Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Mastering Menus & the Creative Process Ep. 58

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Mastering Menus & the Creative Process Ep. 58 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, This is Chef's PSA Podcast.
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  I'm your host Andre Natara. On today's episode, we're going
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  to talk menus and creativity. Stay tuned.
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  So before we get into it, brief update For those of you that are
• 0:22
  looking for the book series that I have on Chef's PSA.
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  Those books have officially been translated into Spanish, so for
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  those of you that needed them in Spanish, they're now available.
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  Now that I've finished doing that, my next project is I'm
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  going to start translating the books into Italian, and I'm also
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  going to create another ebook for free.
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  I'll give it away on the three-part series that I did on
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  Food Cost. A lot of people really enjoyed
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  that podcast series. A lot of people told me they
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  learned more about money and finances than they ever had in
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  their life. So if that's something that
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  you're interested in, go back and listen to that three-part
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  series on food cost. And I'll create an accompanying
• 0:57
  guide based off what was said in that three-part series.
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  So I just put up a poll on Instagram and it was what was
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  today's podcast going to be about?
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  It was going to be about interviewing best practices or
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  the journey that one has to take to become a chef.
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  Or was it going to be about menus and creativity?
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  Menus and creativity one, polls are closed.
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  So that's what we're going to talk about on today's podcast is
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  creating menus, what my process is when I create menus and how
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  the creative process ties into. I did a video on Instagram the
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  other day, which was part of a class that I had done during the
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  pandemic. It was called how to lead like
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  an executive chef or how to manage like an executive chef.
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  And we went, you know, we treated it like master class and
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  we went through every single aspect of running a hotel and
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  menu engineering was a part of that.
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  So I did a small little clip of that and I put it up on social
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  media and it talked about the 7030 rule or the 8020 rule.
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  And I was actually surprised by how much good feedback I
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  received on that. I didn't realize that that was
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  such a foreign concept to people.
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  So I talked about, you know, creating a menu that 80% of it
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  or 70% of it are items that are going to do the majority of the
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  heavy lifting on the menu. It's everything that's going to
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  sell what I like to call the fastball down the middle and
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  then 20 or 30% depending on how you break that down is going to
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  be your area to play and create. So I do want to talk about that.
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  I also want to talk about the creative process and how that
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  ties in to building your own menu.
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  Now before we get into all of this, I will say not every
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  restaurant is the same and not every kitchen is the same and
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  it's not a one-size-fits-all. What works for one restaurant
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  doesn't necessarily work for another restaurant.
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  And and you have to use a little bit of intelligence to figure
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  out like, hey, this what you said applies to what I'm doing,
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  but this definitely doesn't. So I'm going to trust that you
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  all are going to take what is useful and specific to your
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  restaurant and discard what is not and maybe just help a friend
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  out who might need it. But not everyone's going to need
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  everything I say. So first thing when you're
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  creating a menu, I think the first thing that you have to
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  discover is what your brand identity is for the restaurant
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  that you're creating a menu for. And there's a lot of different
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  ways to do this. Some people have a brand
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  statement or a mission statement.
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  They have a vision board, but regardless of what that is, you
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  need to establish parameters of what falls into the box of your
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  restaurant and its menu and what doesn't.
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  Because where I see a lot of chefs go wrong is that they
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  create really delicious food or not delicious food.
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  And they put it on the menu where it doesn't make any sense.
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  And the example I'll give is you have an Italian restaurant and
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  you're putting tacos on it like it.
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  That just doesn't make sense for you to have on your Italian
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  restaurant. Or vice versa, you have a
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  Mexican restaurant and then you go put pasta carbonara on it.
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  That doesn't make sense. So the first thing that you need
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  to do is you need to identify what the guardrails are for your
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  restaurant. Because a restaurant has to have
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  an identity. It can't be something
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  one-size-fits-all for everybody. A lot of restaurants are
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  starting to fall into that category because they don't
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  identify who they are, what their identity is, what is the
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  brand that they're trying to go for.
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  And so they end up putting whatever's trendy on the menu,
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  and it just becomes this messy menu of a whole bunch of things
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  that really don't make sense. To give you a good example of
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  what I mean, there was a period in time where everyone had a
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  cheese border charcuterie board, Brussels sprouts, and we just
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  called it New American Kitchen. So I get it.
