Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Cut the Tape, Fold Your Towels, Attention to Detail Ep. 17

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Cut the Tape, Fold Your Towels, Attention to Detail Ep. 17 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:01
  Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs, PSA
• 0:03
  podcast. I'm your host Andre natera.
• 0:05
  On today's episode, we're going to call it cutting the tape,
• 0:08
  straight folding your towels and why attention to detail is
• 0:11
  important. So stay tuned.
• 0:25
  So, what have I been up to this past week?
• 0:27
  I feel like I've gone to a lot of concerts but to a push it to
• 0:30
  you concert anyway. You guys don't want to hear
• 0:32
  about that, but I haven't been doing as.
• 0:34
  I haven't been focusing on writing this line cookbook, but
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  I did finish it. I just wrapped it up, right
• 0:41
  before I started recording the podcast.
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  Now, time to edit it and then publish it go from there.
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  The book is titled line, cook survival manual, and it's
• 0:52
  basically very similar to the red book, The how not to be the
• 0:54
  biggest Did you in the kitchen short, little chapters,
• 0:57
  basically, giving you little tips on things that every line
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  cook should do to hopefully haste in your career to make you
• 1:03
  more successful as a line cook. It's not a recipe book.
• 1:07
  It's basically telling you The things that I wish people told
• 1:11
  me when I was a young cook. Anyway, I also started actually,
• 1:17
  I started recording the audio version of The Culinary
• 1:19
  leadership fundamentals book. Everyone told me, well, you
• 1:22
  record a podcast. You should just do the audio for
• 1:25
  the book. And I started doing that, that
• 1:27
  was a bad idea. I realized that there's certain
• 1:30
  people that are professionals when it comes to audio books and
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  then you know, there's everyone else, I started recording it and
• 1:37
  then I played it back just to hear how it sounded and it
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  sounded like, you know, like I'm a 4th grader, standing up in
• 1:42
  front of the class trying to read it.
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  Just sounded terrible. So I probably recorded like
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  three chapters that, I decided. Yeah, I'm not going to do that.
• 1:51
  I wouldn't want to listen to that.
• 1:52
  It's my own voice. I decided to go against that.
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  I went with the person who did the first audio book for chefs
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  PSA and asked him if he would do.
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  The audio book for culinary leadership fundamental.
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  So I'm excited. It will be back soon.
• 2:06
  So I'm thinking maybe within two weeks, The Culinary leadership
• 2:09
  fundamentals, book will be ready roughly around the same time
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  that the line cook survival. Manual book is also ready.
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  And I'm also working on a leadership class.
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  Oh, culinary leadership, fundamentals, class for those
• 2:22
  people that don't like to read and you prefer video.
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  I'll have that soon. I'm The editing that's not far
• 2:28
  off. It'll be, it'll be here in just
• 2:29
  a few weeks, hopefully, and I released a new t-shirt.
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  So on the last podcast, I was talking about kitchen karate.
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  I made a kitchen karate, t-shirt.
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  Y'all should buy that. Anyway, that's what I've been up
• 2:39
  to. I've been hustling here for this
• 2:40
  chefs, PSA stuff, fighting fighting with people online.
• 2:44
  I fight, I fight in the comments.
• 2:46
  I should probably stop doing that anyway.
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  A lot of people don't agree with what I say.
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  That's okay. But anyway, let's talk about
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  what today's episode is about. So today's episode is basically
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  attention to detail. Folding your towels cutting the
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  tape straight. All those little things that
• 3:00
  happen in great kitchens and that you see in really good
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  cooks, and why they're important, why they matter.
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  And I'm going to argue for them and why I think everyone here.
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  Should anyone anyone, listening, I think you should cut your tape
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  straight. I think you should fold your
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  towels. I think you should take the tape
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  off, you know, the pans before they go to the distillation.
