Now that the State Fair is over (see my earlier blog) and after splurging on some 60 foods on a stick, I can conclude that all but perhaps a handful of them are not good for the human body if consumed in large quantities.

In order to encourage our employees to eat healthier, I recently partnered with our human resources department to offer healthy recipes to team members. These recipes are easy to prepare and feature simple ingredients. Ninety percent of our team members are not culinary professionals, and everybody has a busy life. Therefore, I created recipes which anyone should be able to do in 30 minutes, with ingredients readily on hand. Read more of this >>

I have spent my entire career between golf clubs and hotels. Everything I have become and the basis for all of my kitchens derive from my first ever hotel executive chef management job more than 10 years ago. I would like to spend a couple of posts talking about that hotel, because my fondest memories come from that tiny little place. Read more of this >>

“Okay, on Sunday you can bust suds.” I still remember basking in the glory of those words. Despite flying straight into my well-established disgust and borderline phobia of spittle-laden leavings, for the first time, I became professionally goal-driven.

Here was the plan: Perform well enough at washing dishes to be noticed and then work that into a better job in the kitchen. Subsequently, after proving myself committed to working quickly and until the work was done, coupled with a flexible willingness either to run my mouth or shut it down as the situation warranted, I was promoted to a prep cook position.

Prepping food was a produce-or-you-will-be-barked-at proposition: washing and cutting lettuce for the salad bar; trimming chicken and cubing steak for teriyaki skewers; cracking frozen lobster tails and slathering butter, spices, and plastic wrap over the top. Measure that, mix this, but mostly, speed was demanded.

This little kitchen had to be the point of origin for the term breakneck speed. Again, this was “old school” and there were tons of accidents. Never was there a mention of proper lifting techniques and nary a rubber glove in sight. Cuts and burns in that kitchen were an hourly occurrence. We had more bandages and burn ointment “on the fly” than “remake” dinners. Most of my kitchen hits and nicks were inconsequential—until I was stabbed.

The culprit was waiting for my arrival—a stiletto-thin, serrated steak knife with evil intent. Like a viper on the trail, this bad boy was blade up in the recesses of the only rubber mat in the kitchen. It had been dropped, walked on, and wedged into place by the numb shoes of my fellow workers. One busy evening while diligently applying my adopted value of “speed above all,” I dashed to the front of the dish pit, my vision blocked at the waist by a bus tub full of dirty tools.

As my right foot came to a harried stop, it pressed securely down on the mat-trapped handle of the knife, leveraging the blade tip up at an angle that allowed it to rip itself through the thin canvas of my ratty tennis shoe and then into the inside meat of my late-arriving left foot. I mean, I buried that knife in there. This was real pain, not a schoolyard scrape, and it is here, I confess, that the only thing that kept me from screaming like a scared five-year-old was the swift reaction of the battle-tested kitchen veterans. The alarm was sounded by the first amigo to see me and then, “Wha’ the f’enheimer did choo do?” said the big dawg kitchen manager.

A knife was protruding from the side of my foot like the curb antenna on my grandpa’s Chevy, but what should I do? Yell? Jerk it out? Or just continue to hold my breath and spastically hop around? I know now that my lapsed reaction was because of pure shock, but I did not have long to process the event.

Two or three white-apron blurs grabbed me and together we three-legged-raced to the three-compartment sink. They lifted my leg onto the side of the stainless steel tank. I became woozy. “We gotta take it out and look at it,” they barked.

“Okay,” I feebly replied. I shouldn’t have looked. There against the silver sink was my dangling bloody foot. I saw the hand grab the knife and tug. It hurt coming out, but it was my flesh entrails and the flow of deep red color that I so vividly remember. My tennis shoe and sock were off a moment later and the cold water was cascading over my bare foot. The full blast torrent barely diluted my burgundy-colored blood swirling at the bottom of the sink. Then, first aid goo, gauze, duct tape, and an ice bag, followed by momentary humanity.

After my patch-up, while sitting on an over-turned ice bucket, the kitchen manager came over to me and said “Dude, that’s bad. You gotta go to the doc.”

