Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / The Last OG's in The Kitchen Ep. 95

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The Last OG's in The Kitchen Ep. 95 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host Andre Natara. On today's episode, we're going
• 0:05
  to talk about why you need to respect the last generation of
• 0:08
  chefs. Stay tuned
• 0:21
  now before we get into it quick update.
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  Cook line of Chef's Wear. So go get that while you're at
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  it. Anyway, what is this episode
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  about? This episode is about respecting
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  the chefs that came before you. I think there's a certain rite
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  of passage that we all have to go through where initially we
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  think our chefs know everything and then we believe that they
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  know nothing. And then we think we're better
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  than them and then we call them up for advice because we
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  realized they were right out all along.
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  Similar to the relationship that we have with our parents, a lot
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  of us at least, right? Sometimes you think your parents
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  know everything when you're young and then they know nothing
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  when you're a teenager. And then when you get older you
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  realize that maybe they were right the whole time.
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  Maybe not all parents and maybe not all chefs, but there's
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  something to be said about the previous generation that came
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  before you. I like to use the expression if
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  you had to dig a 10 foot hole and someone else dug 9 feet and
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  the only thing you had to dig was the remaining 1 foot, could
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  you take credit for digging A10 foot hole and give no credit to
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  the person that dug the 1st 9 feet?
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  Well, that's basically what happens here because a lot of
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  new chefs get in position and they want to diminish the old
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  guard as if everything that is current is right.
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  Everything that you're doing right now with regards to food
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  trends, the way that you cook, what's popular, that's the right
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  way to do it because it's now you may have blind spots.
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  The previous generation thought the exact same thing and the one
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  before that thought the exact same thing.
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  So who's right? There'll be a generation in
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  front of you that's going to look at what you're doing now
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  and think it's wrong. When I was a young chef and I
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  got my first executive chef job, my chef mentor was still in the
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  building. And I remember when I got that
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  job, I thought to myself, I'm going to change this.
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  I'm going to change that. We're going to stop using that
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  Morton's kosher salt and go to Diamond Crystal.
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  We're going to make our stock this way because I like oxtail
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  in my stock. And I started making little
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  subtle changes because now I'm the chef and I knew better and I
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  tried so hard to outshine my previous chef.
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  The funny thing was is when you're in the shit, that's the
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  first person you call. Everyone knows what they're
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  doing until they get to that point when they realize, oh
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  shit, I don't know what I'm doing and I need help.
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  And then you start to understand some of the decisions that were
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  made and why they were made. You have to think about all the
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  chefs that came before you. You know, you look at the chefs
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  that are very relevant right now.
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  And even the chefs that I may name might not be the most
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  relevant chefs, but they're relevant to me.
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  When you think about a lot of these Nordic chefs, Renee
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  Rezeppi, you know, he's the, he's the king of the Nordic
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  chefs. And you have to think to
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  yourself, they learned that from somewhere.
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  Yes, they put their own interpretation and their own
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  personality into what they did with their restaurants and their
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  food, but they learned it from somewhere.
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  They had to have come from great kitchens.
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  They had to pass through there. There's no way around it.
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  We all went to culinary school. Well, maybe not all of us, but a
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  lot of us went to culinary school and we had chef
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  instructors there that were teaching us the fundamentals,
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  the classics, the classic repertoire of Escoffier, classic
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  cuisine. How do you make a stock?
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  How do you make a consomme? What are the five mother sauces?
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  No one ever talks about the father sauces.
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  Are there father sauces? I don't know.
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  And you build this foundation by going to culinary school because
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  when you leave, you have a certain skill set that the
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  employer as the chef who's hiring you knows that you should
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  have a certain baseline of knowledge.
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  They're not expecting you to perform at the highest level
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  right out of culinary school. They're expecting you to have
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  the basics. You know how to use a knife.
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  If they tell you, do you know what a brown stock is?
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  You know what it is. If they ask you to make a
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  bechamel, they, they know you have a general idea of how to
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  make a bechamel or a hollandaise or balute, or you know what Mira
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  poi is. You know basic terminology.
