:40
  You might be stubborn in your ways and not want to correct the
• 4:43
  food because you feel that you're losing a little bit of
• 4:47
  yourself. We all want to cook great food.
• 4:50
  We're all passionate about the food that we create.
• 4:52
  We're attached to the identity and we associate ourselves
• 4:55
  sometimes with the identity of being a chef.
• 4:57
  I was talking to someone the other day and they were talking
• 5:00
  about how they identify as a cook and they identify as a chef
• 5:03
  and that is their personality. Now, I had this problem too, and
• 5:06
  for many years all like like if you took me to a party, the only
• 5:09
  thing I was going to be able to talk about was food.
• 5:10
  That's it. Like if you talk about anything
• 5:12
  other than food or probably, you know, fights, you know, the UFC
• 5:16
  or the hip hop, I wasn't going to be able to hold a
• 5:19
  conversation. So it got to the point where
• 5:21
  people didn't want to bring me to parties because all I talked
• 5:23
  about was the industry. That's fine when you're around a
• 5:26
  bunch of chefs and cooks, but it creates for an awkward situation
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  when you're around the plebs, the normal, the normal people
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  out there in the world, right? Especially if all you could talk
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  about is, you know, what you're cooking, what you're doing in
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  your kitchen. You live it kind of in a bubble
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  when you're working in the industry.
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  Social currency in a kitchen doesn't necessarily equal
• 5:45
  anything when you're outside of the kitchen.
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  The way we regard culinary skill doesn't matter to someone that's
• 5:50
  a non chef. You could be the you could be
• 5:53
  the most badass chef ever. But if they're not into food, it
• 5:56
  does not matter. No one gives a shit.
• 5:58
  And sometimes we get wrapped up in this identity of being chef.
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  And I face this problem and so I had to re.
• 6:04
  I had to recreate my identity as Andre.
• 6:07
  And so during this time, during the kitchen, when I was a chef,
• 6:10
  I removed any embroidery I had on my coat.
• 6:13
  I just wore a Cook's chef coat. A lot of chefs go through this.
• 6:16
  I would tell people, don't call me chef, call me Andre.
• 6:18
  I just kind of wanted to renounce the title because I
• 6:20
  wanted to be who I was, not necessarily the title.
• 6:23
  A lot of people, it's weird now. Like, sometimes I'll go places
• 6:26
  and people will call me Chef's PSA.
• 6:28
  They're like, you're Chef's PSA. Oh, hey, Chef's PSA.
• 6:31
  What are you doing? It's like, that's not my name,
• 6:33
  That's the name of the podcast, but that's not my name.
• 6:36
  It's funny to me. Anyway, I crack up a little bit.
• 6:38
  But but we digress. I had to reinvent myself and
• 6:41
  disassociate myself from Andre the person and Andre the chef.
• 6:45
  Well, the same thing happens in the restaurant.
• 6:47
  Sometimes you think when someone doesn't like a dish or someone's
• 6:51
  asking you to change something in the kitchen, you take it
• 6:53
  personal because you think they're talking about you
• 6:55
  personally, not necessarily about the food.
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  And sometimes this could be to your detriment because it will
• 7:01
  cause you reluctancy to act and take action.
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  And when you're in a situation where you need to act going down
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  the wrong Rd. because you have your ego attached to not wanting
• 7:10
  to change the dish, maybe your team needs to to change it
• 7:15
  because they can't execute it, or ownership needs you to change
• 7:18
  it because they need to fill the restaurant.
• 7:19
  Whatever the case may be, you as the leader, it's your
• 7:23
  responsibility to know when you need to step aside, regroup.
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  As I like to say, breathe, wipe your cutting board and reset.
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  Because if you don't, disaster is inevitable.
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  It's right around the corner. Restaurants are going to close.
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  And if you don't have skin in the game, sometimes you might
• 7:37
  not feel that. But you have to think about this
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  impact. If you have a typical restaurant
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  that has 50 employees, there may be two or three people off the
• 7:46
  salaries of those employees. So now when a restaurant closes,
• 7:49
  not only are you affecting 50 people, but you're affecting the
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  people that they support. So you may be in all actuality
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  affecting 150 people that are living off that restaurant, not
• 7:59
  including vendors and other businesses and small farms.
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  So there is a certain level of responsibility that goes with
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  the chef to correct course when things are not going correctly.
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  Let's let's go back and touch on not taking it personal.
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  When people give you feedback on your food or asking you to
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  change something that may be your identity you feel is
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  attached to it. If we had 10 cameras set up and
• 8:20
  they were all taking pictures of you and every single person that
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  took a photo of you, they'd have a different perspective of what
• 8:26
  you look like. They'd have a different opinion
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  of you. It goes to this old saying, all
• 8:30
  statements are equally correct. And what that means is if I say
• 8:34
  the food is good and you say the food is bad, both statements are
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  true. This is a hard thing for people
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  to wrap their head around. You may love the food and you
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  may think it's great. Someone else may hate the food
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  and think it's terrible. Both of you are right because we
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  live in a subjective state when it comes to food.
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  So you have to understand that when someone is giving you
• 8:51
  feedback, it's not a personal attack.