Weakly, I said. “My car’s got a stick. I don’t think I can work the clutch.”

“That’s okay, I’ll drive ya.”

“But what about the dinner rush,” I asked.

“I’ll get Bobo [his second in command] to run the line. Let’s go!”

I received support and attention not from the “boss/owner” who was “tsk-tsking” in the background, but from our recognized tribal leader: the kitchen manager. This leader didn’t give a hoot about arti-“chokes” or potato-“bakers” when it got real. He stepped up and personally ensured my well being when it counted the most. To recap in a nutshell: I got a tetanus shot, stitches, and time off.

When I returned to work, I was part of the cultural lore. The kitchen crew all blamed some pond scum sucker from the front of the house for being lazy (okay, some disharmonious comments may have emanated from me) and causing this wounding of “one of us.”

One of us. Yes, by working hard before the bloodletting, by not fainting at the sight of my gored foot, and by returning to work, I had made my “bones.” I even picked up a nickname, “Blood” (as in copious amounts of), long before there was any gang member connotation.

Like many hourly workers before and after, I started that summer just trying to get a job and ended it by taking a wild ride with the kitchen tribe.

Somewhere between the third and the (always a mistake) fourth Manhattan over the holidays, I found myself in a transcendental trance that ripped the very fabric of the space-time continuum. I was able to look deeply into my past, a relatively mistake-laden era and also see off into the future. Since I like to keep my own future a mystery to me, I looked into our collective future. Here are the fearless predictions for 2010.

January: In an effort to “start the new year right,” new marketing campaigns will hit the ground running, extolling the glories of “new service, new low rates, and free breakfast and/or lunch and/or dinner.” These campaigns will cost a combined $4.5 million. Occupancy increases by 1.75% and net additional profits will total $17.53. Sales and Marketing people deem the effort a complete success. Most chefs shake their heads and mutter something profane under their breaths.

February 2010: Most F&B folks are beginning to ponder things in their operations since cutbacks have forced many managers into doing more day-to-day functions. Questions pop up like: Why do we need all that liquor on a banquet bar? Why do I have dark and light crème de cacao on that same banquet bar? Green and white crème de menthe, are you kidding me? How many grasshoppers are we serving? If I sell approximately 50 bottles of wine a month, do I really need a fifty-bottle wine list? Streamlining happens in a big way. Spring menus start to get written. F&B people realize that, yes, the capital plan was approved and, no, we’re not getting squat.

March 2010: The government declares the recession is indeed over. There is much rejoicing. Relishing the news, most hotels tell their owners they’ll only miss GOP by 15% for the quarter. The owners are less than thrilled. A steady increase of high quality, in-house coffee products is seen in the form of kiosks and cafes, since we finally figured out the $8 dollar venti-soy-latte-cappa-frappa-no-whip-half-skim craze isn’t going away. Starbucks Corporation reportedly says, “Well, duh.”

April 2010: Most hotels realize there are three or four places in town that are known for doing Easter brunch really well. So they let them do it and save a ton of labor and product cost. Spending money wisely continues. Servers and cooks who have been saving really good, albeit phony, excuses for why they need the day off are understandably disappointed. Fans of Arbor Day fear their hopes of a glorious buffet are doomed. In sports news, with the 2010 season just weeks old, the Pittsburgh Pirates are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

May 2010: Another sign of economic recovery appears. Brides who once had $45 dollars per person to spend are now coming in with a budget of $46.50. Congress hails this as a “return to the boom time.” Also, due to swift movement on the healthcare reform bill, each employee who is injured on the job will now receive $1.8 million dollars. This entitles them to a three-hour stay at the emergency room, ten minutes in front of an actual doctor, 200 mg of ibuprofen, and a SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aid.

June 2010: Lady GaGa eats a caper and claims, “It was salty.” Every news organization in the country picks up the story. The beef industry raises prices due to “recent events in the news” and, oddly, no one seems to notice that cows and capers have nothing to do with each other. Thousands of watermelons are then recalled but mostly because watermelons feel they could use the press.

