Chef test

Actually, everything


Did the applicant understand his/her instructions?.
Does he make the most out of the ingredients?
Knows how to use equipment?
If not, is he embarassed to ask how? (Don't be afraid to ask, O.K.? )
Gets along with other staff?

CAN WORK CLEAN AND TIDY?!!!!!!!

Performs well under pressure?
Understands basic hygiene?
Cleans up after cooking?

Everything Pump says plus: Can you follow a recipe without putting your own twist on it? (If you want to "twist it", buy your own place.)? If you are applying for a job as a chef, can you at least make chicken noodle soup? I am so tired of hearing "We hired a new cook, you need to train him." Here comes a guy with three rings in his lip (I have come to the conclusion that anyone with a lip ring is worthless) whose first act is to put his iPod in the radio and ask me what kind of music I want to hear (Answer: Nothing on your iPod, and that's not why you're here.) So it all comes down in the end to he and his stoner friends were listening to what they call music one night and he made some sandwiches that you know were like really great and his friends were like saying it was really awesome and he should like be a chef and could get his own TV show, so he like did us a favor and applied here and the H.R. person like really liked his new tatoo, and so now here he is and he's going to show me how I should cook. I know this turned into a rant, but I'm not sorry because I'm sure if this is how it goes for me, others are suffering too. And the answer to your question is not so much do you have knife skills (mine were always weak) but do you have enough sense to peel an onion before you chop it (not kidding) and have enough sense to put it in a new container instead of on top of the old onions. I would like to see a common sense test. Example: Multiple choice question; The deep fryer needs oil added. You only have enough to add half of what you need. You should A)Empty the container and call it good, B)Empty the container you have, get a new one and add the rest from that, or C)Re-program your iPod, flirt with the cute waitress and hope the fryer doesn't catch fire. They'd pick C.

Most of the testing I have had assumed I had knife skills and was aware of various termonology., and use all the equipment. I walked into a fully stocked commercial kitchen and in front of me a table. On the table about 25 -30 different items(foods and ingredients}. I was presented with a menu and told I had 3 hours to make 3 courses for 4 people.
That was it, I presented the dishes to them , they asked me some questions about the items, said thank you, I went home. I was notified in a few days that I had the position and an appointment was set up for more particulars.(starting dates, hours, salary etc.) About every 20 minutes a proctor came into room and looked at area I was working in. He had a clipboard and jotted things down.

Very well done "rant" :) It is the primary reason I have not returned to the kitchen.

You may find a black box as well, though I do like the idea of chicken soup and the ability to follow a recipe, I guess it would depend on the job that is being applied for.

Greyeaglam... love the rant, I'm just getting myself motivated for day 2 of a 3 day agm...... can you feel my pain, it's mostly in my butt from sitting down all day, as I said to the C.F.O. yesterday "If I wanted to sit on my *** all day I would have become an accountant" though you did miss D,(don't bother to check that you have oil to replace before you throw it out).....Wow this went off topic fast...just like our agm

Surely you're kidding.

The last job I got the test I took lasted 8 hours involved a 3course meal for 6 ppl with an explanation of what I made and why. Once I finished the meal I had 3 rounds of interview/QA with 3 ppl in each round. It was brutal but an experience.

Does he/she wash hands first

1lb steak mince ( ground beef) and make it into something fabulous

Yeah-butt, Ed B. and Chefhow.....

Those interviews you were describing were for Chef jobs, like, I mean Chef-Chef jobs, not the regular-Chef kind of job, like, you know, Prep-Chef, Line Chef, or Salad Chef.

Oops, gotta go now and get back to my "Cheffing".....




What's a Chef?

"Eh!! Tcheffe!! You come now! You come quick! Is raining in dry-store...."

