Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Working in Restaurants, Hotels, and Country Clubs Ep. 10

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Working in Restaurants, Hotels, and Country Clubs Ep. 10 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, you're listening to chefs, PSA podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host Andhra natera. On today's episode, we are going
• 0:06
  to talk about career paths and what it's like to work in a
• 0:10
  restaurant. What it's like to work in a
• 0:11
  hotel and what it's like to work in a country club.
• 0:13
  So stay tuned. So what's new everybody?
• 0:28
  I'll tell you what's new with me last week.
• 0:30
  On the Shelf, space a podcast. I told everyone that I launched
• 0:33
  some merch and well, that was short-lived because within a
• 0:37
  week, someone complained in my merch.
• 0:39
  Got taken down. Anyway, long story short,
• 0:41
  Instagram account gets taken down.
• 0:43
  Now, my merch account gets taken down.
• 0:46
  I'm starting to think that somebody doesn't like me out
• 0:48
  there, which is stupid because I'm like, probably the nicest
• 0:51
  person you'll ever meet in real life, in fake, Chef life, maybe
• 0:54
  not. But in real life, I am super
• 0:56
  nice anyway. Long story short stores back.
• 1:00
  The original chefs PS a book which I had talked about last
• 1:03
  week I'll probably update and take down.
• 1:06
  I plan on adding new psa's to it.
• 1:10
  Taking out some of the old ones that are no longer relevant and
• 1:13
  updating that. So it'll be chefs PSA, you know,
• 1:17
  Vol 2. And then I just wrapped up my
• 1:20
  new book which I'm hoping to have out within hopefully,
• 1:23
  within two weeks and that is culinary leadership
• 1:26
  fundamentals. That one is going to be much
• 1:29
  more serious. Not no joke.
• 1:31
  You like the first book that one is intended to help Young Chefs,
• 1:35
  new chefs, young Cooks. People that want to become
• 1:38
  executive chefs, really understand, you know, the basic
• 1:41
  fundamentals of leadership. So look out for that book coming
• 1:44
  soon. But anyway, let's get to the
• 1:45
  subject at hand today and that is the difference between hotels
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  restaurants country clubs. And the only reason I'm
• 1:52
  including those three is because those are the only three which
• 1:54
  I've worked in. And I've been an executive chef
• 1:57
  of a hotel, I was a regional Chef for a hotel.
• 2:00
  Regional corporate Chef for a hotel chain.
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  I was also a chef of a restaurant Chef / partner and
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  then I was also a chef of a country club.
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  So I've I've done all three. I speak from experience, and
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  I've worked as a cook in restaurants and hotels, but I've
• 2:16
  never worked as a cook and a country club.
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  But anyway, long story short, I know what I'm talking about when
• 2:21
  I could speak to some of the differences between all three
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  environments. So I'd like to say that I
• 2:27
  enjoyed my time in all three. So Someone's looking for me to
• 2:30
  say that one is better than the other.
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  It's really all individual preference but I do want to take
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  you through what some of the pros and cons are of all three.
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  So I want to start with country clubs.
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  Now have to say that I've spent the least amount of time in my
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  career in a country club. I think it was about three years
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  as an executive chef, where I oversaw to country clubs.
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  And here's the thing that a lot of people may or may not know
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  about country clubs if you're a chef of a country club, like if
• 2:55
  you're looking as an executive chef, they do pay very well
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  country clubs. I, Ink are maybe some of the top
• 3:01
  paying jobs and the city, depending on The Prestige of the
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  country club. And of course, there's low end
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  of everything. There's low on restaurants,
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  stores, high-end restaurants, low end hotels high-end hotels.
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  Well, the same applies to country clubs, but in general, I
• 3:14
  would say, you know, as as if I was going to use a general
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  statement, I would say that country clubs will pay more and
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  that's why a lot of country clubs.
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  You see a lot of certified Master Chefs, certified
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  executive chefs that are chefs of country clubs people that
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  have garnered, some Stage in their career.
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  And the reason that is is because, you know, the country
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  club members want to know that their chef is the best of the
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  best in class that they've they've selected one of the best
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  chefs within the city that can make great food for them in the
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  membership. So some of the pluses about
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  working in a country club is, you know, you don't have every
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  meal period you know, you might have like the you might do some
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  breakfast tacos for golf carts. You might have to do a Sunday
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  brunch. Finally in some places but for
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  the most part you're looking at lunch service dinner service and
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  you know, maybe some sort of small buffet and the locker room
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  depending on how many depending on how many kitchens you have to
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  service. The members are extremely picky
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  and country clubs. I will say that and they kind of
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  have Bland pallets at least in my experience, you know, make
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  sure you have a turkey club, a chicken sandwich.