July 2010: A hotel in California has created an ultra-high-end, organic, triple-filtered frozen fruit juice that is placed on a stick-like serving device. The Kardashians become fans and the price rises to $13 a piece. Several trade publications pick up the story. Most everyone in the Midwest eating a popsicle thinks most everyone in California is nuts. Attempting to cash in a growing nostalgia market and get adults to relive their childhoods, Coca-Cola announces that Dasani water will now taste like “the hose” for just under $8 a bottle.

August 2010: The GM announces it’s not too early to think about next year’s budget. Otherwise, it’s hot and miserable. No real holidays exist. Group business is down. No real point to August, so let’s just skip it.

September 2010: Catering managers around the country wonder when the 2010 holiday menus are going to be out since they’re getting “lots of calls.” They will send this request for 15 straight days. These calls will abruptly stop on September 16th. At this point, all inquiries will be to use last year’s menus at last year’s prices because “the clients really liked it.” Chefs all over the country are treated for head trauma from banging their heads against their desks.

October 2010: All catering departments announce that sales for holiday parties are drastically down. In an effort to add some spark to this trend, ads will be placed in all local media. These ads will cost a combined $500,000. Holiday party business increases by 1.75% and net additional profits will total $17.53. Sales and Marketing people deem the effort a complete success. F&B operations begin to tighten their belts since “we don’t want to blow the year in these last two months.”

November 2010: With the holidays looming, on-call servers who have bugged you for additional shifts for 42 straight weeks will suddenly fall off the face of the earth, and you are now understaffed. Sensing we’re being fiscally conservative, every piece of equipment that has been limping along for ten months will suddenly break. The banquet department will suddenly announce, “We don’t have enough plates/teaspoons/Champagne flutes,” etc. Even though you asked and were given 100% assurance that “We have you taken care of,” your purveyors will suddenly be completely out of something from your holiday menus, both this year’s and last.

December 2010: Proclaims that if 2011 is as tough as 2010, you’re going to quit the business and do something else because you’re sick of this. Have it pointed out that you said the same thing at the end of both ’08 and ’09. Consider firing the pointer-outer, have a cocktail, and realize you love it no matter what…

Happy New Year and a successful 2010 to all!

If you’re a member of the Mighty Dozen (my regular readers), then you know I am not a fan of “Reality TV.” My life is enough reality for me: a game show-like anticipation of the daily events in an F&B manager’s life with all its highs and lows, the gritty documentary aspects of trying to pay a mortgage AND rent AND having a daughter in college, the love story angle of my relationship with my wife after living apart for a year because tough economic times call for tough measures, and the cartoonish excesses of my bad habits and leisure time (this is neither the time nor the place to discuss those). Quite frankly, my life is probably better suited for HBO than the networks. However, being the fickle viewer that I am, I get bored with me from time to time and turn to TV.

Recently, I’ve been watching Top Chef Masters. I like it because the finalists are accomplished chefs, and they are put to the test with really interesting challenges. I knew all of these guys by reputation alone, but reputations can be earned from a fantastic sense of marketing, great menus, and achievements long past. What makes Hubert Keller, Rick Bayless, and the others absolute rock stars in my book is that they are all amazing cooks, each and every one of them truly gifted.

I also watch Hell’s Kitchen, but I do that purely for entertainment. I think Gordon Ramsey, who is a fantastic cook and great restaurateur, is hilarious. He is legendarily tough on his staff, but I also know he really plays up the Devil in Clogs aspect for the telly. The food he runs is simple to everyone except that poor lot getting filmed making it. Between the pressure of TV, his histrionics, and the relative lack of skills exhibited by many of the contestants, they struggle mightily with a small almost bistro menu.

