22.2022 Edition

Editor: Justin Khanna​

Hey Reader,

“I’m about to go stage/interview/trail at [insert high caliber place], what advice do you have or is there anything I should keep in mind?”

I get this question a lot, and I’m gonna distill my answer here for you folks before it evolves into a YouTube video.

Firstly, let’s unpack the question.

For many of you folks, your first day in a fine dining or Michelin-starred kitchen isn’t a completely alien environment.

The building has 4 walls, a kitchen, industrial appliances, they’re working with food, everyone’s (hopefully) wearing pants 👖

98% of the environment is exactly the same as your current kitchen. But you’re still nervous.

Why?

❓“What if I’m not fast enough?”
​❓“What if they ask me about something I don’t know about?” (hydrocolloids, rare/exotic ingredient, cooking technique)
​❓“What if I get asked to cook a dish for them?”

⚠️We also have to rule out the answer I give to more experienced folks here (that’s another monologue). Because if you’re interviewing for a sous or chef-de-cuisine position, not a lot of this will probably apply in the same way.

In my experience, most stages or working interviews fall into 2 camps:

1. The Pair-Up
2. The Processor

When you find yourself in a “Pair-Up” situation, you’ll get matched with a chef-de-partie or line cook who is running a station or responsible for a set of projects.

This is typically someone who has a pretty extensive list or has a lot going on. If you were to get paired up with someone who has an easy-to-manage section, it's poor resource allocation to give them extra help.

They’ll be delegating prep tasks from their list to you. This is real prep that’s gonna end up on their station for service, and so every task you can save them time on is one less thing they have to do.

If you weren’t there today, they’d probably be doing this themselves, so your goal is to knock it out of the park for them. Give them mise en place that they’re STOKED to work with.

This means asking for a demo of the project, and saving it. If you’re 65 rolled cucumbers in, check number 66 with the demo. Is it exactly the same?

Pro-tip: after being 20 minutes into the project, show your progress to your “Pair-Up” person. Not in a show-off-y, “look how good I’m doing” way, but in a “I wanted to confirm this is the standard we’re going for” way.

Common traps with the “Pair-Up”:

• Attempting to go too fast and sacrificing accuracy - It’s not realistic to think you’ll be able to do 100% of what your “Pair-Up” can do. It’s literally your first day. You might only be able to do 60%…but if you’re able to take a 50 minute project off their plate, that’s still 50 minutes of time savings for them (not the ~90 minutes it took you to do the project). But this ONLY works if they get an accurate result. Them having to go back and do it again completely destroys the purpose of the Pair-Up.
• Not understanding the use of the final product - Sometimes you’re given incomplete instructions. You get to told to medium-dice some celery root. You’ll spend ~35 minutes meticulously squaring off the vegetable to nail perfect dice. Only to find out that it’s being used for a soup that’s gonna be puréed 🙈. The reverse applies too: you think you’re just shaving turnips to be tossed into a salad. However, the these shaved turnip strips are being twirled into a garnish for a duck main course, and the thickness really matters. Too thick and they won’t hold the twirl. Too thin and they don’t give the textural impact that the dish needs. Ask about the final use to give yourself clarity.
• Mis-reading the relationship - If you’re on a 5-day or 2-week stage, the time will come to become the Mario and Luigi of that station. On the first day: you’re Robin, they’re Batman. You succeed when they succeed. This means becoming fully invested & focused on positive outcomes for every task, and not trying to rush in and defeat the bad guys by yourself. (This analogy might be falling apart, but I hope it’s making sense).

The other commonality is to find yourself in “The Processor” role. This can sometimes be done solo, and sometimes done as a group of stages.

Take this Cambro of blanched fava beans and remove the secondary pods. Peel 40lbs of shrimp, saving the shells for stock. Strain 60 quarts of chicken stock. Pass 15 liters of carrot soup through a chinois. Peel 10 heads of garlic. Shuck 3 cases of corn before putting it in the produce fridge. Write labels for these 30 cryovac bags.

These might be projects for specific stations, or they might be larger prep tasks that benefit the entire kitchen (your 10 heads of peeled garlic will be used across 3 different stations in the brigade).