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  You just want to throw whatever's trendy, whatever was
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  in Bon Appetit for the week. And we're just going to say it's
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  New American and it's going to stick.
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  And yes, that food is delicious, but it didn't really have an
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  identity, and those restaurant concepts sometimes can be
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  shortlived. So really good exercise that I
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  did to identify what is the brand as we got in a room and we
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  put all the stakeholders in the room.
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  So anyone that has a vested interest in the restaurant and
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  we said what is the restaurant and we create 2 columns.
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  It is this, it is, you know, we listed out 1010 things that we
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  felt identified the restaurant and said OK, if it falls in the
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  category of these 10 things, it could go on the menu.
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  But if it doesn't, then it shouldn't even be discussed.
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  So again, we're going to use the Italian restaurant as the
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  example. If you said your restaurant,
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  again the identifying words, it's Italian local seasonal from
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  Sicily focused on seafood. Let's just say we're using those
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  five. If someone came and said OKI
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  have this great, also buco dish from a different part of Italy,
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  well then that shouldn't go on the menu.
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  It's not seafood, it's not Sicilian, it wasn't local.
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  So even though it is Italian, it doesn't fall into the parameters
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  of what that menu is. So you have to clearly identify
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  what the guardrails are for your restaurant.
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  And I'm not saying you can't ever color outside the lines,
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  but you need to have some sort of predictability for your
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  customer coming in that they could look at your website and
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  it says Italian coastal Sicilian seafood restaurant.
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  They say, I kind of get it, I I think I know what I'm going to
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  walk into. They're not going to go to your
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  Italian coastal Sicilian restaurant and expect you to
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  have ahi tuna tacos on it, right?
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  Some common sense needs to be involved in this menu creation.
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  So first thing you have to do is identify what the guardrails are
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  for the restaurant. And then there's the
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  conversation of what level are you trying to go for, right?
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  Are you just going for the local neighborhood restaurant or are
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  you going for something extremely high end?
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  Are you pushing for Michelin 3 star?
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  Are you pushing for just, you know you want to be busy and you
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  want to feed the neighborhood? Again, very different ends of
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  the spectrum. If you're going for the three
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  star versus neighborhood, you would have put something that's
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  you'd expect that a three star Michelin restaurant on the
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  neighborhood restaurant and you wouldn't put something from the
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  neighborhood restaurant on the extremely high end menu, at
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  least not without adding a lot of finesse and Polish to it.
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  It has to fit the concept so your customers again can come in
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  and know what to expect. You have to approach this from a
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  business mindset first, right? So establishing what the
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  guardrails are is establishing what the business mindset is for
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  the restaurant. We're going to talk about
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  creativity here in a SEC, but let's kind of establish the
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  framework, The bones business first, right?
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  As we talked about, it's the lifeblood of any restaurant to
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  make sure there's money coming through.
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  Now every restaurant is going to be different.
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  Like I said, some restaurants apply the 444 rules.
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  So like 4 starters, 4 main courses for desserts.
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  Yeah, that's that's a smaller type restaurant.
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  Some people are going to go into a tasting menu.
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  Only some people might have a large menu with like 50 items on
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  it. You know, every single
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  restaurant is going to approach it differently.
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  But when you're creating a menu, a good way to look at it is the
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  amount of inventory and the amount of means and plus that
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  you need to create the menu. There's a lot of factors that
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  you have to consider. So you have to consider how much
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  inventory do you need to execute this menu?
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  How many cooks do you have on the line to execute the food
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  that you're trying to put out? I'm going to get off the
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  subject, but at one point in my career I was the chef of a
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  restaurant where we were doing a tasting menu and it was, it was
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  complex and we were punching above our weight.
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  What I mean by that is we were we were looking at like what El
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  Bulli was doing is like we got to be as good as El Bulli.
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  Yeah, this is when bubble food was all the rage and what we
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  were trying to do with like 5 cooks was just not feasible.
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  It was it was not realistic to do that level of food with only
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  five people tasting menu only and all the other things that we
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  had to deal with, right. And what ended up happening is,
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  you know we spread ourselves too thin And then what we were
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  trying to execute, we just executed it sloppy just because
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  we didn't have enough people to execute it well.