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  That's really why I started PSA. It's really to bring attention
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  to detail. I'll tell you why it's important
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  to me. I'll tell you how the whole
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  thing got started. So I'm going to take you back
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  Couple of years, I was opening up a hotel in Austin Texas and I
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  had a group of chefs around me. That honestly would probably the
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  best group of chefs that anyone could ever ask for.
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  Almost all of them had Michelin star or world's 50 best
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  experience. You know, they were coming from
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  some of the greatest chefs In the country, if not the world.
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  And this this culinary operation that we were opening.
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  It was it was massive. So we had over 100 Cooks, you
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  know, I think we had something like 20 Sous chefs.
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  It was it was just a massive operation and the level of food
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  that we were trying to accomplish at the time we wanted
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  to be best in class and whatever particular category we were
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  competing. So whenever you need to deliver
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  high level food and when I say high level food, I just mean
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  best-in-class in that specific category.
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  So if you're a gastropub it's delivering the highest level
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  food you could for a gastropub or or for a fine dining
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  restaurant or for a cocktail bar.
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  Whatever the case, maybe you want to deliver high level food.
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  Having so many different chefs from.
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  So many different backgrounds. All from great restaurants, we
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  had to come together and decide. What are the things that we deem
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  most important in terms of kitchen standard and culture?
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  So, that's everything. From what color of tape do we
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  use, how do we cut the tape? How do we fold our towels?
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  How do we set up can bruise? What is the fish stored on?
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  Is it stored on ice? Is it stored swimming?
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  Is it stored up? How often do we change the fish
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  water? Do we brine our fish?
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  Do we not brine or fish? Like we wanted to get down into
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  the nitty-gritty. The minutiae the attention to
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  detail in the smallest things and every Chef coming.
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  A different background had a different opinion on how we
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  should do things from, you know, we did it this way at this
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  restaurant or we did it that way at this other restaurant.
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  All of them being high-level restaurants.
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  What I found interesting is that every single high-level
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  restaurant has a specific way. They do every single little
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  thing from how they clean mushrooms to how they store,
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  mushrooms to how they peeled tomatoes, do they blanch them
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  first? Do they not blend them first
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  every single place? Does things a very specific way
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  because they deem them to be the most important so we had all
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  come together. Together and we decided on what
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  those things would look like. Now where it became a little bit
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  interesting, as we said, okay, so now that we've come together
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  and we've determined how this is going to look in our kitchen,
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  how are we going to train that to 100 people that we've never
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  worked with? And how do we instill attention
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  to detail into these? 100 people?
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  It's, it was a daunting task. One of my, one of my friends,
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  Matthew Peters, he was the winner of the Bocuse D'Or in
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  2017. The first American to ever win
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  the Bocuse New York, He's a good friend of mine and we were
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  having a conversation right before this.
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  And I asked them to question because I know he had gone
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  through some immense training, sorry.
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  Intense not events to prepare himself for this competition and
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  he'd worked in some great restaurants, obviously, And I
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  asked him the question. I said, you know, I'm opening up
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  this hotel and I want to have as much attention to detail in all
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  things that I deem important. But I have, you know, over 100
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  employees. How do you think I could instill
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  that into every single person's mind and he gave me some great
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  advice and I put this in the book he said you don't have to
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  convince everyone, you need to convince your direct reports and
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  then they need to convince your direct report.
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  There were direct reports. And then so on and so forth,
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  down the chain of command. He says, so don't look at it as
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  you have to convince 100 people. You just need to convince the
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  people in front of you and then their job, so on and so forth.
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  I thought that was a brilliant piece of advice because
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  sometimes tasks in the kitchen seem overwhelming.
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  When you have to train large numbers of people, especially in
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  very large operations. If you're trying to perform at a
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  high level, all those little things that are attention to
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  detail. Matter side note it was Matt's
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  birthday last week October 14th and he also Shares a birthday
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  with Thomas Keller his Chef, which Super interesting that
• 7:27
  they both share the same birthday anyway.
