Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / The Angry Brunch: Chef's Rant Ep. 84

Transcript

The Angry Brunch: Chef's Rant Ep. 84 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, This is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host Andre Natera. On today's episode, we have the
• 0:05
  Angry Brunch episode. Stay tuned.
• 0:20
  This episode of Chefs PSA is sponsored by J&R Grills and
• 0:23
  Smokers and now they've just introduced their J&R Offset
• 0:26
  Smokers. Built to the same unmatched high
• 0:28
  quality standards as all J&R products, it will stand the test
• 0:32
  of time and offer professional grade results.
• 0:35
  Built from high grade rolled steel, not pre-existing tanks
• 0:38
  for added strength. It comes in 250 and 1000 gallon
• 0:41
  sizes. 500 gallon and custom configurations can also be made.
• 0:45
  It's comparably priced to other commercial offset smokers and
• 0:50
  they deliver their ultra durable models including custom units in
• 0:53
  less than three months. That's less than half the
• 0:55
  typical lead time of most brands.
• 0:57
  They understand your passion because it fuels them too.
• 0:59
  BBQ or upscale cuisine. They always help you deliver.
• 1:02
  They build everything in Texas and ship to all 50 states in
• 1:05
  over 50 countries. So what are you waiting for?
• 1:07
  Go to jrmanufacturing.com/offsets.
• 1:11
  So before we get into it, let's talk about how you can support
• 1:14
  the show. First thing you can do is you
• 1:16
  can go to chefspsa.com. You get all my books Culinary
• 1:19
  Leadership, Fundamentals, Kitchen, Art of War, Bad Suit,
• 1:22
  Good, Chef Line, Cook Survival Manual, How Not To Be The
• 1:25
  Biggest Idiot in the Kitchen and Buy New 150 Most Important
• 1:29
  Chefs, PSA's. I have a bunch of free ebooks as
• 1:32
  well. For those of you that have been
• 1:33
  asking, the audiobook for 50 Most Important Chefs PSA's is
• 1:38
  done. You go find that on the website.
• 1:40
  For those of you that prefer to read With Your Ears Versus Your
• 1:44
  eyes Reading Old School With Your Eyes, the audiobook is
• 1:48
  done, not on Audible because I did not publish this book and
• 1:51
  I'm still unsure if I should publish it or not.
• 1:53
  So people want me to publish it, let me know.
• 1:55
  For those of you that want the paperback version of it, maybe
• 1:59
  I'll create a limited edition series of it, but as of right
• 2:03
  now it's not going to be published strictly ebook and
• 2:06
  audiobook. When I was recording this
• 2:08
  audiobook, so originally I wanted to do the narration.
• 2:12
  Obviously I do the podcast so I know how to edit audio, but when
• 2:15
  I played it back and listened to myself.
• 2:17
  So anyway, here here's the story.
• 2:18
  First time I did it I forgot to turn on the mic, so I read the
• 2:21
  whole audiobook and then when I went back to play it, it didn't
• 2:25
  record anything. So that kind of pissed me off
• 2:28
  initially. And so then when I re recorded
• 2:30
  it and listened to it, it sounded terrible.
• 2:33
  You know, some people, what people don't understand is for
• 2:35
  people that are voice actors or read audiobooks, that's a skill.
• 2:39
  And I quickly realized it's a skill that I do not have.
• 2:43
  I sound like I did when I was 8 years old, standing up in the
• 2:47
  middle of class, stumbling, trying to read the words that
• 2:49
  the teacher wanted me to say the page out of the book.
• 2:52
  It's not me. So anyway, it's not my voice.
• 2:54
  I do a quick little intro, but it's not me.
• 2:57
  Also at Chefs psa.com, you get the merge, this Happy cook hat,
• 3:02
  some T-shirts, water bottles, hoodies.
• 3:05
  Even though Hoodie Weather is coming to a close.
• 3:07
  You can get all that, but let's get on to the show.
• 3:09
  We digress. I could have easily titled this
• 3:13
  episode 1000 Reasons Why Chefs Hate Brunch.
• 3:16
  I almost did. Maybe I will.
• 3:18
  Who knows? Before we get started, I need to
• 3:19
  make sure everyone knows fuck brunch.
• 3:21
  Let's get that out of the way. I absolutely despise brunch, and
• 3:24
  there's nothing anyone can say in the comments that's going to
• 3:28
  change my mind. Now, I should say that
• 3:31
  everywhere I've ever worked, I've served brunch.