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  You know how to move in a kitchen.
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  You know what the uniform looks like.
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  You don't need the culinary dictionary to answer every
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  question. If I tell you I need something,
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  there's a good chance if they taught it to you in culinary
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  school, you'll have a vague understanding of what it is.
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  So where do we begin to respect the teachers at culinary school?
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  Right? They are the ones that are
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  providing you with your first level of education.
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  I am still in contact with my very first chef.
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  My first chef instructor and I are still friends to this day.
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  Spoke to him last week. Shout out to Kirk Bachman who
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  has the Ultimate Dish podcast and runs the Escoffier schools.
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  So another good podcast to go check out.
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  But I owe him a lot. He gave me my first lessons.
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  He taught me about stocks and sauces and culinary 101, taught
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  me how to use a knife, taught me how to not be afraid and to not
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  get my hands dirty when marinating chicken.
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  I'm using my chef in a practical sense.
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  His father was also a chef who taught him right.
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  One of the chefs that I worked under for many years taught me
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  so much, the fundamentals, how to make a stock better than how
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  I made it in school, how to improve on the fundamentals that
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  I have. But who taught them?
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  We think we just arrived at the Internet or the light bulb.
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  We don't think about the hundreds of failures that went
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  into developing something before it got to the point which it's
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  usable for us. Bad ideas get pruned off 100
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  hours of doing something gives you the right to make the
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  decision on it because you've already figured out the
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  variations and the nuance. The person questioning it and
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  being told hasn't put in the 100 hours to do it yet, so you have
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  to give respect to the person who, through countless hours of
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  trial and error, figured it out. We take a lot of things for
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  granted, and you don't have to like everything about the
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  current system. But had it not been for
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  Escoffier, codifying everything for us, developing the kitchen
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  brigade, structuring kitchens in a certain way, giving you
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  guidelines for many recipes, where would we be right now?
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  Respect is due there. Where would we be if it weren't
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  for chefs like Marco Pierre White or Pierre Kaufman or Paul
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  Bacoos or Joel Rubuchon? Everyone out here making
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  rubuchon potatoes and no one stops for a minute to think.
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  How long did it take Joel Rubuchon to come up with that?
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  How did he figure it out? How many times did he fail
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  before we got to the end product?
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  And what were the iterations after that to make it more
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  efficient for service? You know, a lot of times I put
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  up these chefs. PSA is like, no one cares how
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  you did it in school. No one cares how you did it at
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  your last job. Partly true, partly not true
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  because respect is due to the person that taught you and gave
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  you some new skills. Now, it doesn't mean that they
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  necessarily translate to the new job.
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  You have those skills now, they belong to you and they were
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  taught to you by someone. And unless you know, they're
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  they're tuning into another dimension and downloading
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  information directly into their brain, they learned it from
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  someone. And I promise you, most of the
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  things that I've seen in cooking haven't been downloaded from the
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  ether. And sometimes we like to give
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  shit to culinary students when they come out of school.
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  They say, well, in school, they taught me how to do it this way.
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  Or, for example, you're doing it wrong because school said to do
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  it like this. So if you're a culinary student,
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  I want you to listen to this right now.
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  There's a reason why school teaches you a certain way and
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  they tell you to not deviate from the way that they're
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  teaching you. And I'm about to tell you why.
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  This also may help chefs who get frustrated when culinary
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  students tell them why are they teaching them to cook that way.
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  There's more efficient ways. Well, put yourself in the
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  position of the culinary school director.
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  You have 20 chef instructors, and all of them have differing
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  opinions on the right way to make a veal stock or a Demi
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  gloss or an Espanol. Whatever the case may be, they
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  all know a different way to do it.
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  But how are you going to pass a student from one class to the
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  next class? And how are you all going to
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  sign off and agree on something if all of you do it a different
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  way? You're going to confuse the
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  student. There has to be a baseline of
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  expectation that they all agree on and say, look, we might know
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  100 different ways to do this, but this is how we're going to
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  graduate our students by doing it this way because this is this
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  is the way that we all agree is the most universal method.