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  Where you see that where a lot of chefs are pushing to really
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  achieve the most that they can with whatever goal they have in
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  their specific market. And they spread themselves too
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  thin and they spread their team too thin and it ends up not
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  working out very well because there's only so many hours in a
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  day and there's only so much a human being can do.
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  Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't push yourselves to
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  excellence. Sometimes I would go into
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  meetings with people like we'd have menu meetings and I was
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  ambitious. So I'd say I want to do this,
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  this, this, this, this, and I'd get pushed back from some of my
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  sous chefs and be like, that's too hard, It's too ambitious,
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  this, that and the other. And I would get frustrated and I
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  would say I don't need to be surrounded by a bunch of people
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  telling me what we can't do. I need to be surrounded by
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  people telling me what we can do, what can we achieve.
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  If we want to be the best, we need to be able to push and
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  saying we can't do it. We're not going to have any
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  success behind it. A lot of times, like I needed
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  some people to push back on me, but other times I needed to push
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  them a little bit because sometimes, sometimes as the
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  chef, you have to know where that line is.
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  You have to know that you've pushed your team too far and
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  they're on the edge of breaking and and it's just not healthy or
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  you haven't pushed far enough, right.
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  And you know, take a take a good look around your kitchen.
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  Are people busy? Are they screwing off on their
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  phone half the day? Well, then you could probably
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  push harder, right? I mean, use some common sense
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  and some discretion when you're designing your menus.
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  Now when we're talking about what's going to go on the menu.
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  So again we we to discuss the guardrails that someone needs to
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  have on the menu. So everything that goes on the
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  menu has to pass the test of does it fall on the brand and in
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  in the guardrails of what we're trying to achieve.
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  Once that's been taken care of, then we need to say okay, the
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  8020 rule, what I was talking about earlier is like 80% of
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  your dishes should be familiar because that's going to carry
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  the bulk of your sales. So 80% of the dishes on the menu
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  should be easy for someone to understand.
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  It shouldn't be so complex that they don't know what they're
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  looking at like. The expression goes chefs
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  cooking for other chefs or chefs cooking to impress themselves.
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  If 80% or 100% of your menu is chefs cooking for chefs or chefs
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  cooking to impress themselves and it's not in the right
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  neighborhood, most likely you're going to fail.
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  The the reality is, is you are not going to be able to serve
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  that super intricate food in every type of setting, right?
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  There has to be a little bit of common sense in determining
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  what's going to go on your menu. So like I said, 80% of the
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  people that are coming in, they're going to have simple
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  pallets. They're going to order the
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  things that are familiar to them.
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  You know, empires can be built off chicken parm or a hamburger
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  or really good pasta or really good tacos, like the basics do
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  well for a reason. And to not have the basic things
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  on the menu that are going to sell is actually going to hurt
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  your restaurant because you don't want someone to come into
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  your restaurant and say I need a translator for what this is.
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  I don't understand any of it, right?
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  Early on in my career, I remember someone had come up to
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  me and they wanted to put this weird shit on the menu that I
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  really wasn't jiving with. And I remember thinking, you
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  know, I'm a pretty serious chef. There's no way I'm going to put
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  that on the menu. And I remember having a little
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  back and forth with my boss. And they, they caved in because
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  when I was a young chef, I just wanted to do amazing food.
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  And I could care less sometimes about would it sell or would it
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  not. And in retrospect, that was
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  stupid. They should have fired me
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  because now when I go and consult with people and
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  occasionally I come across with chefs that'll say I don't want
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  to do it, that's not my food. I was like, well, the food that
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  you're trying to do is not this restaurant.
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  You're going to end up closing this person's business because
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  you want to do your food. There has to be a good balance
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  on the menu. Now let's talk about the 30 to
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  20% that you have to play with. That's where I would start to
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  introduce things that are maybe on the fringe.
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  So new techniques, obscure ingredients, things that maybe I
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  like or my team wants to experiment with.
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  So a lot of chefs that work with me be like I want to experiment
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  with this particular ingredient. I'll say great, we'll put on the
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  menu, but it's going to be in that 30% range.
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  That's not going to be something that I would anticipate that
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  will sell. And and usually I was right,
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  like we'd put something obscure on the menu and then you'd look
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  at your menu abstracts and it's like the chicken parm sold 100
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  and that one sold zero or that one sold two.
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  Because the reality is like if you're putting it on the menu
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  and no one else is liking it, it doesn't matter.