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  A hamburger, make sure your fries are good, make sure you
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  have a good. But for the most part, I would
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  say that the food in general, in the country club is probably of
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  all three. I would say it's probably the
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  safest, it doesn't mean that there's not a lot of technique
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  involved, because I'm sure you'll put in or I'm sure you'll
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  put on some high-end. Banquets some weddings and
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  things like that. Where you have an opportunity to
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  showcase, there might be some culinary program within the
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  country club. In my case, we would do a
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  tasting menu every Saturday just to break it up.
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  So there's opportunity within country clubs country clubs.
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  Or fun. The environment is much more
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  relaxed but a lot is dictated by the members and what they want
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  and you know, it's not so much the chef's creativity on a plate
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  in a country club. It's about making sure that you
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  know, you're delivering consistently good food and it's
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  delicious. And, you know, it's Best in
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  Class in terms of a country club setting and it's really hard for
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  me to Define exactly what country club food is, but it's
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  not restaurant food, and it's not necessarily.
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  Toll food, it's Country Club food and kind of falls into its
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  own unique. Genre some of the the downsides
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  of working in a country club. I would say is you know for me
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  it was some of the frustrations when it came to the type of Chef
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  that I am I really wanted to push culinary to a high-end I'd
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  meet with members and they say, you know, we want to we want to
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  have food as good as the best restaurants within the city.
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  I said, okay? So I start to create menus like
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  that and they say no, that's not what we mean.
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  Like we want a good steak and french fries.
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  So sometimes there is a little bit of a disconnect.
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  Between what the country club members?
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  Think good food is versus what a chef, you know, creative Chef
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  might think good food is so navigating that sometimes can be
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  a little bit difficult, but I can say this, if you happen to
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  be an executive chef and you get one of those great country club
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  jobs. You'll notice, most of those
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  executive chefs don't leave, they take really good care of
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  you as a chef. When you're in a country club,
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  they pay you well you get great benefits time off is great.
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  You know, you might have to work some branches for the So,
• 6:30
  Thanksgiving brunch, Christmas brunch, but besides that, I mean
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  you're you have a pretty good life.
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  So Country Club Chef life isn't the worst, you know, it's a good
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  balance of life. I think between the three Hotel
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  Country Club and restaurant I think Country Club for an
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  executive chef probably gives you the best work life balance.
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  So now let's talk about restaurants and when talking
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  about restaurants, I think it's important to note that there are
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  different levels of restaurants. You could be talking about a
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  diner or you could be talking about a three Michelin star
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  restaurant and everything in between.
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  So that's that's a wide range of variety between the two ends of
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  the spectrum. For the sake of this
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  conversation, I want to focus on the upper high-end restaurant.
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  So I'm not talking three Michelin star, but let's let's
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  you know, good restaurants within the city.
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  Generally speaking in most restaurants, the chef is the
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  head of the kitchen and what they say goes and everything
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  goes to the chef. So in a lot of places, the
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  general manager reports to the chef, everyone reports the chef.
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  So not just the culinary team but everything that is built
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  upon the success of a restaurant.
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  A lot of times that is, you know, a chef driven concept and
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  that's a fun place to be. If you're the chef of a
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  restaurant near the kitchen kitchen runs things and it's
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  fun. And you know you get to create
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  food and every day you live and die by the sales that you make
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  that day on good days, you know, it's a win and it's a win for
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  the team and on bad days, you start thinking, are we going to
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  have to close the restaurant tomorrow or the next week?
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  A chef knows their food cost everyday.
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  A chef is in the kitchen working.
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  I would say when I was a chef of a restaurant, probably, 80% of
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  my time was spent, you know, behind the stove or with a knife
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  in my hand. And 20% of my time was
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  Managerial admin and that is very different in hotels and
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  country clubs. So a chef in a restaurant is
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  really Hands-On. You know, pushing pushing for
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  greatness with their team involved, with the front of the
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  house in the service, team involved with a culinary team,
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  really working on making something great.
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  And I think that's one of the great things about working in a
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  restaurant is, if you are creative and you're driven, and
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  you want to make a name for yourself a restaurant and
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  independent. With the right backing behind
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  you, it can be a really fun experience on the flip side.
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  I would say that there are some risks.