• 3:34
  And I understand it's a good model for a lot of people and a
• 3:38
  lot of people do like brunch. A lot of people serve brunch and
• 3:41
  they're very successful at it. And a lot of people love working
• 3:44
  that brunch shift and love cooking eggs and that's that's
• 3:47
  you. That's not me.
• 3:48
  The expression I like to use is there's two types of people,
• 3:51
  people that hate brunch and people that are wrong.
• 3:54
  So there's nothing you're going to say that's going to convince
• 3:55
  me that I should love brunch because I don't.
• 3:58
  Actually, I take that back. The only way I like brunch is
• 4:00
  when you're cooking it and not me.
• 4:02
  So I'll go eat your brunch. I just don't want to cook your
• 4:04
  brunch. How about that?
• 4:05
  Now, when I said 1000 reasons why I don't like brunch, or I
• 4:09
  should say 1000 reasons why chefs don't like brunch, I
• 4:13
  literally could probably list 1000 reasons.
• 4:15
  But we're not going to get to all those reasons today.
• 4:17
  For me, the ideal brunch in a restaurant starts at 5:00 PM and
• 4:21
  serves the dinner menu. That's that's the best brunch
• 4:23
  starts at 5:00 PM serves dinner. Ideal brunch.
• 4:27
  I think like if you want to be a chef and you're thinking about
• 4:30
  going to culinary school because you think you're going to go
• 4:32
  work in these fancy restaurants and get your fancy dishes on the
• 4:35
  menu and make your special. Before you do that go work a
• 4:40
  brunch service. Make sure you really like this
• 4:43
  because if you're like me, brunch will make you fall out of
• 4:45
  love with of cooking pretty quick.
• 4:47
  I'm I'm, I'm joking obviously. But if I had started out at
• 4:50
  brunch, which actually now that I think about it, I did start
• 4:53
  out at brunch. Maybe that's why I don't like
• 4:54
  brunch so much. When I went when I was a young
• 4:57
  cook, what we used to do for Sunday brunch is different what
• 5:00
  from what you see a lot of days in today's Sunday brunch world.
• 5:03
  So it's a smaller menu, egg poachers and, you know, maybe a
• 5:06
  steak and there's fries and there's truffle oil everywhere.
• 5:09
  But when I started, I was the old school Sunday brunch, which
• 5:12
  had mirrors and carving stations and chauffeur and salmon, Kubiak
• 5:16
  and beef wallingtons and a cake buffet.
• 5:19
  And the Garde Monterey used to have to make these mirrors with
• 5:21
  pates and on crude. That's the brunch that I used to
• 5:24
  have to do. And we used to have to shine the
• 5:25
  mirrors up with vinegar anyway. Maybe.
• 5:27
  Maybe that is why I don't like brunch.
• 5:29
  And a lot of restaurants do serve brunch.
• 5:31
  And by the way, there is some sarcasm in this, so understand
• 5:34
  that I I do see the business model why people need to have
• 5:37
  brunch in their restaurant. It does make money.
• 5:40
  It's an extra meal period. A lot of places are extremely
• 5:43
  busy for lunch. I should say brunch.
• 5:46
  You can make a lot of money doing it.
• 5:48
  It's usually lower food cost for the most part if you've designed
• 5:51
  a good menu. So I get the case for brunch, so
• 5:54
  let's get that out of the way. I understand if you're a
• 5:56
  business owner, you're a restaurant owner, you're a chef
• 5:59
  that has to do brunch. I understand, but I don't have
• 6:03
  to like it. So what's the best part about
• 6:05
  working brunch? I would say probably telling
• 6:07
  everyone how much you hate brunch.
• 6:09
  That's the best part. Spending the day complaining
• 6:11
  about how much you dislike brunch is the best part about
• 6:14
  working brunch. If you've ever heard of the
• 6:15
  Orboros, which is a dragon or a snake that's consuming its own
• 6:21
  tail, sometimes you see it as a an Infinity symbol.
• 6:24
  It like it represents, like the cycle of life and death the
• 6:28
  Uroboros. That's brunch because a lot of
• 6:31
  times if you don't have your menu planned, well, dinner
• 6:33
  service suffers because you're prepping for brunch.
• 6:37
  And so you lose a little bit of your limited team because you
• 6:40
  have to displace people to go prep up for the brunch service
• 6:43
  the next day, and then brunch service suffers because you
• 6:47
  didn't pull enough people off dinner to support brunch.
• 6:49
  It's like a vicious cycle that people go through.
• 6:52
  Now if you're in a kitchen that's staffed up and well
• 6:55
  prepared and you have a prep team that's dedicated to that,
• 6:58
  or all your menu items crossover, so you don't need to
• 7:01
  prep extra for brunch, you're smart, well done.