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  You're you're not cooking for yourself and you're not cooking
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  at home. In many cases you're cooking for
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  the audience that's coming in. But I think there is a certain
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  level of experimentation because you will be proved wrong on
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  occasion. You'll put something on the menu
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  thinking that it's for the chefs and next thing you know,
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  everyone's getting it. But that 30% should be where you
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  experiment with new techniques and new ingredients.
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  It should be learning, but that should be a rotational thing,
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  right? So those are coming off.
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  Another portion of the menu is the portion for me, like in
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  restaurants that I would run, there was a portion that would
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  never change. So we had our signature items
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  and let's just say it's, you know, these five items, they've
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  never come off the menu. We may adjust a little here or a
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  little there, but the fact of the matter is those don't change
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  because those are our greatest hits and everyone comes in to
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  get that. It's the example of, like, when
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  you go to a concert, like you want to hear all their new
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  stuff, but they play like the same five hits.
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  It's like, well, that's what makes them the money.
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  That's what everyone really wants is the five hits.
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  So you see it a lot in the music industry.
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  You can learn something from the music industry as a chef, right?
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  The greatest hits, The Rolling Stones, Satisfaction, Wu Tang
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  Clan, Playing Cream, great songs, by the way.
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  But the point is, you might want to listen to the new the Fringe,
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  but they're going to play the classics.
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  The same thing has to hold true in your restaurant.
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  You want to make sure that the classics don't move, maybe
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  adjust them a little bit. So again, you have that 30%, you
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  have the classics, and then there's something that I like to
• 14:29
  call the sucker shit. And I think having sucker shit
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  on your menu now is more important than ever as we move
• 14:35
  into the age of social media and Instagram.
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  So what is sucker shit? Sucker shit is the kind of thing
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  that influencers come in and they take their phone out
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  because it comes to the table. It's the Salt Bay action, it's
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  the gold plated tomahawk. It's the obscure thing that's
• 14:50
  shaped into a cake. It's truffle oil on French fries
• 14:55
  like that. That is kind of like the crack
• 14:57
  for influencers. Like, Oh my God, I had they have
• 14:59
  truffle fries. Like most people know.
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  Like, I personally hate truffle oil, but I'm not opposed to
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  putting truffle fries on the menu because I know it's going
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  to sell, right? So that that's that fastball
• 15:11
  down the middle, but it's the it's the sucker shit.
• 15:12
  So I'll, I'll tell you a funny story.
• 15:15
  When I would be designing menus with my chefs every now and
• 15:18
  again, we talk about like we need some sucker shit on the
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  menu stuff that the influencers are all going to pull out their
• 15:23
  phone for dinner. And so right before the pandemic
• 15:28
  happened, I was working with my pastry chef and I said I want to
• 15:30
  come up with the most obscene ice cream sundae and I want to
• 15:35
  make house made ice cream. And I want you to make your
• 15:38
  homemade magic shell. And I want to use the most
• 15:41
  expensive cherries and have on glaze and 10X vanilla bean ice
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  cream. And I said I just want you to
• 15:47
  make it so over the top and garnish it with gold leaf and go
• 15:51
  to the table and pour it tableside and serve it on a
• 15:54
  silver platter and make you know a whole bunch of pomp and
• 15:57
  circumstance around the dish. We're going to sell it for $50
• 16:02
  Sunday for four, for $50.00, and I want every single table that
• 16:07
  comes in that's a party of four or more to get it so they can
• 16:10
  all take their phones out and record it.
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  And I want to be on everyone's Instagram when we're doing this.
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  And it was, it was that, I mean, it was, you know, sucker shit,
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  but it was delicious too. Like, I'm not going to lie,
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  sometimes sucker shit is delicious.
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  And so we put it on the menu and we put it on for like 60 bucks.
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  People would buy it all the time and everyone wanted to take
• 16:29
  pictures with it. And it worked, right?
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  The the tableside ports, the souffle coming that everyone's
• 16:34
  going to take their phone out. Or the giradon being wheeled to
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  the table depending on what type of restaurant you are, where
• 16:40
  they're slicing the meat or they're, you know, slicing the
• 16:42
  rib eye at the table. It's the it's the chocolate
• 16:45
  pinata that is kind of the stuff that you know is going to bring
• 16:49
  attention to your restaurant. So what I would tell my chefs is
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  you want that to get them in and then you show them the cool
• 16:54
  stuff that you're working on, but that's the stuff that makes
• 16:56
  your restaurant go viral on social media.