“So what’s the point?” scream the Mighty Dozen who have taken it upon themselves to keep me from veering off topic into musings about old Good and Plenty Commercials (Choo Choo Charlie was an engineer!), how annoying I find the guy from the Sham Wow/Slap Chop commercials (hugely!) or whether this little missive will become popular enough for me to canoodle with Jennifer Aniston (it won’t). But once again, I digress…

The point is that when these contestants go into the little isolation booth for their “candid” conversations with the camera, they seem to be completely misguided about “how good” or “how strong” they tare. Somewhere along the way, they got a picture that they were superstars, when they would be neither super nor stars in the kitchens of Bayless and Keller. It seems no one ever sat them down and given them an honest assessment of their skills, their management styles, their time management, etc.

As an industry, we seem to have entered a realm where the pursuit of “people skills” (aka, being nice, empathetic, and empowering) has come to replace honesty. Much of our collective history was based on honesty alone with the “people” side not getting much consideration. It was as efficient as it was brutal. We’re swinging the other direction, and I worry we’re swinging too far. When one of these aspiring chefs stares at the camera and says, “I know I’m a great cook” when all evidence is to the contrary means that someone somewhere has dropped the ball in the training. The folks on TC Masters acknowledge the skills of the other contestants; the Hell’s Kitchen crew acknowledges their own.

This is not an indictment of people skills, niceness, empathy, or empowerment. I have been a Core Culture trainer for Starwood. I have also recently reaffirmed those tenets with culture training for my current company, The Handlery Hotel and Resort. I firmly and sincerely believe in all of those traits, although my proposed mission statement of “inflicting hospitality on an unsuspecting world” didn’t make the final cut. (Apparently one does not “inflict” hospitality…who knew?). However, I best serve my staff with honesty.

Honesty does not have to be brutal. Honesty can be respectful. It can be a building block for future success. Or it can be a jackhammer. The manner in which you deliver the message is entirely up to you. However, the best thing we can do for our staff is to give them a completely dispassionate and thorough evaluation of their skills. Give them the tools they need to get better, and make them better, without worrying about being so “nice.” Maybe they’ll grow up to be the next Hubert Keller. Let them believe they are better than what they are by being “nice” or avoiding the confrontation altogether, and suffer the consequences when they end up on TV looking foolish. You may be the only one who knows the knucklehead on the tube used to be in your charge, but you’ll still know.

And that, my friend, can seriously interrupt your canoodling…

When I think back on my early days in the kitchen, a time before you could purchase pre-peeled, chopped, sliced, marinated, or cooked foods, restaurants worked on a cycle. Monday was the start of the prep cycle that would build through the week in order to bring you to full capacity for the weekend. You would spend a good part of each day completing your assigned components of “the never ending prep cycle.” Through repetition you became very proficient at the basics: peeling garlic and shallots, chopping herbs, making stocks, roasting ducks, filleting fish, and butchering everything including legs of veal. Knife skills became second nature as you raced to keep up with the frenzied pace of the kitchen.

In the ’70s, most cooks worked lunch and dinner service six days a week and were happy to be employed. The desire to improve skills and move up the ladder burned deeply within everyone in the kitchen. Dishwashers wanted to be pot washers, pot washers wanted to be prep cooks, prep cooks wanted to be line cooks and the aspirations continued right on up the line. Most cooks had earned the right to say they were a cook, having spent many years working their way up through the ranks learning the basics and building on the foundation which would carry them through their careers.

As our property grows services grow as well. The need to expand menus and increase seating capacity, only emphasizes the need for qualified, competent and passionate cooks. The search for identifying and recruiting cooks who have it and get it never ends. What I have found is that the largest applicant pool consists of “career changers.” Most are recent graduates from one of the many post-secondary culinary schools in existence today. So many, in fact, that I think the pool of prospective students necessary to keep the schools full and profitable is diluting the quality of the student population. I am not implying that these are not reputable schools; they are staffed by many fine chefs with good intentions and have acceptable facilities.

