Are Your Foundations Built Up? 👀
33.2022 Edition
Editor: Justin Khanna
Hey Reader,
Remember last week when we had a listener question come through? They had a sentence that really stood out to me:
“I decided that I want to give myself like 8-10 years, give or take, just to learn; so I have no obligations to any particular restaurant, no responsibility for other cooks, just nothing but time to grow.”
I started writing a lot on this topic, so this is a series of monologues here on the Repertoire Newsletter that I'm going to build into eventual blog posts. Last week we talked about "Promotion Fog", and this week:
Foundations and Flourishes
Notice how this person worded their goals with arbitrary words like “learn” and “growth”, and even labeling responsibility for others in a “negative” way…as if any of us just get to peacefully go into a completely spotless and quiet kitchen and “just create” whilst simultaneously getting paid profitable amounts of money, without having to earn new revenue through media appearances, collaborations, or secondary streams like catering or private events.
I’d pose this question to that individual: Pick an arbitrary chunk of time in that 8-10 year span - what would you learn between year 5 and year 6 that you don’t currently have access to?
Why can’t you learn those things sooner?
Don’t get me wrong, for certain roles, there are actual limitations that exist.
“I want to become the butcher in order to run the charcuterie program and improve my fish fabrication skills, and there’s only one butcher on staff and they won’t be leaving for another 2 years.”
“I don’t quite have a handle on expediting, and that’s the chef-de-cuisine’s role and she won’t be leaving for at least 3 years.”
How do we solve this problem?
In my experience, I had 2 specific chapters of my “learnings”: Foundations and Flourishes.
Your Foundations are the basic principles. The time-tested skills that are basically your ticket-to-ride in order to function as a valuable member of the team in a professional kitchen.
These skills transcend cuisine type, restaurant size, or even operational complexity.
- Being able to manage a list of tasks
- Time management for client/customer related deadlines (we open at 10am, the catering order is getting picked up at 4pm, the guests for the PDR arrive at 6:30pm)
- Sanitation, hygiene & cleaning as you go
- Following instructions to replicate someone else’s idea (either from a recipe or shadowing their process)
- Hand-eye coordination in fabrication & preparation (dicing onions, piping macarons, layering sliced meat on parchment paper, peeling carrots)
The list goes on - we even cover several of these in Total Station Domination.
When I have folks that are intimidated to start in their first kitchen, most fears stem from feeling that they lack development in those Foundations.
The other common fear is that they’ll be asked questions about ingredients/techniques they aren’t familiar with. I’d say those usually fall in the Flourishes camp.
These skills are specific to an individual, restaurant group, or dish preparation.
- Grilling over open fire (Saison)
- Cooking & seasoning sushi rice to perfection
- Making barley koji (noma)
- Glazing vegetables in butter emulsion (Per Se)
- Cooking bread in a tandoor oven (Junoon)
Being over-indexed on either can lead to extreme frustrations as a professional.
If you’ve got too many Foundations, but not enough Flourishes, you feel like you have nothing that makes you unique. You'll get bored at work, and long for an environment that will push you outside of that comfort zone.
If you’ve got too many Flourishes, but not a stable set of Foundations, you’ll struggle to adapt to new environments and task lists…but maybe you’re REALLY fast at making milk skins or making celery root sheets. You'll have a cool-sounding resumé, but you can't really be trusted with complexity yet.
The key is to know what stage you’re in, and what the place you’re working at has the capacity to teach you. Your current restaurant might help you build 60% of your Foundations, and 7% of your Flourishes. Your next place might add 25% more to your Foundations and 30% of Flourishes. Do any of us ever reach 100%? Probably not - but you can definitely tell the difference between someone who's at 81% vs 3% 😒
I did a combination of 12+ stages, and 4 extended working positions at restaurants over 8+ years to feel like I had both reasonably developed. Don’t get me started on the lessons I had to learn as an owner for the last 5 years.
Can all of this learning happen at one place? Absolutely.
Can it happen across 16 different spots, too? I’m living proof of it.
Tenure isn’t bad, either. I acknowledge that I can be pretty skill-obsessed and progress-focused sometimes, but there are also incredible lifestyle advantages that come with tenure.
Not everyone wants environmental & team changes to happen every 2 years. Plus, the ability to know exactly what you’re walking into for 4 years straight can allow for great routine development.
On top of that, your commute is predictable, you know where everything is in dry storage, and doing your taxes is easier.
You can also push for a raise and even non-monetary compensation like less working hours so you can have a hobby outside of work or spend more time with your family (see: the popularity of the 4-day workweek that we’ve covered on the podcast).
Grant Achatz spend a few weeks at elBulli, but fused that experience and inspiration with what he learned at The French Laundry to open Alinea. No one gives him shit for how long he spent at elBulli, they applaud him for what he did with it. He built his Foundations, and then added Flourishes.
Where are you in your journey right now? Shoot me a response to this email, I read every one 👀
Top Highlights 💡
Akiko's Pottery
The incredibly talented Kevin Bui of Nourished Media made a mini-documentary on one of my favorite people in Seattle. Me shopping even made an appearance 💸
You'll also see appearances from Brady Williams (previous podcast guest) and more.
Our Take: It's a fun, beautiful watch that you might enjoy instead of your normal Netflix/Hulu/Disney+ binge this week 📺
Especially if you're a hustling solo-preneur, seeing her early hustle stories was really motivating 💪
What IS Black Garlic?
I'm a huge fan of us all knowing exactly what's going on when it comes to food science.
Black garlic has always been difficult to explain, because it's not technically fermentation. This leads to me having fears that someone might apply a more widely-used fermentation technique on something like a whole head of garlic, and end up with something incorrect. They might, then, throw their hands up and say, "I'm no good at fermentation!".
It's not fermentation. And this Twitter thread has a ton of great sources for you to get brushed up on, so that you can tell your guests and team what's actually going down inside that allium. I've just never had a centralized place to send folks to read up on this topic 👇
August 3rd 2022
|
ICYMI 🙌
I’m doing a Farm Dinner - My friend Aash, founder of Aash Farms is wanting to get into the dinner-game and asked me to collaborate with him on a menu that showcases his produce! It's happening in Woodinville, WA, and it'll be paired with some fun wines. Hope to see some of you folks there if you want to learn more about regenerative farming, eat a fun summer-inspired meal, and meet some new people.
Quick Hits 💥
Restaurant Meme Mania with Eli Sussman – Previous podcast guest of mine, Lindsay Collins, had Eli Sussman, one of the best meme accounts in hospitality, on her podcast!
Haus is in TROUBLE - One of my favorite new alcoholic brands is going through some heavy turbulence right now.
This Dallas chef said he worked at Michelin-starred restaurants, but reps say he didn’t - one of you folks sent me this, and long time listeners know how much I love a good cautionary tale...
To Peep 👀
Suisin Hayate Sakimaru Gyuto
Some wildly beautiful (and expensive knives) at Korin just dropped. They're going through a re-shuffling of their website logistics, so I don't even get an affiliate kickback if you purchase one of these 😂 just wanted to share great craftsmanship when I see it.
Quote I'm Pondering 💭
Thanks for reading, as always,
👊Justin