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  We had a dish that we did and it was, I'm sure everyone's done
• 17:02
  it, but this is what we were doing.
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  We were doing tater tots with aerated Greer cheese and black
• 17:08
  truffles, and we would sell it for a certain price and we kept
• 17:12
  raising the price, but no one ever complained.
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  No matter how much we raise the price, people would still buy it
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  and my chef de cuisine at the time would come up to me, like,
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  I want to take this off the menu.
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  It's not as intricate, you know, we want to, we want to push.
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  I said look, push on all this other stuff, but keep that on
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  the menu. I know it's not like the most
• 17:30
  Swannier thing, but trust me, it's the one thing that everyone
• 17:34
  comes in and takes photos of it. Every single table gets it and
• 17:38
  it's a cash cow. Don't take it off the menu.
• 17:41
  I think to this day they still have it on the menu, I think.
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  But it it's one of those things that you have to have a good mix
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  of that sucker shit on the menu that everyone wants to come in
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  and take photos of and like I said then you get them with the
• 17:51
  other stuff. This doesn't apply to all
• 17:53
  restaurants, but it applies to a lot where you do tasting menus,
• 17:56
  you have the opportunity to have supplements on there.
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  I think having that on especially from a incremental
• 18:02
  revenue standpoint is a good thing.
• 18:03
  So let's say you have a tasting menu and you see this with a lot
• 18:06
  of high end restaurants, they'll have you know the supplemental
• 18:09
  caviar, the supplemental truffle, the supplemental A5 wag
• 18:12
  you that's a good way to increase and add value to what
• 18:17
  you're already doing. So for example, let's just use
• 18:19
  that tater tots as an example that I had earlier.
• 18:22
  I could say we have tater tots with aerated grier cheese on
• 18:25
  top, but for X amount of dollars more, we could supplement black
• 18:29
  truffles or you could supplement caviar, right.
• 18:32
  That is adding value to what you're doing.
• 18:35
  It's it's those Lux items, right.
• 18:37
  So if you have a tasting menu, then you have this course or
• 18:40
  that course orange for extra supplement, you could add in the
• 18:43
  lobster, or you can add in the A5, right?
• 18:44
  So for $25 more, $50 more, whatever the case may be, you
• 18:48
  add in those more expensive items.
• 18:50
  And then once you've written your menu, you should hopefully
• 18:52
  go through some sort of process to vet it.
• 18:54
  Make sure you do tastings, make sure everything's correct, and
• 18:57
  you should be reevaluating your menus quickly so you're
• 19:00
  adjusting them as needed. You know what's selling, what's
• 19:02
  not. A good practice is to run the
• 19:04
  menu analysis at the end of every month and evaluate what's
• 19:07
  selling, evaluate what's not and adjust as needed, right?
• 19:10
  The longer you delay, the more it's going to affect your bottom
• 19:13
  line. Now the last thing I'm going to
• 19:15
  talk about when it comes to creating menus, when you want to
• 19:19
  introduce things but you're not sure how to introduce them.
• 19:22
  This is something that I do. This is just this is just my pro
• 19:25
  tip is if I wanted to introduce an obscure ingredient, I might
• 19:30
  introduce it. For example, everyone loves
• 19:33
  beets, but not everyone loves foie gras.
• 19:36
  So maybe I will create a beet dish with foie gras versus a
• 19:39
  foie gras dish with beets. So if the first thing on your
• 19:42
  menu that you see is beets, a lot of people are going to be
• 19:44
  likely to order it. But if the first thing that you
• 19:47
  see on your menu is foie gras, they may be less likely to order
• 19:49
  it. So when I needed to introduce
• 19:52
  things like that, I would introduce them, You know, I'd
• 19:54
  partner them up with someone that was really popular, right?
• 19:59
  So if. You know, I I I would introduce
• 20:03
  the obscure friend with a really popular one.
• 20:05
  So like I said beats with frog bra and I know that's not that
• 20:08
  obscure, but sometimes in some parts of the country it's very
• 20:11
  obscure. And I think that's a good way to
• 20:13
  look at that is to to introduce people to things that they might
• 20:17
  not be comfortable with by having something that they are
• 20:20
  comfortable with on the plate already.
