#pantry chef

[r0ttenb0gb0dy]

BRING ORDER TO CHAOS.

been playing a lot of ready or not recently and imagined my expo line at work as a level and it made me laugh sooooo had to draw it!

enjoi :3

[neriad13]

Sometimes chefs get…emotional about food waste. It’s something we’re taught to avoid at all costs. Half of French cuisine is creative ways for using leftovers. What isn’t eaten on the first go round tends to get re-purposed into specials in most restaurants or, in the final stop on the leftover journey, served to the employees as their daily staff meal. A tightly run restaurant with good control over its leftovers and a menu made for sopping up what would otherwise go to waste tends to have very little in the way of true food waste.

I think every restaurateur should operate like that and that being able to control waste so tightly should be a huge point of pride for the kitchens that do accomplish it.

But this isn’t about the good kitchens.

Sometimes…you run into the chefs who take the need to not throw anything away too far. Who get visibly upset when they’re forced to throw away a quantity of food that is no longer fit for human consumption. Who, instead of biting the bullet and getting rid of what needs to be gotten rid of, they just…pretend it isn’t a problem.

Looking at it from their point of view, I can kind of see why they’d act this way. With every pan in the trash they’re seeing their food costs go up, which is never a good thing. They’re also seeing their hard work go in the garbage and when you spend hours working on something wonderful, it hurts when not all of it gets eaten. So much so, that sometimes they can’t bear to see it be gotten rid of at all.

There’s where the people on the lower rungs of the kitchen hierarchy come in to save the day. In the hours before the chef gets in, they’re the ones who are most likely going through the coolers and removing all the things that the chef couldn’t bear to throw away himself. But it has to be done when and where the chef can’t see what’s being thrown away, thus sparing both hurt feelings and food poisoning for everyone involved.

There’s no way that the chef doesn’t know it’s happening. But because he didn’t see it happen, he does not have to formulate an emotional response to the loss or take responsibility for what’s been thrown away.

(for the record, I’ve never been yelled at for doing this or seen anyone else get punished for the same either)

It’s a silly system and I think the world would be a much better place if superiors didn’t feel the need to outsource their emotional labor to their lessers.

And yet…there’s something incredibly funny about it being common knowledge in every kitchen I’ve ever worked in that you DO NOT throw away a pound of rotten lobster meat unless the chef is well away.

So, the next time you’re in some kind of eatery, salute the little guys behind the scenes who secretly keep the kitchen clean and are able to make the hard choices!

[neriad13]

So I’ve been a cold side chef for years now and just got a job which requires working on the hot side. And...the one thing that I’m having so much trouble wrapping my head around in the new job is the fact that I have to use a utensil to pick up hot things. >.<

AND THEN I have to wash that utensil! Which involves walking it to the dish pit! It’s barbaric!

But seriously, on the cold side I got into the habit of doing absolutely everything with my (gloved) hands. Even among the other pantry chefs I was a pretty dang handsy person. Which...I could afford to be, seeing as how I generally wasn’t pulling things out of the oven and serving them right then and there. 

Anyway, that’s why I keep attempting to scoop flaming hot mashed potatoes with my hands. Send help. -_-

[neriad13]

The thing about working in a kitchen is that everyone looks butch as hell in the uniform, no matter how you present when you’re out of uniform.

However, as a consequence of this, no one is actually recognized as butch within a kitchen. 

This has its perks, but it is frustrating when “gentlemen” insist on opening doors and picking up heavy stuff for you. -.-

[neriad13]

Today the chef’s kid came in and was giving everyone high-fives while sucking on his binky. It was quite a morale booster.

[neriad13]

I have literally never worked with a chef who owned a damascus steel knife and wasn’t an asshole.

Something-something “the beauty of the blade reveals the ugliness of the heart.”

[neriad13]

Today, a man had a mental breakdown because I asked him for more granola.

Welcome to Summer in the club~!

[neriad13]

I was dying and all my chocolates were melting.

Random Kitchen Quote of the Day