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  He doesn't think it's that interesting.
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  Happy belated birthday. What I've noticed is that the
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  higher up? You go in restaurants, the
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  higher level the restaurant, the more attention to detail that
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  they have, I wrote about this in the culinary leadership
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  fundamentals book, there's something called decision
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  fatigue and you could look this up and basically the concept is
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  you have a limited amount of decision making In brain power
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  in a day and the more you use that up, the less good decisions
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  you're going to make. After you've used up all that
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  decision, making ability. So when you're trying to run a
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  high level kitchen, the main thing you want Cooks to focus on
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  is the food. The food that's in front of
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  them, is the most important thing.
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  It's not cutting the tape, it's not folding the towels.
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  It's not making sure that the Cambro is a certain place.
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  None of that is as important as the food.
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  But unfortunately you have so many other decisions going on
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  That you're going to have decision fatigue, because you're
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  thinking, how should I label this?
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  Should I label it. What's my uniform look?
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  Like, what color of apron am I wearing?
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  Why are they, why do they have a different apron?
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  Why do they have a cooler t-shirt than me?
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  Why do I have to fold my towels? And they don't, should I fold my
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  towels. Your brain is going through all
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  these decisions. So we wanted to put as many of
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  the things in the kitchen and have a standard for them, so
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  people wouldn't have to think about them.
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  So this is how we fold our towels.
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  We fold it in thirds. And then in thirds again, this
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  is how we cut our tape. We cut it.
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  Short and straight. No more than 2 inches and we
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  label it a certain way date. On one side initial on the other
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  side and then product in the center.
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  We put everything in the same place when a Cambro goes on the
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  Shelf, the handle always has to be facing out.
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  So it's easy to. So it's easy to remove.
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  The towel always went to specific place on The Cutting
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  Board. A utensil being always went a
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  certain place above your cutting board.
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  The knife always went to the top and to the right assuming that
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  you're right-handed top into the left if you're left-handed.
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  Before anyone would remove their apron, they had to roll it a
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  specific way. Sharpies were only black
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  Sharpies. We didn't allow different
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  colored Sharpies and the reason we had all these decisions going
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  on in the kitchen is because the fewer things that you had to
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  think about that mean, you had more brain power to focus on the
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  things. That are important like the
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  food. The food is the food that you're
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  making is the most important thing that you're doing, if
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  you've wasted all this precious brain power on all these other
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  things, you're not going to have the same amount of attention on
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  the food, but If you have all this fresh mental energy, you
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  could put it towards the food that you're making.
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  You can make sure that things are done.
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  Perfectly seasoned correctly, hot food is hot.
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  Cold food is cold, it's plated correctly.
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  The plates are clean. The rim on the plate is wiped.
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  You can make sure all that's done.
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  If you don't have to think about all those other things because
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  they were on autopilot, and what we found in a kitchen of a
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  hundred people, is that everyone started doing things exactly how
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  we wanted them. The tape was always cut
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  straight. The towels were always folded as
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  we wanted the containers before they went to the The dish
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  station always had the tape removed.
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  Never went to the dish station with the tape on and all these
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  things just became autopilot. And when a new cook would come
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  in, they would see all this and they would say, they have two
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  choices, really. They're either going to
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  acclimate to the way that we do things or they're going to say.
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  This is not for me and they're going to leave which I'm okay
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  with either decision, if they decide that they're going to
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  jump on board and do things the way that we do it, great.
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  When when if they decide this isn't for me and they leave
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  great because they were going to disrupt the kitchen and how we
• 11:01
  flow and how I liked things to flow in the kitchen.
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  One of the chef's that I worked with Ranger Clark.
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  Shout out Ranger, he was a marine and when we would label
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  things, he always said you know when they go on the Shelf you
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  want everything to look covered in aligned and I wasn't familiar
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  with that term. And what he said was this was a
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  military term as to how they would line up and cover each
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  other and he said the same principle holds true on your
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  station. So we all determined okay, then
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  the tape has to go exactly right here.