Oh Kuan. I am definitely not kidding. Wish I were. Here's an example, and this is the cleaning guy who did it. Guy leaves a note for the bar manager that there's no fryer boil out cleaner. Bartender tells me after the supplier I get it from is gone, so I order another brand from a different supplier. I did toy with the idea of bringing it out of storage and putting it on the fryer, but since it's on the shelf where it always is and says fryer cleaner all over it, I figure he'll find it. I come in on Wed. and find the fryers aren't changed, so I go ahead and do it because I don't know if the guy quit or what because no one tells me anything. In comes the bartender and tells me the guy called her in the morning and says he can't find the cleaner, so he'll do the fryers the next day. I thank her for calling me and telling me that before I wasted my time. She figured she'd see me in time to tell me (1/2 hour before opening). I figure the guy should notice there's new oil in the fryer, but by now I'm not trusting any of these rocket scientists, so I leave a note with his name on it stating that the fryers were changed on Wed. I put the note on top of the fryer with a soup cup on it so it can't fly away and come in Thurs. to empty fryers. At that point I spaz, :mad: and the maintainance guy who's there working on the ice machine thinks I'm nuts for getting upset so easy ($97 worth of fryer oil with one day's use on it up in the recycle bin, yeah I'm upset) and I want to know how anyone could be so ******* stupid. He says I can't yell at the guy 'cause he'll quit, I say I don't care, anyone that stupid I don't need. Told the bartender to quit trying to run the place and tell the guy to call me because I would have told him where the cleaner was. I have repeatedly told these people to stop trying to drive me nuts because it's pointless. I already am. :crazy:

This is a actual test someone gave me to be a chef for a stadium, Sporting Events, Concerts, catering for convention Center


Chef Questionnaire

• What does Your State recognize as the temperature range that hot food be held at and above.

___________________

• What does Your State recognize as the temperature range that cold food be held at or below.

___________________

3. According to your Local State Food Codes, any meat product with stuffing should be cooked to what internal temperature?
____________________________

4. According to Your Local State Food Codes, potentially hazardous foods have three characteristics, they area:

a. _______________________________________

b. _______________________________________

c. _______________________________________

• Name the 3 categories food safety hazards are divided into:

a. _______________________________________

b. _______________________________________

c. _______________________________________

• What should one do first for a severe burn? ______________________________

• At what temperature does water boil at sea level? _________________________

• What is arrowroot? ________________________________________________

• Name the 5 mother sauces.

a. _______________________________________

b. _______________________________________

c. _______________________________________

d. _______________________________________

e. _______________________________________

• What is Crème Fraîche? __________________________________________

• How many cups in a quart? __________________________________________

12. How many teaspoons in a tablespoon __________________________________


13.(1) liter is equal to how many ounces _____________________________


14. How many fluid ounces in a gallon? ___________________________________


15. Meat is graded in the retail market by what three categories?

__________________

__________________

__________________


16. What is MSG? __________________________________________________ ____



17. Invert sugars, dextrose, fructose and mannitol are all what? __________________







18. Name 3 kinds of flour:


a. _______________________________________


b. _______________________________________


c. _______________________________________



19. What is meant by Lactose Intolerant?

__________________________________________________ __________________

__________________________________________________ __________________­­­­

• What is a Kilocalorie:

__________________________________________________ __________________

__________________________________________________ __________________­­­­

• What is meant by “Organic Grown Food”?

__________________________________________________ __________________

__________________________________________________ __________________­­­­

• For a plated duet dinner, what size chicken breast would be appropriate?

What size filet of beef?
_________________________________________

• On a buffet with 3 meats as entrees, how many ounces of each meat would you purchase for?

_________________________________________

• How many plates on a dish up can be prepared in ½ hours time?

_________________________________________

• What is the number one food allergen?

_________________________________________

• How many pounds of potatoes (for mashed) would you prep a buffet for 300 people

• How many 5 oz filets can one get out of a 5 (up) beef tenderloin?

• How much does the average steamship weight?

________________________________________________

• How many orders of Haricot Verts in a 5# box?

• How many sides to a tourne vegetable?

________________________________________________

After getting the job this is what he wanted me to give Sous Chef in the interviews.

Sous Chef Questionnaire

• What does the state of your state recognize as the temperature range that hot food be held at and above.

___________________

• What does the state of your state recognize as the temperature range that cold food be held at or below.

___________________

• According to State Food Codes, any meat product with stuffing should be cooked to what internal temperature?

______________________________

• What should one do first for a severe burn? ______________________________

• At what temperature does water boil at sea level? _________________________

• How many fluid ounces in a gallon? ___________________________________

• What is arrowroot? ________________________________________________

• Name the 5 mother sauces. ______________________

______________________ ______________________

______________________ ______________________

• What is Crème Fraîche? __________________________________________

• How many cups in a quart? __________________________________________

• (1) liter is equal to how many quarts? ___________________________________

• Meat is graded by what three categories?