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  If you're a young cook going into restaurants, you know,
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  sometimes the restaurant environment has that reputation
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  of, you know, the doors locked when you show up and you know
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  what, you're not getting paid, it's really easy to let people
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  go in the restaurant world. Sometimes there's things that
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  happen that You got a bad review in the paper or something like
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  that and then you know your restaurant might be open a
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  couple of weeks after that before it's time to close
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  because you live and die off sales and there's nothing else
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  to support the restaurant other than the restaurant.
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  So the ecosystem in a restaurant is much more fragile.
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  Now, when we're talking about successful restaurants, you
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  know, there are some successful restaurant groups out there
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  that, you know, when they're, when they're busy, you know,
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  they're they're building an empire and they're scaling up
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  and they have lots of money and that's a great place to be.
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  But when you're that small Independent Restaurant, trying
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  Make a name for yourself every single day.
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  The person that walks through that door, the money that they
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  give you. That is very important because
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  that's how you pay your rent. That's how you pay your bills.
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  That's how you pay your staff. So there's a certain amount of
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  pressure that goes into that within a restaurant.
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  When I was the chef of a restaurant, I was also the
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  accountant was also the human resources manager.
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  I was also the dishwasher if they called off.
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  I was also the night cleaner if they didn't show up.
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  So there's fewer resources in a restaurant when things kind of
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  go Haywire. So You're going to wear a lot of
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  hats when you're working in a restaurant, but as a cook, the
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  environment is fun. I mean it's fun.
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  It's I enjoyed my time in a restaurant, it was chaotic at
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  times and you know, have some good memories.
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  I have some bad memories but for the most part in general I
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  enjoyed my time as being a chef of a restaurant.
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  But in my case, my restaurants closed and that was something
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  that I don't ever wish upon anybody because that was a very
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  tough thing to see go down. So anyway, restaurants are fun.
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  The chef is the Us. And if you are pushing in a
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  restaurant and you change your menu, when you need to change
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  your menu, you have that flexibility because you are able
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  to make decisions in real time in a restaurant.
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  And I think, you know, now we're going to get into hotels.
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  I think we could talk about some of the differences between
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  restaurants and hotels specifically when it comes to
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  food in hotels, a lot of hotels and again, hotels, there's the
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  low end hotels and there's the high-end hotels and I, you know,
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  Worked in high-end hotels. Fairmont hotels was my last job.
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  I was the chef at the Fairmont and Austin Texas, which was the
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  largest luxury hotel. We had great restaurants.
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  We had a great chef program there so I had access to pretty
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  much everything money was hid. Say money is No Object as I
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  don't mean it like that but it was definitely Money Was No
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  Object compared to my experience and country clubs and
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  restaurants. You know I had all the equipment
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  I needed, it was top of the line whenever I needed something.
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  No. Problem, get it.
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  If I wanted caviar, I was buying kilo tins of caviar.
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  Whenever I needed truffles on the menu, we were able to spend
• 11:59
  money because we were making money and that's one.
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  Great thing about hotels is they have the banquet operation to
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  prop them up and because you have that banquet operation
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  propping up the rest of the the rest of the restaurants bars in
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  the hotel. You could sometimes do stupid
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  things that you might not understand what have
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  consequences in. The restaurant world so you can
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  have a, you know, a zombie dish. Something that hasn't sold in a
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  long time in a hotel and no one's going to say anything
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  because maybe it's, you know, the catering managers favorite
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  dish. So it stays on the menu or the
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  owners favorite dish, but it doesn't sell it only sells to
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  that one person in a restaurant, you wouldn't do that.
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  You wouldn't, you wouldn't have, you couldn't afford the luxury
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  of having a bad dish on the menu.
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  You look at something, if it's not selling you get it off.
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  You put something on there that is selling in a hotel because
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  you have rooms and banqueting operations.
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  Propping up the rest of the hotel.
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  It sometimes gives chefs a false sense of how good they're really
• 12:58
  performing, because you could be carrying some bad dishes, and
• 13:03
  you could be making some poor financial decisions in one area,
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  but you're making some great financial decisions in another
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  area. So they kind of become a wash
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  and they get swept under no one notices them.
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  So it's, it's a little bit different.
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  Another thing I'll talk about big difference between a hotel
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  and a restaurant is in a hotel. The chef is the king of the
• 13:24
  kitchen, but that's the extent of their power.
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  Usually, we're in the restaurant, you know, their
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  power reaches all the way to their own human resources
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  department because they're probably the human resources
• 13:33
  person. But in a hotel you have those
• 13:36
  positions, you have a director of engineering, you have a human
• 13:38
  resource director, a catering manager and they all operate
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  independently from The Culinary team.