• 7:04
  Congratulations, you're a Unicorn.
• 7:06
  Most people don't do it that way.
• 7:07
  And by the way, I should add in that one of my favorite songs is
• 7:12
  Brunch on Sundays by Nas and that should be the anthem.
• 7:15
  So I post it on Instagram all the time.
• 7:17
  That's the anthem. Shout out to Nas and Escobar
• 7:20
  cigars. A lot of chefs get caught in
• 7:22
  their own mind when it comes to creating brunch menus because
• 7:25
  they think they have to not repeat anything on any other
• 7:28
  menus. So they prep a menu entirely for
• 7:31
  the weekend, what I call building a church for Easter
• 7:33
  Sunday. You wouldn't do that.
• 7:35
  It's like pulling on all nighter for a test that gets called off
• 7:40
  by, you know, 3:00 PM the next day and then everything gets
• 7:43
  thrown, thrown away in the trash like you.
• 7:46
  You cram, you study, you prep, you make all this food and then
• 7:50
  you don't sell it. You never prep just enough for
• 7:52
  brunch. You either prepped way too much
• 7:55
  and you're wasteful, or you didn't prep enough and you ran
• 7:58
  out of eggs or bacon. And by the way, you only need to
• 8:00
  run out of eggs or bacon once for brunch to never do that
• 8:03
  again. I was a chef of a restaurant and
• 8:05
  we ran out eggs and spinach, I think.
• 8:08
  I think it was eggs and spinach for Sunday brunch and it was
• 8:11
  like, noon. The restaurant's packed and I'm
• 8:13
  working the expediter and I had to stop.
• 8:16
  I had to pull someone in to cover the expediter for me.
• 8:19
  They had to run to the grocery store down the street, literally
• 8:23
  sprinting to get eggs and spinach that we needed for
• 8:26
  brunch. I I wiped them out of eggs.
• 8:28
  I remember the cashier used to know me.
• 8:30
  They were they were laughing because like, oh, brunch.
• 8:32
  I said, yeah, brunch. You only need to do that one
• 8:35
  time. I never did it again.
• 8:36
  Everyone has to make that mistake.
• 8:37
  If you haven't made that mistake, it's coming.
• 8:39
  Maybe, I don't know. Hopefully not.
• 8:42
  But realistically, it probably is.
• 8:45
  And then you deal with the tired staff.
• 8:47
  Now, this is assuming that you don't have an AM and PM staff
• 8:50
  because a lot of places, they're serving dinner and then they're
• 8:53
  turning right back around and serving brunch.
• 8:56
  So it's that cloak. And they close and then they
• 8:59
  open, they're tired. And some of them say, you know
• 9:02
  what, I'm still going to go out and have a good time tonight.
• 9:05
  It's Saturday. I'm going to go out and have
• 9:07
  some drinks. I'm going to be hungover and I'm
• 9:09
  going to crawl in to work the next day and try and execute
• 9:13
  brunch service Wolf of Wall Street style.
• 9:16
  Or there's that person who did that anyway and then called off.
• 9:20
  By the way, everyone knows you're lying.
• 9:22
  You went out with us the night before, everyone saw you have
• 9:25
  too many drinks and then the next day you got a cold and then
• 9:28
  you're back Monday and it's like, oh it's just a 24 hour
• 9:30
  bug. I guess I'm, I guess I'm better
• 9:32
  now or you're 3 hours late because of traffic.
• 9:37
  Like, oh, I I hit that 6:00 AM traffic on Sunday.
• 9:39
  Now I I get it. Some people are going to be
• 9:41
  like, well, in LA there's traffic all the time or, you
• 9:43
  know, whatever city you happen to be in, there's always
• 9:44
  traffic. In my city, True, there's some
• 9:47
  cities that there's always traffic, but most cities,
• 9:50
  because not everyone lives in LA.
• 9:52
  Most cities there's no traffic at 6:00 AM You could make it to
• 9:55
  work pretty quick and you could predict the traffic.
• 9:58
  You're not going to be stuck in traffic for three hours.
• 10:00
  You probably just forgot to set your alarm.
• 10:02
  And no one believes your story. Everyone knows your line.
• 10:05
  No one's going to call you on it.
• 10:07
  So I don't know why we don't call people out when everyone
• 10:09
  knows it. It's like, I know you're lying.
• 10:11
  You know you're lying. You know I know you're lying,
• 10:14
  but we're not going to address it.
• 10:15
  And what happens inevitably during brunch?