Common traps with “The Processor” (yes, these can definitely apply to “Pair-Up”, too):

• Working clean - "Duh, Justin, I've heard this before." But it's worth defining & expanding on: Different kitchens have different cleanliness standards. This isn’t helped by the fact that a lot of tasks that get delegated to “The Processor” can often be tedious and messy. Your goal is to avoid all of the common red flags in production: food on the floor, chaotic countertops (splattered food, un-contained trim), and you being an unclean worker (food on your apron/shirt/shoes, un-gloved hands or not using tools, etc). I teach principle-based station setup that’s adaptable across different tasks in Total Station Domination, but if you’re unsure of how to setup for that task, questions like, “what’s the best layout/setup to make sure I don’t [insert messy outcome], because I wanna work clean” are more than fine to ask. Sure, you might get a scoff, but isn’t that better than getting getting roasted by the sous chef for having corn husks all over the floor because you didn’t know that you could shuck into a Lexan container and empty it into the compost bin when it’s full?
• Lack of engagement - It’s easy to melt into the background when you’re asked to do 4, 5, 6 hours of the tasks I outlined above. You might not even be close to the rest of the brigade! I remember at a stage I did at Oceana in NYC, I was brought to a secondary kitchen (I was in a “Processor”-style stage) that wasn’t even on the same floor as the rest of the team. But don’t let that get in the way of you asking thoughtful questions and showing that you’re excited about the work that they’re doing. Between projects, ask about what dish or station this project is for. If you’re being asked to go down to dry storage, ask if there’s anything else you can grab. Aim to be visibly focused when you’re working. It’s not about being robotic or “just a work horse”. But show that you’re going to be a valuable team member and other folks can count on you to be engaged in your work. Before you know it, you’ll slowly start to get trusted with more responsibilities. In other words, avoid the negative feedback loop: you get asked to do tedious task > you get un-interested > team sees you're not engaged > they give you another tedious task to do 🔁
• Misunderstanding the role - You’re gonna get frustrated. “That guy over there is working with wagyu. She’s using a blow torch on meringue. He’s doing the garnish for the signature dish. I’m stuck here writing labels for cryovac bags.” But the tasks you’re doing need to get done one way or another. You aren’t doing prep that’s gonna be thrown away at the end of the night. You're not working with "fake" food. You’re assisting the team, the tasks are just tedious and not super exciting. That’s why they were given to you. Because it only takes a little bit of training to show how to do it, and it’s not the end of the world if it’s not perfect. You might watch someone else get 4 projects done in the same amount of time it takes you to do 1. That’s normal. The worst thing you could do is it compare your role to someone else’s and not do justice to what’s asked of you.

Can I promise that you won’t be asked about high-acyl gellan gum or that someone won’t pull a “first-day” prank on you and ask you to go find the bacon stretcher from downstairs? No.

The best thing you can do in those situations is come up with a few “canned” responses that you feel comfortable responding with that don’t compromise your integrity:

“I’m not familiar with that, how do you use that here?”

“I’ll admit, this is the first time I’m working with this, can you walk me through the basics on this?”

“Got it, forgive me, I was given a lot of information earlier on my tour of the kitchen, can you remind me where I can find that?” (Bonus: bust out your notebook to show that you’re gonna write it down)

A lot of the pre-stage jitters can be eased by understanding these “Pair-Up” or “Process” concepts, and just expecting that to be your experience.

Last bonus tip for you folks: you’re interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing you.

If you’re seeing that cleanliness standards aren’t being adhered to, or the culture of the team isn’t quite what you would’ve hoped…that’s okay. The current hiring landscape is starving for engaged talent right now, and other organizations would be happy to have you.

I hope this first pass at my thoughts on this topic resonated - what did I miss? Respond to this email, I read every one...or better yet, share this newsletter with someone who needs to hear it.

Top Highlights 💡

​Will micro-restaurants repair a broken industry?​

Smaller restaurants have many benefits: space costs less, you can employ fewer staff members, and you can connect with customers more thoughtfully.

"In bigger restaurants, you can say hi to guests, but it’s not like you’re there with them through the entire meal and sharing the experience together.” - says Matt Cowan, the chef, and owner of The Heather in Hamilton.

And yet, despite having fewer seats (and guests), Chef Cowan’s restaurant exceeded targets from the year before.

Despite the fact that his concept will not work for every restaurant, experts think, that we will see more micro-restaurants in the future.

“We’ll see more chefs doing cool things with small spaces,” Mr. Staley, Chef and Co-Owner of Yarrow says, “because it will be all a chef can afford to do.”