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  So I've seen a lot of chefs that transition from the restaurant
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  world to the hotel world that really struggle with the Hotel
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  politics. Let's call it because they don't
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  understand. Like I'm the chef what I say
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  goes. What's the problem here?
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  Why doesn't everyone else get it?
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  And it's because you you know and hotels typically have an
• 14:03
  executive committee and that executive committee is equal
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  weight. So you know the director of
• 14:07
  sales and marketing has the same amount of powers the executive
• 14:10
  chef, which in a restaurant, that's crazy.
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  What do you mean, why are you taking, why are you taking
• 14:14
  orders from a sales guy? Like, they work for us but not
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  in the hotel. It's almost like there's this
• 14:19
  equal footing for both. Parties.
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  So, the power Dynamic changes drastically from from
• 14:27
  restaurants to hotels and I think if you're not used to that
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  it could be very difficult for you to understand that the
• 14:35
  kitchen is a part of the hotel versus being the only part of a
• 14:41
  restaurant. Like just, it's just a different
• 14:43
  mindset. And it's important that people
• 14:45
  understand that, you know, it's I'll also say that hotels.
• 14:49
  Also have this mindset something with country clubs, That the
• 14:52
  customer is always right and they could get whatever they
• 14:55
  want, you know. They're paying x amount of
• 14:56
  dollars for room, sometimes to a fault like the food and beverage
• 15:00
  director is going to walk up to the chef and a fine dining
• 15:02
  restaurant and say, hey, I need you to give me a chicken
• 15:04
  alfredo, which happens to be my specialty.
• 15:06
  Great, let me give you a chicken, alfredo, but it's like,
• 15:09
  come on. You wouldn't, you wouldn't walk
• 15:11
  into a three-michelin-star restaurant.
• 15:13
  It's a, the customer gets whatever they want.
• 15:15
  Give them a chicken alfredo, but you would do that in a hotel,
• 15:18
  which is, you know, sometimes it's this into institutional
• 15:21
  First mentality that you give the customer whatever they want.
• 15:25
  And as a chef, it's like how can you do that to me?
• 15:28
  I've put all my effort into making this handmade pasta dish
• 15:31
  and these organic Tomatoes etc. Etc.
• 15:35
  And you want me to give you like, spaghetti with butter
• 15:37
  noodles or whatever. It just drives you crazy and you
• 15:40
  know, the person is going to come up to you and say, you
• 15:42
  know, so and so wants a blackened chicken alfredo and
• 15:46
  you're going to be like okay, you know, whatever and you can't
• 15:49
  do anything about it because Like I said, a lot of times the
• 15:53
  chef is equal to the person telling them what to do hotels.
• 15:57
  The hierarchy is different in different hotels.
• 15:59
  So you some hotels have a food and beverage director that the
• 16:02
  chef reports to other hotels, the food and beverage director
• 16:05
  and the chef are equal. So in my case, my most recent
• 16:10
  jobs, I was equal to the food and beverage director, which I
• 16:12
  enjoyed that much more than having to report up to a food.
• 16:16
  And beverage director gave me much more autonomy and my
• 16:19
  kitchen to do what I needed to do to make it.
• 16:21
  Progress a little bit and take my culinary team where I needed
• 16:25
  to take it and I'll tell you a story.
• 16:27
  This is a feel like I've been talking about the difference
• 16:31
  between these three but I'll tell you a story.
• 16:32
  I was judging an audition for Gordon Ramsay's MasterChef when
• 16:37
  it had just come out and I was judging it with a certified
• 16:40
  Master, Chef great, legendary Chef Ferdinand Mets, who used to
• 16:44
  run The Culinary Institute of America and he and I were the
• 16:47
  two judges and we sat down at lunch and we were having a
• 16:49
  conversation and he says Do you know why hotels have food and
• 16:53
  beverage directors? And I said no, I have no idea.
• 16:55
  Why hotels have food and beverage directors and he said,
• 16:57
  because back in the day Chef's were tyrants, you know, in the,
• 17:00
  in the 60s and 70s and the 50s chefs were tyrants.
• 17:04
  And if you didn't like the way that the food was served the
• 17:07
  Haute, the chef was going to tell you to get out of the
• 17:10
  restaurant, he was going to tell you.