I am actually a huge fan of a quality culinary education. It’s not really the school’s fault, students either have the aptitude and skill needed for this kind of work or they don’t. You cannot teach inherent skills, stamina, and physical dexterity, which are needed to become a proficient cook/chef. Many applicants have never actually worked in a restaurant or have come up through fast food and mid level chain operations. Many have no relevant experience. Most have missed out on the early development stages that all competent cooks and chefs have in common, a strong foundation. I will admit that I have hired the wrong person more then once in my career and I have experienced the pain involved in correcting my poor decision. Your chances of identifying the best candidate are greatly increased with each additional interview, test, or audition that you conduct.

In addition to the standard interview questions, we administer a written test to measure basic culinary knowledge, kitchen math, and sanitation. This gives us a baseline and helps us to delve deeper into each area. If an applicant cannot write a basic recipe from memory, or give an opinion on food in America, we have to assume that he/she is not a serious cook or culinarian. In the second interview, the applicant will meet with Sous Chefs and FOH management for their analysis. If the consensus is favorable then he/she is asked to cook for us. The applicant is expected to prepare a soup and entrée in about an hour and half. We are looking for an organized, focused individual who can execute quality food under some level of pressure. In the last month I conducted six cook auditions and this is what I found:

• Two applicants came without a proper knife kit and would ask to borrow tools.
• Most had cavalier attitudes before they got started, but were soon making excuses why they couldn’t execute what they had planned.
• All but one produced a very safe and boring plate. This was an opportunity to show a little style and flair, it was an audition. With dozens of choices for a center of the plate protein, 3 picked a steak, 2 picked salmon and 1 picked swordfish.
• Most plates lacked balance and all the necessary components of a quality restaurant plate (no sauce or carbohydrate were common).
• Most applicants were unorganized, sloppy and displayed poor sanitation practices.
• All but a few could slice and dice like a kitchen pro and most seemed uncomfortable to actually be in the kitchen.

I would suggest to all who recruit, manage, and train cooks (if you are not doing so already) to incorporate a written and practical cooking test into the interview process. Invest the appropriate amount of time and take all the necessary steps to identify a qualified candidate and perhaps then you may have a 50/50 chance of success.

I’m contemplating my headstone.

I’m not dying and not planning on it anytime soon. I’m not “dark,” nor am I a fatalist. I’m not even truly sitting here wistfully contemplating my mortality with existential thoughts of the great beyond.

Those who know me can tell you I’m not all that wistful…ever. But my headstone puzzles me. How do I want to be remembered? Go with elegant and understated? Elegant and understated fits me like a donkey in a tuxedo. Perhaps a granite structure in the shape of a Jack Daniels’ bottle with a CD of all my favorite songs on motion-sensor repeating loops (clearly my favorite; I’m sure the Mighty Dozen would agree)? But what would it say? As much as I talk in real life, I want the stone to be short, sweet, and to the point.

A Good Man and a Good Chef

Now one might ask why I didn’t mention my wife and children? My love for them borders on fanatical, but loving your children and being in love with your wife are all part of being a good man. So are integrity, character, and a long list of other attributes that I hope I have or will learn before that final day.

A Good Chef…that’s a little harder.

Esquire magazine recently did an entire issue on how to be a man. It spoke of things good men do. It made me think of chefs. Fellow blogger and very talented chef Len Elias made a very succinct and well-written list of the levels of “cheffiness.” A thinking man, which I try to be on occasion, would say he gave us the destination.

Having that, it made me think that maybe we should discuss the trip. It also made me realize that someone should write some things down while in the midst of trying to become that ever-elusive “good chef.” Stuff I’ve figured out; stuff I’m still figuring out; stuff I may never figure out. I may be strong like bull and smart like tractor, but I do know some stuff. So here goes:

Good Chefs are great cooks. They love the process, the ingredients, and the traditions. They are passionate about flavor and presentation and will spend hours coaxing flavor and tenderness out of something a tiger would say was a little “chewy.” Cooking isn’t enough, however. I know great cooks who aren’t chefs, just like I know some “chefs” who aren’t good cooks.

Good Chefs know how to use their equipment, every single piece of it. Whether it’s in a micro-sized mom and pop or a monster hotel “so big you could park airplanes in it” culinary factory, they know it all: which fryer cooks hotter, which oven is off by 20 degrees, how to make the Robot Coupe work even when that plastic safety stem is broken. They know this because the show must go on…always.