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  It's in their reality and their perception.
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  It's not good and that makes it true, but in your perception
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  it's not. So how do you find the balancing
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  act between them? Some things is just to look at
• 9:04
  the numbers where your sales at are sales increasing or
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  decreasing, right? You want to go in the right
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  direction. You could look at online
• 9:11
  reviews, are they going up? Are they going down?
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  Right. As long as they're trending in
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  the right way then keep doing what you're doing.
• 9:17
  But if they're trending in the wrong way then you have to re
• 9:20
  evaluate and reassess. One of the things that I talk
• 9:22
  about often with teams is the idea of rapid prototyping.
• 9:25
  I'm sure I've discussed this on the podcast before, but it's
• 9:29
  something that Apple Products does.
• 9:30
  You know, they release Update 1, Update 1.2, iPhone 15, iPhone
• 9:34
  14. Anyway, they're always
• 9:36
  innovating with their product and they're sending out updates
• 9:39
  and they're rapidly prototyping now for the chef that could
• 9:42
  filter and distil that information as it's coming in.
• 9:45
  The quicker they could react to it, the better off they'll be,
• 9:48
  right? It's like seeing the iceberg and
• 9:51
  you're driving the Titanic. How quickly can you pivot the
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  ship? If you don't, it's inevitable
• 9:56
  that you're going to hit it. So the idea of rapid prototyping
• 9:59
  is something that I think people need to incorporate into their
• 10:02
  kitchens every single day. The idea of 1% better
• 10:05
  consistency is important, consistently good is great,
• 10:08
  consistently bad isn't. So if you're getting negative
• 10:11
  consistent feedback, it's important that you adjust and
• 10:14
  make the necessary corrections. One of the most important things
• 10:16
  that I think people do is that that, you know, there's usually
• 10:19
  a pre shift meeting and there's a post shift meeting.
• 10:21
  The pre shift meeting is to kind of talk about what's coming,
• 10:24
  make any adjustments. You know, we could do this.
• 10:26
  Let's adjust the time on that. Let's adjust the cook on this.
• 10:29
  Let's adjust your setup here. This is how many covers are
• 10:31
  coming in. These are the VI, PS:, or PX,
• 10:33
  whatever you use and you prepare for service.
• 10:35
  The post shift is sometimes where the greater learning
• 10:39
  happens because you're able to reflect and look back and say
• 10:41
  what went well and what didn't. Now as that information comes to
• 10:45
  you, the quicker that you adjust what went wrong and what didn't,
• 10:49
  The sooner you'll get better, but sticking your head in the
• 10:51
  sand is not going to make things better.
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  And I know a lot of chefs just think, you know, we did fine.
• 10:56
  It was the service team's fault or it was someone else's fault.
• 10:58
  It was never their fault, right? It's always someone else's fault
• 11:01
  when shit goes wrong. But it's always, you know, you
• 11:03
  always get the credit when things go right.
• 11:05
  But it doesn't really work like that.
• 11:07
  The idea is you have to correct it and make sure that you as the
• 11:10
  leader have the open mind. When your team sees that you
• 11:13
  have an open mind and you're constantly correcting it, they
• 11:15
  also start to incorporate the open mind idea as well.
• 11:18
  Now maybe you're not in a position where you are the
• 11:20
  leader. Maybe you're just a cook and
• 11:22
  your leader doesn't do that. It's important as a young cook
• 11:24
  to self analyze what went right and what went wrong at the end
• 11:27
  of every shift. I've talked about this before.
• 11:29
  You should journal. Write down all the things that
• 11:31
  you did well, all the things that you could do better.
• 11:34
  Have little competitions against yourself.
• 11:37
  Maybe yesterday it took you 30 minutes to do something, today
• 11:40
  do 29 the next day to 28. Always be looking to get that
• 11:44
  little bit of a improvement 1% better every day, because
• 11:47
  sometimes you don't have a boss or a chef that's pushing you to
• 11:49
  get better. And let me tell you something,
• 11:52
  No one is responsible for you to get better.
• 11:54
  You're responsible. You're in the driver's seat.
• 11:56
  No one's coming to save you when times get tough and we're all
• 11:59
  going to go through difficulty, right?
• 12:02
  Maybe you lose your job, maybe you don't get promoted, maybe
• 12:05
  you're stuck in your position and all your friends are going
• 12:08
  to give you advice. They're all going to tell you
• 12:09
  what to do. They all have the right answers,
• 12:11
  but none of them can do it for you, and none of them are going
• 12:14
  to really be there to help you when the times get tough.
• 12:17
  Best thing that you could do is learn to help yourself, learn to
• 12:19
  correct things on your station. When you're in a situation that
• 12:22
  isn't getting better, it's your job to make the decision to get
• 12:24
  you out of there. No one's going to pull you out
• 12:26
  and save you. I do these Sunday Q&A S often,
• 12:29
  and one of the repeat questions I get is, you know, I don't like
• 12:33
  my job. The chef sucks.
• 12:35
  How do you handle the chef that you're better than or that
• 12:38
  doesn't care? And I'm like, why are you still
• 12:40
  there? What?