• 10:17
  You know brunch is busy. It's chaotic.
• 10:19
  You don't have enough prep space for your eggs and your pancake
• 10:23
  batter, and you buy all this inventory that you only need for
• 10:26
  two days a week and your kitchens packed.
• 10:29
  And I don't know why, but brunch service always seems to make the
• 10:32
  kitchen messier. Like, you'll walk into a kitchen
• 10:35
  that's typically very clean, but during brunch, like there's
• 10:37
  broken egg shells on the floor and pancake batter that spilled
• 10:41
  in the cooler that someone forgot to clean up.
• 10:44
  People forget to pull tickets those days.
• 10:46
  Everyone just looks like they got their ass kicked at the end
• 10:49
  of brunch service. And now if you're the PM cook
• 10:51
  coming in and you see all these people that went through brunch
• 10:53
  service, like they they just got out of a fight from the Octagon.
• 10:56
  They look like they got their butts kicked.
• 10:58
  They're like, who was it busy for brunch?
• 11:00
  You guys have a good brunch service.
• 11:02
  You know damn well they didn't have a good brunch service.
• 11:04
  But you still got to ask, right? The PM person coming in, let's
• 11:08
  say they're coming in at 3:00. Brunch service ends at three,
• 11:11
  3:00, but they showed up a little bit early.
• 11:14
  What happens? The host comes back.
• 11:16
  I just sat 320 tops. They just walked in, right?
• 11:20
  It's brunch is the only meal period where 320 tops are going
• 11:24
  to walk in 5 minutes before closing, and they're going to
• 11:27
  order mimosas, Benedict's crab cakes, half your menus, 86
• 11:32
  because you thought you were closed.
• 11:34
  It's that kitchen curse. As soon as you start throwing
• 11:36
  everything away, that's exactly what they're going to order.
• 11:39
  Don't throw it away. That's what they're going to
• 11:40
  order. And you just walked in at 3:00
• 11:42
  PM and you see this chaos and you're like, I'll be right back.
• 11:45
  I'm going to go smoke a cigarette because you know
• 11:47
  exactly that you're going to get sucked into this.
• 11:49
  Now you're put behind for dinner.
• 11:51
  Now dinner service for Sunday, It's typically, you know, in a
• 11:54
  dirtier kitchen. It just has a different tempo.
• 11:58
  Sunday dinner service after brunch does feel different.
• 12:00
  It doesn't feel like your regular dinner services.
• 12:03
  It's almost like the music's offbeat.
• 12:06
  So if you don't serve brunch right now, you're lucky.
• 12:08
  What you want to avoid is this conversation where the owner or
• 12:11
  the executive chef sits you down and says I got a great idea,
• 12:14
  What do you think of brunch? You've been warned.
• 12:17
  You're going to love it as much as I do.
• 12:19
  Like I said, I could have listed 1000 reasons why I don't like
• 12:23
  brunch. I don't know if you agree with
• 12:24
  me or not. Like I said, you're not going to
• 12:26
  change my mind. I'm speaking for the people
• 12:28
  today, those people that have to close and open and got screwed
• 12:32
  over for brunch and all the mods came in and they want the egg
• 12:36
  white omelet with no oil, which by the way is almost impossible
• 12:40
  to make. If you made an egg white omelet
• 12:41
  with no oil, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 12:44
  Everyone wants it their way. No one orders what's exactly on
• 12:47
  the menu. The brunch cooks are fast,
• 12:48
  right? Shout out to brunch cooks
• 12:50
  everywhere who hold it down, who know 100 ways to cook an egg and
• 12:54
  can interpret people that say I want it over easy, but I want
• 12:58
  the egg yolks fully cooked. Shout out to those cooks right
• 13:01
  there that hold it down. Can I get my gluten free toast?
• 13:04
  I noticed you don't have avocado toast on the menu, but you have
• 13:07
  avocados. Can we just get that?
• 13:08
  It's like Burger King on brunch. They're going to make it their
• 13:11
  way and you're not going to be able to do anything about it.
• 13:14
  With all that being said, there's only one thing that's
• 13:16
  worse than brunch and that's holiday brunch.
• 13:19
  All right, chefs, rant over. You know what to do.
• 13:22
  If you're watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe and the thumbs
• 13:25
  up button. If you're listening on Spotify
• 13:27
  or Apple or anywhere else, Google Amazon.
• 13:30
  Make sure you leave five stars. Nothing less than five stars.
• 13:33
  Go to chefspsa.com. Go get the books.
• 13:35
  You go get that new audio book. I will see you next week.
• 13:39
  Hit the porno music.