• 17:11
  I don't serve my state that way or this is exactly how I want my
• 17:14
  fish served, you cannot change it and so they introduced the
• 17:17
  food and beverage director because chefs didn't have those
• 17:19
  soft skills the food and Average director was the liaison between
• 17:23
  the customers or the guests and The Culinary team and the chef.
• 17:27
  And so, you know, they were Suave they were smooth and they
• 17:29
  were able to finesse things between the two areas.
• 17:34
  What was interesting for Anne and Matt said this to me, he
• 17:37
  says, now chefs are on TV. They have big personalities,
• 17:41
  they understand how to engage with customers.
• 17:44
  He says, once hotels, remember why food and beverage directors
• 17:48
  exist? They might take them away.
• 17:50
  So, anyway, that was, it was an interesting conversation.
• 17:53
  I don't know how true that is, but it was its food for
• 17:56
  food-for-thought. Nonetheless, it was a good time.
• 17:58
  So, anyway, long story short, that, to me, is really the
• 18:02
  biggest difference between all three 3, it's an individual
• 18:05
  Choice. They're all great career paths.
• 18:07
  If we were strictly to talk about money, you know, because I
• 18:11
  think that's usually the million-dollar question is,
• 18:13
  people want to know what, what pays the most they're all going
• 18:15
  to be different. But I would say in general, the
• 18:19
  top end of all three pay a lot. So when I say the top end of all
• 18:24
  three, I'm talking about like hotels in Las Vegas or Macau,
• 18:27
  you know, pay as much as like some of the greatest restaurants
• 18:31
  in the world for their head. Chef Ocean.
• 18:34
  And some of the greatest country clubs also pay as much as those
• 18:37
  great hotels. So the very top end, probably
• 18:39
  pays the same, the low end. I would say the low end country
• 18:44
  clubs, probably pay more than low and hotels and low end
• 18:48
  restaurants. So I would say country clubs,
• 18:50
  pay a little bit better as a general rule of thumb.
• 18:52
  And I would say in the middle, you know, depending on the high
• 18:55
  end restaurant high-end hotel. I think they're, they're pretty
• 18:58
  much equal, but I think certain high end, hotels might pay a
• 19:01
  little bit more in my My experience.
• 19:04
  I've noticed high-end hotels pay more than the high-end
• 19:06
  restaurants within the city unless you're the chef owner.
• 19:09
  So if you're looking to make money if you're looking for
• 19:11
  benefits, I would steer towards the direction of hotels and
• 19:15
  country clubs. But if you're looking for that
• 19:18
  freedom the creativity, the ability to, you know, execute
• 19:22
  daily service. And you know that that Rush of
• 19:26
  live and die every day by what you do during service
• 19:29
  restaurants there in terms of culinary creativity.
• 19:31
  They're all different. I would say you have more
• 19:34
  flexibility within a hotel to learn more things because you
• 19:38
  could Can Banquets you could work in breakfast, you could
• 19:41
  work in a restaurant, you can work in a cafeteria, you know,
• 19:43
  there's a lot of different things you could learn.
• 19:44
  We're in a restaurant, you're just learning the food of that
• 19:46
  particular restaurant in a country club.
• 19:49
  I think probably has a little bit more than a restaurant
• 19:51
  because they have a restaurant, they probably have a buffet,
• 19:53
  they might offer a couple of other things, but in general
• 19:56
  there's more going on than just the restaurant.
• 19:59
  Where so I would say, in terms of the amount of skills you can
• 20:02
  learn, you could probably learn the most in a hotel, then
• 20:06
  Country Club then restaurant. But if we're talking like the
• 20:08
  top, Top top of the food chain restaurants hotels country
• 20:12
  clubs, like you can't go wrong. If you're going to go work at a
• 20:15
  three-michelin-star restaurant, a five-star hotel or the best
• 20:18
  country club in the world. Those are all great choices and
• 20:21
  you're going to learn a tremendous amount from all
• 20:23
  three. So individual choice and yeah.
• 20:26
  Well anyway, if you want to support the show, there's a
• 20:30
  donate button in the show. Notes on Spotify, we have merch
• 20:34
  as we discussed as I said earlier, Chef space a.com, you
• 20:36
  can find all of that. We have the book chefs, PS A not
• 20:39
  to be the biggest area in the kitchen.
• 20:41
  You could buy that on Amazon. It's also available on Audible.
• 20:43
  The new book will be out. Soon, you can find me on all
• 20:47
  social channels. Tick-Tock, Instagram, Twitter,
• 20:50
  Etc, and we'll see you next week.
• 20:53
  Hit the porno music. Thank you, everyone.