• 12:41
  Why are you working in a place where you don't respect the chef
• 12:43
  and the chef doesn't care? No one is chaining you to the
• 12:46
  stove. There's no reason why you have
• 12:48
  to be there. There are a ton of great
• 12:50
  restaurants in pretty much every city, and there's nothing
• 12:54
  holding you back for going from going and working for these
• 12:57
  great chefs that are in these great cities.
• 12:58
  What's holding you back, right? Do you do you like complaining
• 13:01
  about how your chef sucks and how your team sucks and no one
• 13:04
  cares? Sometimes you just got to change
• 13:05
  the environment and no one's going to change it for you.
• 13:07
  Like, if you wait it out, we're going to wait for that chef to
• 13:10
  quit. Maybe it's going to be a year.
• 13:12
  And then what if you get another bad chef?
• 13:14
  Why not take action now when you need to correct course, the only
• 13:18
  thing that you can do is act sitting around and waiting for
• 13:21
  magic to happen. It it doesn't work that that
• 13:24
  way. We all we all fall into that
• 13:26
  pattern of like oh maybe some magical elves are going to come
• 13:29
  clean the walk in for me. Like no, the walk in.
• 13:32
  You got to clean that shit. You spilled it.
• 13:33
  You got to clean it up. You made the mess you got to
• 13:35
  clean it up. Chef's PSA is all about helping
• 13:37
  you stand on your own 2 feet. I'm not going to do it for you.
• 13:39
  I'm just going to tell you what I think and what works for me.
• 13:42
  But ultimately, you got to do it yourself.
• 13:44
  Now, when you're looking at what's going right and what's
• 13:46
  going wrong, when you're looking at the food, sometimes you got
• 13:48
  to look at it objectively. Is the food too complicated?
• 13:50
  Do you need to scale back the technique a little bit?
• 13:53
  Are there more efficient ways to do it?
• 13:55
  One of the things that I like to say is the shortest path to get
• 13:59
  to the most delicious result is the right way.
• 14:02
  So is there a quicker way to do it?
• 14:04
  And the reason I bring that up is because sometimes we fall in
• 14:07
  love with the idea of difficulty.
• 14:09
  We think, oh we got to broom wall this by hand or we got to
• 14:13
  do this but maybe you don't have the labor to do that so you got
• 14:15
  to find deficiencies in what you're doing.
• 14:17
  Maybe you have to buy the pre peeled garlic.
• 14:20
  Not not the garlic, the pre peeled garlic.
• 14:23
  You got to get that. Who who the fuck uses garlic
• 14:26
  anyway? Home cooks use it bad.
• 14:28
  Not just home cooks, but bad home cooks use it.
• 14:30
  Don't. Don't buy the pre peeled garlic.
• 14:32
  And also one other thing, don't use that lazy lemon that comes
• 14:36
  in a bottle. That stuff's nasty.
• 14:38
  Lazy lemon is disgusting. It tastes weird.
• 14:41
  Doesn't taste like fresh lemon or fresh lime.
• 14:43
  I I don't know why people buy that and have that in their
• 14:45
  kitchens. I mean, how hard is it to
• 14:48
  freaking squeeze a line or a lemon?
• 14:50
  Strain out the seed? Anyway?
• 14:53
  We digress. I I think it bears repeating
• 14:55
  because I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here.
• 14:57
  The person that takes action has every single advantage over the
• 14:59
  person who takes none. And when it's time to act, it's
• 15:02
  time to act. The the expression that if a
• 15:03
  Tiger's chasing you, you could either run calmly or you could
• 15:06
  run frantically, but to not run would make you unwise.
• 15:11
  So just because you're facing a difficult situation doesn't mean
• 15:13
  you don't got to hit the panic button and you got to act
• 15:15
  frantic and you got to run around like a chicken with your
• 15:18
  head cut off and the sky is falling sometimes.
• 15:20
  Sometimes you could act and create action without hitting
• 15:24
  the panic button because the team sees that, especially if
• 15:26
  you're the chef. If you're panicking and running
• 15:28
  around and correcting course versus if you're calmly running
• 15:32
  around and correcting course, your energy affects the people
• 15:34
  that are around you. But anyway, take this to heart
• 15:37
  what I said. Because maybe you're in a
• 15:39
  position right now where your restaurant needs you to take
• 15:42
  action, or you're on a station where you need to take action.
• 15:45
  Don't wait. The longer you wait, the more
• 15:47
  difficult it'll be. The sooner you act, the sooner
• 15:50
  you'll correct it. That thing that you're avoiding
• 15:52
  is probably the thing that you need to do the most anyway.
• 15:55
  You all know what to do. Go to chefspsa.com.
• 15:57
  You can get the the merch. You can get the books.
• 15:59
  It's hoodie weather. Add some beautiful hoodies, one
• 16:02
  says. Sucker free kitchens.
• 16:03
  So if you run a sucker free kitchen, you need that hoodie.
• 16:06
  Go get the journal. Write.
• 16:08
  Shut down. Make a plan.
• 16:10
  Act on it. We'll see you next week.
• 16:12
  Hit the porno music.