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  If it's on a deli cup it's right underneath the lip.
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  If it's on a Cambro, it's right above the handle because the
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  handles facing out anyway, so that's the first thing that
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  people see. And so it made things look very
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  orderly and it's it's really brilliant when you work in these
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  kitchens, when you see how orderly things are because, you
• 11:53
  know, that there's thought behind all this other things.
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  So, someone said to me on Instagram, when I said, fold
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  your towels and cut your tape, they said, I've seen many cooks
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  that come from those, oops of kitchens that fold their towels
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  and cut their tape, but can't cook just because you do those
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  things doesn't mean you can cook, but what I'm saying is, if
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  everything in the kitchen is important, cutting your tape is
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  important folding. Your towels is important.
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  Setting up your station a certain ways important.
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  Rolling your apron is important. Then the food is also important.
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  If you're putting that much attention to detail in all these
• 12:29
  other things which people might deem arbitrary, if those things
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  are important, then the most important thing, the food should
• 12:35
  also be important. If you're going to take time to
• 12:39
  brunoise, an onion perfectly by hand.
• 12:43
  And let's just say, you have to go petal by petal in your brew
• 12:46
  and wine it. And everything has to be Just
• 12:50
  perfect. If someone comes up and just
• 12:52
  dumps that you're going to be upset because it took you so
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  much time and effort into something.
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  If you're putting a tremendous amount of effort into something,
• 13:01
  that makes that thing that you're doing much more valuable,
• 13:04
  this argument is often made. Where people would say, well,
• 13:07
  why is that a luxury ingredient? Instead of this like why, why
• 13:11
  is, you know, caviar more important than a tortilla for
• 13:15
  example, or wise foie-gras more important than, you know, a
• 13:18
  chicken And I get it. It's subjective.
• 13:21
  And everyone could deem things. This is more important than that
• 13:24
  or this is luxury. And that's not well, here's why
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  is because things that are much more difficult and things that
• 13:31
  are much more scarce, have more value, plain, and simple, if
• 13:35
  it's much more difficult to create a foie gras, or if it's
• 13:38
  much more difficult to harvest caviar and you have a limited
• 13:41
  amount wear. Something else is in abundance.
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  Clearly, the thing that is much more difficult and in limited
• 13:46
  quantity is going to be much more valuable it's It's food
• 13:50
  economics, 101. It's like it's like gold.
• 13:54
  Gold is more valuable than other precious metals because there's
• 13:58
  less gold of then. There are the other precious
• 14:00
  metals Bitcoin is more valuable than all the other
• 14:02
  cryptocurrencies because there's only 21 million Bitcoins.
• 14:04
  Anyway, that's a, it's a side tangent point being.
• 14:09
  After all of this is that if you want to take your career and
• 14:14
  your kitchen skills up to the next level, everything should be
• 14:16
  important. Think about every single thing,
• 14:18
  Thing that you're doing and why you do it and think about how
• 14:21
  can you level up everything and improve it one to ten percent.
• 14:26
  Once you start making these small improvements in everything
• 14:28
  that you do you will see exponential Improvement across
• 14:31
  the kitchen, right? Think about that.
• 14:34
  If you make 10 things better, that's a huge Improvement to the
• 14:39
  end product attention to detail is not arbitrary and it's not
• 14:43
  something that should be dismissed.
• 14:44
  Attention to detail, is really what defines great chefs and
• 14:48
  Great Cooks. So anyway, rant over for the
• 14:51
  day, if you want to support the show, follow chefs, PSA on all
• 14:56
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• 15:00
  you're listening for listing on Spotify.
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• 15:11
  biggest city in the kitchen. We have the merch.
• 15:13
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• 15:15
  find all of that. I appreciate everyone's support.
• 15:19
  Hit the porno music.