• 20:22
  I I do believe that creativity is a collaborative process.
• 20:26
  So when I'm designing menus, I usually get as many stakeholders
• 20:30
  in the room and we would write down ideas and we would just
• 20:34
  throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
• 20:36
  So if I had five people, I'd tell everyone come with five
• 20:38
  ideas and let's just go through them.
• 20:40
  And sometimes you what you'd end up with is a dish that's a
• 20:43
  mishmash of several people's ideas.
• 20:45
  So I might say let's do the beef this way and someone else may
• 20:49
  say with this sauce and and this vegetable and then before you
• 20:53
  know it maybe we have an amalgamation of a lot of
• 20:55
  different ideas. So think about it like this,
• 20:57
  this If you're changing your menu and you have a couple of
• 21:00
  items that don't change, right? So you know your greatest hits,
• 21:04
  and then you have, you know, the sucker shit that might not
• 21:07
  change. And so you're experimenting
• 21:09
  with, you know, 30 or 40% of the menu that's going to change for
• 21:12
  the season or whatever. That might only be like six or
• 21:15
  seven items. But if you have five people
• 21:18
  coming up with 10 dishes apiece, that's fifty ideas, 50 menu
• 21:23
  ideas that you only need 5 or 6, right?
• 21:26
  And so then you're able to really push the creativity.
• 21:29
  Now once we've determined what those items are, we'll go out
• 21:32
  and we will cook them. And so the way that I would do
• 21:34
  it is everyone would, would cook the dishes, we'd sit there and
• 21:37
  then we'd pick the dish apart. Because sometimes on paper
• 21:40
  things sound delicious and then you try them and they just don't
• 21:43
  work. And it might be an idea that
• 21:46
  just it's time hasn't come or you fully don't understand the
• 21:50
  technique yet. Got to let the cake bake, as
• 21:54
  they say. So when we get into the creative
• 21:56
  process, we're all trying the dish.
• 21:58
  And the creative part is super fun because that's where you get
• 22:02
  to experiment. That's where it's okay to fail.
• 22:05
  You know, the guardrails are a little bit looser on the
• 22:06
  creative portion of the venue. And honestly, that's also
• 22:11
  sometimes the place where you could get that attention that
• 22:14
  you need for your restaurant. It's the local press, the write
• 22:18
  up in the newspaper, whatever the case may be.
• 22:20
  Sometimes that comes from that 30% because the the people that
• 22:24
  are writing about food usually write about what's on the
• 22:26
  fringe. They don't ever write about, you
• 22:28
  know, the roasted chicken that much.
• 22:29
  They they write about, you know, the octopus bubbles.
• 22:34
  Anyway, you get my point. So playing with that 30% on the
• 22:38
  fringe sometimes is what's going to get you the recognition that
• 22:41
  you need. And then when my group of chefs
• 22:43
  would get together and taste if if the dishes up there, we'd all
• 22:46
  really pick it apart. And for me, in that creative
• 22:51
  process and that menu ideation phase, it's the time to be the
• 22:55
  most critical. So we would taste it and we'd
• 22:57
  say we'd look at it this way. That's how I would look at it.
• 23:00
  Say we'd look for something balanced, what is the, what's
• 23:02
  the salt level, what's the heat level, what's the acid level,
• 23:04
  what's the fat level. And we'd want to make sure, you
• 23:07
  know, kind of like an equalizer on a stereo, You adjust all the
• 23:09
  knobs until until the dish just is delicious.
• 23:14
  And so like, add a little bit more acid, add a little bit more
• 23:17
  fat, add a little bit more heat, add a little bit more sugar, add
• 23:20
  a little bit of this, add this gas streak, finish it with olive
• 23:24
  oil, boom. Then you get it or you know,
• 23:26
  brighten it up with freshness, maybe it needs more fresh herbs
• 23:29
  or whatever the case may be. Then you add the texture.
• 23:32
  And once we'd be really happy with how the plate tastes, then
• 23:37
  we start with refining the presentation on it.
• 23:40
  So the presentation was, was after the taste.
• 23:43
  So do another podcast on taste versus presentation.
• 23:46
  So presentation came after taste.