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  That's why they do it. It doesn't mean that they don't
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  know other ways, and it doesn't mean that all the other ways are
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  wrong. It's just that school teaches
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  you a certain way as to not confuse the student with 1000
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  different ways to do it. It establishes A consistency so
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  they could progress through the program or the curriculum with
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  the correct answers. So students, if you're listening
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  to this, you understand now that there are more ways to do it
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  than what you're being taught in school and chefs out there in
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  the real world, you also understand now that's why
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  they're being taught that way is because they need to graduate
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  them through the system the same way it is in your kitchen.
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  I want you to do it this way because you're working here.
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  It's not that you don't know other ways, it's just that this
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  is the most efficient way for you to do it while you're
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  working at this particular place.
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  I would never have any of the success that I've ever achieved
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  as a chef had it not been for the chefs that came before me.
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  As a young chef, I used to sit down and listen to the older
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  master chefs talk and I was just quiet.
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  I would just listen. I would absorb it and whatever
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  they said now to me seems like common sense, but back then it
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  was magical. Some of the culinary advice that
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  they'd give me, like make sure you cook the duck fat side down.
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  I had never cooked a duck, so I was like, OK, I remember that.
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  I logged that into the back of my mind.
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  It's like duck cook, fat side down.
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  Got it. It's like stuff that we take for
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  granted. It's the curse of knowledge.
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  We take it for granted now, but when you're hearing it for the
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  first time, it's mind blowing. The old stories that I used to
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  hear, you know, they would test meet with skewers, metal skewers
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  or cake testers. And I remember the chef telling
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  me the reason we all have mustaches is because we all have
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  burns on our lips from the cake testers.
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  I would always use my wrist. Sometimes I use my, my lower
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  lip, whatever. A lot of times you just use a
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  digital meat thermometer. Anyway, we digress.
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  But that knowledge is transmitted from the previous
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  generation of chefs to the new generation of chefs.
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  Not just that knowledge, but a lot of the things that we do as
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  chefs currently. If you're, if you're a chef
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  right now running your kitchen, you might say the only way to do
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  this right is this way. You have to ask yourself, why do
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  you say that? Is it because that you've
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  iterated hundreds of times and come to that conclusion, or is
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  it that someone else did before you?
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  Is the preference of a previous chef that you worked for the way
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  that your chefs cooked will shape how you view food moving
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  forward? When I got out into the real
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  world and I had my first executive chef jobs and I wanted
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  to do my food, I realized I really didn't have my food.
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  Even to this day, I can't say I have my food.
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  I cook a certain way, but it's not necessarily my food.
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  It's stuff that my chefs have taught me that I've maybe
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  adjusted a little bit to my style or to current trends or
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  techniques, but it's the transfer of knowledge from the
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  previous generation. If you go back and you watch a
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  lot of old cooking shows, you'll see a lot of really bad habits
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  in the kitchen from great chefs, mind you.
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  You know, they got the big clunky tongs.
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  Their stations are messy, unfolded towels everywhere.
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  Their uniforms look tattered. And then they go through all
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  this work and then they put up a dish that you're like, oh, holy
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  crap, that food doesn't look anything like what I would serve
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  today. Food evolved very quickly and
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  what you're serving right now is going to evolve with the future
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  might be served by robots. When you watch those old shows
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  and you see the look on their faces, they were doing the most
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  innovative food for their time. Go watch old Iron Chef and stuff
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  that you look at like, well, that doesn't sound good or that
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  doesn't look good. Know that that was the hottest
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  food at the time. Go watch old Iron Chef America
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  and Chef Bobby Flay coming in blowing people's minds with
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  Chipotle Lays. No one had ever seen those
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  before. Now you take it for granted that
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  you use Chipotle on everything. There's a restaurant chain.