Our Take: As we start to see more automated food production tools rise in popularity, the human-leveraged experiences will start to command a premium. The ability to serve 600, 1,100, 3,000 guests a day will be tackled by operators who are focused on that type of business model (or it'll just happen at home through delivery).

Folks who want to be extremely hands-on will operate with the same constraints they've always had (lack of space, staffing challenges, sourcing complexities). But supply and demand dynamics will take over, and we'll see these experiences command a premium ($160 menus will rise to $300+).

​How a Buzzy New York City Restaurant Makes More Money By Closing on Saturdays​

Restaurant Dame in Manhattan has an unusual concept- it’s closed during the weekend, staff only works four days a week and owners only work five. And yet, beyond being radical, it is more profitable for Dame to have this concept.

What’s even more interesting about this restaurant is that staff is cross-trained, which means that someone might cook one day and serve the next. On top of that, according to the co-owner Patricia Howard, their cooks “have never made so much money in their lives.”

How do the numbers work? Fish and Chips yields a 17% profit, and Dame does even better on the squid and oyster dishes. They don’t offer delivery as they’re too small and have very low fixed costs and manageable labor costs.

Our Take: Pre-pandemic, it was too many years of "the customer is always right". I discussed this with Corey Mintz on the podcast, and I think he's right. The place I see this going wrong is when leadership ends up flip flopping the rules and ends up mis-managing expectations of customers. Most of your guests don't mind that you're closed on Saturdays. They mind when one week you were open, and the next weekend you're closed. Sometimes you're doing lunch, sometimes you aren't. Last month you were open til 9pm, now you're closed at 8pm.

The managers I admired from would always run extended experiments to make sure they were getting robust data sets. I'm not saying don't change things up; but don't do it at the expense of your customers' trust.

Quick Hits 💥

​The Future Of Allergen Training - Allergen training can help hospitality creators provide a safer environment for guests. Check out this article about the biggest hurdles, changes, and what restaurant operators need to know about training their managers and frontline teams.

​Justin on the High EQ Marketer Podcast - We talked about marketing restaurants, planning menus, and challenges that upcoming chefs face. It's a different style of interview than I'm used to, but I really enjoyed presenting my answers for a new audience.

​Who to Trust: the Blogger or the Critic? - High-profile food critics used to change the food conscience of an entire city. Today, we have food bloggers that have "typed their way to the top". Check out the full article discussing who to consider trusting when it comes to food.

ICYMI 🤳

​Brady Williams | Opening a Restaurant: Collaborative Management and Creative Business - Ep. 149​

Brady Williams is the chef/owner of Tomo. Chef Brady joined Canlis in Seattle in 2015 as its sixth-ever Executive Chef. Since then, he has garnered a number of local and national awards, including a perfect, four-star review from the Seattle Times. He’s described the aesthetic of Tomo as being "Brutalist Ryokan meets Hokkaido dive bar" and I had a blast talking to him. Check out the full video episode here, or listen to the audio-only version.

This was one of the first weeks where we did a full-suite collaboration across both channels, so you'll also find my #TPC Tomo episode up on the Justin Khanna channel!

​Total Station Domination- Enrollment closes on May 30th​

I designed Total Station Domination for ambitious industry professionals, who want to feel organized, communicate effectively and build lasting habits. By taking Total Station Domination over just three weeks you will save valuable time, execute your prep with a 10-60% time savings, and avoid potential career plateaus.

I'm so confident that Total Station Domination is the best dollar-for-dollar investment you can make into your career if you're a chef-de-partie or line cook who's looking to improve.

See how TSD compares ⬇️

Get lifetime access to Total Station Domination on the plan that suits you here.

If you're "on the fence" or have questions, simply reply to this email.

I'm doing a dedicated livestream on Instagram on Monday to answer questions you might have on the course itself - make sure you're following and join live at 4pm PST on Monday.

Cohort 2 starts June 6th, 2022. Enrollment ends May 30th.

To Peep 👀

​Spyderco's Murray Carter Collection​

Master Bladesmith Murray Carter is one of the world's foremost experts in Japanese kitchen cutlery. Spyderco's Murray Carter Collection faithfully translates his legendary craftsmanship and design into an extraordinary series of high-performance production kitchen knives. We just got the 10.1" Gyuto in, because it's included for free for all students that enroll in the TSD Premium course experience (on top of other bonus content like a Promotion Accelerator and a Dish Creativity Framework).

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Quote I'm Pondering 💭

Thanks for reading,

👊Justin​

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