• 23:49
  Once it tastes good, then we can work on the presentation to make
• 23:51
  sure it looks good, right? And this was a good exercise for
• 23:54
  us to really be critical and pick things apart to make sure
• 23:58
  that that final product was excellent.
• 24:00
  Now a lot of restaurants don't change their menu that
• 24:05
  frequently. So, you know, pro tip when
• 24:09
  you're changing your menu, make sure that everything's costed
• 24:11
  weight measures. Make sure everyone has recipes
• 24:13
  before you start. Before you roll the menu out,
• 24:16
  make sure people have seen it. There's nothing worse than a
• 24:19
  menu change when you walk into work and you have no idea
• 24:22
  because you've never seen any of the dishes.
• 24:23
  So chefs, make sure you're communicating that that's the
• 24:27
  worst. Don't do that.
• 24:28
  But I'll tell you, sometimes you do get in these creative ruts.
• 24:31
  A lot of times people message me and say, what would you do when
• 24:33
  you're in a creative rut? Like sometimes it happens.
• 24:36
  When I was younger, I was the chef of a place that did a
• 24:40
  tasting menu only restaurant and we had to change the menu every
• 24:43
  day. My boss at that place happened
• 24:47
  to be a big fan of, you know, Thomas Keller and The French
• 24:49
  Laundry and Charlie Trotter and said they change their menu
• 24:52
  every day. You need to change your menu
• 24:53
  every day. And so he never allowed me to
• 24:56
  repeat an ingredient twice, which is extremely difficult.
• 25:00
  And it sounds good until like you're on day two or day three,
• 25:04
  day five, day 20. It's like, shit.
• 25:06
  You have to make 8 to 10 courses that are different that you've
• 25:09
  never done before. I would do better at it now
• 25:11
  because now I think I'd probably come up with a better system.
• 25:13
  But back then I thought every single day I had to come up with
• 25:15
  something original. You didn't have to do that.
• 25:16
  Like you could have said, you know, you make a grit and you
• 25:20
  say, here are my sauces, here are my my sides, here are my
• 25:22
  beefs. And then you, you kind of like a
• 25:24
  matrix and say, let's put this with this, with this today.
• 25:27
  But anyway, those types of restaurants are much more create
• 25:32
  creative, and they probably don't play in that 7030 role,
• 25:35
  especially when you're talking about restaurants on the World's
• 25:37
  50 Best. It's their job to play in the
• 25:41
  creative in the abstract, right? But let's be honest, not
• 25:46
  everyone's in that world. Like, you know, a couple of
• 25:49
  people will get on my social and like, talk crap and be like, Oh
• 25:52
  no creativity. I'm out.
• 25:54
  And then you look at their page and it's like, dude, you're
• 25:56
  serving like, filet with asparagus.
• 25:59
  What are you talking about creativity anyway?
• 26:03
  There's true creativity, right? And then there's like, I just
• 26:06
  want to cook my food. I don't want to be told what to
• 26:08
  do. So, like, everyone needs to calm
• 26:10
  down and understand that there's a difference there.
• 26:12
  And it's extremely difficult to work in these places that change
• 26:15
  the menu and shout out to restaurants that do that.
• 26:17
  Shout out to David Breeden from The French Laundry changes the
• 26:20
  menu every day. And one of the best restaurants
• 26:24
  in the world, those guys are ninjas.
• 26:25
  Like you look at what they do and you look at if you change
• 26:29
  the menu every day in 10 years, how many dishes is that?
• 26:31
  4005 thousand? I don't know.
• 26:34
  It's a lot. Shout out to those guys that
• 26:36
  have to live that life. It's not for everybody.
• 26:38
  It's extremely difficult. It's extremely creative and
• 26:42
  very, very elite chefs. Anyway, that's going to wrap it
• 26:45
  up. So hopefully now you can leave
• 26:49
  with a better game plan and make sure you have a good mix of
• 26:52
  items that are going to sell. Make sure you have some items
• 26:54
  that are creative and that you can experiment with, but be
• 26:57
  ready to take them off the menu rapidly.
• 26:59
  Have a couple of things that are going to get people in to take
• 27:02
  photos and get them in the doors and gain attention for your
• 27:06
  restaurant. But most importantly, cook and
• 27:09
  have fun. Anyway.
• 27:10
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• 27:12
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• 27:20
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• 27:24
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• 27:26
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• 27:38
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