Good Chefs are teachers, first, last, and always. Naturally, they teach their staffs, but cooks can do that. Chefs teach the waitstaff. Chefs teach catering managers and convention service managers. Chefs teach the public about their food. Good chefs give it away.

Good Chefs know all the swear words but also know it’s not cool to use them most of the time. Good Chefs also know they can most likely drink you under the table, even if it’s a skill you’ll never witness. Good Chefs don’t have nights out with the boys if the boys include members of his staff.

Good Chefs read and read a lot. They realize that none of us knows everything about our profession, but boy do we want to. Good Chefs can also write. It may not ever be anything more than a clear menu description or a staff review, but they can put sentences together in a clear, concise manner.

Good Chefs have a sense of humor. There is a time and place for it, but they like to laugh. Passionate people always do.

Good Chefs make it their business to know other chefs. We know we are competitors, rivals even, but we also know we are our own support system. We go out of our way to help other chefs.

Good Chefs bring it when they don’t have to. They push the quality of the $18 dollar lunch as much as the $80 dinner. They stay and do dish-up even after 14 hours. They work 16-hour days and 18-day weeks. They call on their days off even though they know everything should be okay. Good Chefs are somewhat knuckleheaded in this area. They have trouble “letting go.”

Looking over this list, it’s shorter than one might expect, but it’s a work in progress, like all good journeys are. Some of the things on here would indicate that I’m not yet a good chef, but I’d like to think I’m on my way. I know for a fact that all the great, even simply good, chefs I know are first and foremost good men and good women. I’d like to be in their company and be able to expand this list as time and experience allow. I want to be a good man and a good chef.

And when it comes to the end, I hope someone thinks enough of me to put it on my headstone.

We have recently completed our vast expansion at Potawatomi Bingo Casino that started almost a year ago. You can read more about it in my earlier post, Opening Soon. Without a doubt, it has been very challenging and tiring at times. Busy periods have been followed by some slow times, but it all has been exciting and rewarding.

In March, we invited the public to our open house introducing them to Woodland Dreams, one of three new banquet spaces we have added. The theme of the event was “Treasures or the Caribbean” and had more than 500 guests in attendance, including potential future clients such as corporate meeting planners, Visit Milwaukee representatives, vendors, media partners, business owners, and others qualified by the catering sales team.

This expansion includes RuYi, the Asian concept opened on Memorial Day weekend, together with our focal point on the new casino floor, Bar 360. RuYi offers a Pan-Asian menu, with everything from Hmong to Vietnamese, from Japanese to Chinese, and even an item or two from Singapore as well as the Philippines.

RuYi is conveniently located in the heart of the casino complex. The dining space, while casual, is richly detailed. Curved walls and tables surfaced in gold and red-orange hues add to the experience. Of the two counters, both of which are topped with stone, one has kitchen views where the busy chefs can be glimpsed at work.

By June, we were busy putting final touches on our 7000-square foot production Kitchen. This new space includes a butcher shop, garde manger, hot kitchen, and a cook-chill operation with two 100-gallon kettles and a turbojet cook-chill tank, as well as a fully equipped pastry department to support our ten foodservice venues catering to the six million visitors we expect this year.

Our new buffet followed. Located adjacent to the production kitchen, we feature eight food stations offering salads, seafood, Latin, Mediterranean, Asian, American cuisine, and, of course, pastries and baked goods. These stations are more mini kitchens where our talented and friendly culinarians cook many dishes in front of the guest, where service is provided with a sassy but classy attitude.

June 11th kicked off the opening festivities with more than 3,000 visitors showing up for the open house. The F&B department was geared up to provide great foodservice. Grand Opening Day, June 19th, was the official opening of the new casino areas, now featuring over 750,000 square feet of gaming, entertainment, and F&B facilities. Close to 30,000 visitors showed and the casino gave away $1 million dollars in prizes that day.
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