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  You take that for granted. But back then they were
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  introducing things for the first time.
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  You have culinary traditions that are passed on from chef to
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  chef. Making things a certain way.
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  Make a pasta like this, use double O flour.
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  No, make your gnocchi like this. You got to bake the potatoes.
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  No, don't bake them. You got to boil them.
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  No, don't boil them. You got to steam them, right?
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  Everyone iterated a slightly different way, which by the way,
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  I bake them. For the record, when I was a
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  chef, even just a few years ago, I used to think to myself, I'm
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  putting out some of the best food I could put out and I'm
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  very proud of it. I was very intelligent to what
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  the trends were. I understood what was modern,
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  how to plate things, what the trendy ingredients were.
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  I was very happy with the food that I was putting out.
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  Now I've been retired for over 2 years.
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  Even though I've dabbled in some dinners and some consulting and
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  stuff like that, sometimes now when I look at food, I'm like,
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  holy shit, Food has really evolved quickly and I see things
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  that I didn't really see two years ago.
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  In two years we've introduced new ingredients and new
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  techniques. Blows my mind.
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  But then I see a lot of chefs, which I find super interesting
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  because I see a lot of chefs preparing old classical
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  technical food, slightly modern. You know, they, they could
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  incorporate some modern techniques, right?
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  They might be using transglutaminase to stick the
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  meat together instead of just using, you know, egg white
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  powder or whatever we had to use back then.
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  But all of a sudden, retro is cool, plated, modern.
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  So retro techniques, modern plating, maybe more ethnic
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  ingredients. I think it's really cool to see
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  chefs pay homage to the classics, right?
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  Classics reinvented. I'm all for that.
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  That's the kind of food I like. When I think about the food that
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  I crave, I think about like, I want a good onion soup, I want a
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  lobster thermidor, I want a perfectly roasted chicken or a
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  nicely cooked piece of fish, a sole or a skate wing with a
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  bernoisette over it, some capers, some lemon.
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  That's what I crave. The classics, the simple.
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  And a lot of times chefs need to focus on making food more simple
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  because you always are really quick to introduce your new
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  creativity and the new spin that you want to do on things.
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  And you have an idea and there's nothing wrong with that.
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  But sometimes your ideas and your spin on things is fucking
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  it up. It's not making it better.
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  You're actually detracting from a really good dish by messing
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  with it a little bit too much. Let the ingredients shine.
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  Stick to your techniques perfectly.
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  In season produce doesn't need much perfect tomatoes, don't
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  need much. Good olive oil, good salt, maybe
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  some burrata cheese, some pickled onions, I don't know.
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  Fresh basil, Good pesto. Then you want to put your spin
• 14:44
  on it by taking the burrata and breading it and putting in the
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  deep fryer and serving it with a comfy egg yolk fudge.
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  It's like it was just fine before that.
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  You didn't need to do all that. You didn't need comfy egg yolk
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  fudge on the burrata with the tomatoes.
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  The tomatoes were enough in the good, olive oil perfect, right?
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  So what can we do better as an industry one?
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  If you have a chef in your life, a mentor, a chef that you worked
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  under, even some of you chefs that have bad relationships with
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  your chefs, reach out to them. Thank them for what they gave
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  you because I'm sure there's some good with some of the bad.
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  And if you have a good relationship with them, cherish
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  that relationship. Reach out to them, have a cup of
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  coffee with them. Sometimes chefs just want to
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  chat with the younger generation.
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  We could not be where we are now had it not been for the
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  generation of chefs that came before us.
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  So big respect to those chefs, but we also won't get to where
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  we're going if it's not for the current generation of chefs that
• 15:39
  are doing it. Anyway.
• 15:40
  You know what to do. You're watching on YouTube.
• 15:43
  Like and subscribe, listen on Spotify and make sure you leave
• 15:45
  five stars, nothing less than five stars.
• 15:47
  Go to chefspsa.com, get everything there.
• 15:51
  Subscribe to the sub stack. We'll see you next week.