_______________________________

________________________________

________________________________

• What is MSG? __________________________________________________ ____

• Invert sugars, dextrose, fructose and mannitol are all what? __________________

• Name 3 kinds of flour.

____________________

____________________

____________________

• What is a proof box?

__________________________________________________ _______________

__________________________________________________ _______________

• How often should you wash your hands? ________________________________

__________________________________________________ _______________

• What is the difference between a convection oven and a conventional oven?

__________________________________________________ _______________

__________________________________________________ _______________

• Name the 3 categories food safety hazards are divided into:

a. _______________________________________

b. _______________________________________

c. _______________________________________

• What is meant by Lactose Intolerant?

__________________________________________________ __________________

__________________________________________________ __________________­­­­

21. What is a Kilocalorie:

__________________________________________________ __________________

__________________________________________________ __________________­­­­


22. What is the number one food allergen?

__________________________________________________ __________________


23. You just overcooked the chicken for 300 people on your plated dinner. You do not have any more chicken in house but you do have thawed pork loin. What would you:


Do First:

__________________________________________________ ______________________

__________________________________________________ ______________________



Do Second:

__________________________________________________ ________________


__________________________________________________ ________________

24. Have you ever burned bacon or croutons?

__________________________________________________ ________________

__________________________________________________ ________________

Sorry Alaska, it was a bit of a tongue in cheek post...

Look, I grew up here in N.America and then cooked my way around Europe and S. E. Asia for almost 10 years. When I came back things had changed a bit. For starters, the word "Cook" had been banished and the double-plus-good-newspeak-word "Chef had been subsituted. Chef also works as a verb too, as in "I Chef at the Dino-mite." Matter of fact most N. American institutions don't use the word "Cook" and even the CDN Chef's ***. and the AFC substitutes the word "Culinarian" for "cooks".

When I came back to Vancouver in the late 90's I remember at my first job as "Chef" going through a stack of resumes and seeing the word "Chef" used all over the place: Salad Chef, line chef, prep chef, even "Drop chef". I had never encountered the term "drop-chef" before, which was listed on one guy's resume who's last job was at an Applebee's, I think. So I got the guy in for an interview just to find out what a "drop chef" was....

It's the guy who "drops" the fryer basket down.....

So.... Yoou live in Alaska, eh? Are you "cheffing" in and around Anchorage?

(Sorry about that, it's that tongue in cheek thing again...)

chef.ESG.73, I use similar questionnaires for interviewing purposes, from Dishwasher to Sous Chef.
They increase in expected knowledge as the positions go higher, and also have more managerial questions, such as how you would handle a high strung employee, etc.

Partly I'm looking for a correct answer, but I'm also looking for someone who will bother to answer, at least try.


Greyeaglem, loved your posts.
Sounds like we've worked similar kitchens.
Twice in my career I've seen potato salad made with raw potatoes.
Suprised to see it the first time, amazed to know there were two people that stupid after the second.
+1 on the following a recipe without adding your own tweak.
The easiest thing, from their perspective, for a new employee to do is to get us to change to their ways. It's harder for them to learn ours.
I just let a Sous go in part for that reason.
And no matter how many times we discussed it, nor how many times he said he understood, he always thought he knew better,and there goes my consistency.

What I'm looking for in a Chef is one who exhibits many of the positive attributes mentioned in this thread.
But most important is to learn my ways first, before thinking that they might have a better way.
I have a loose rule: no one should give input for 6 weeks, until they've paid their dues.
This is not a hard, fast rule.
Some people come in and inpress me so quickly with their proper attitude that I not only welcome input sooner than 6 weeks, I am likely to seek it out from them.
Then again, there are some people that after 6 months I still don't want to hear what they have to say, they still haven't mastered the basics of what we do here.

I was a corperate fire fighter going around fixing acounts..The one test i woulg give is to do soup prep, u know cut a fish bucket of onion, celery and carrots. By doing that I could see, knife skills, if they know to wash vegetables, if there quick enough, and if they comunicated with the other staff.. I learnt a lot from people just by doing that..

This test has never ever failed me...its simple and quick.Should be quick, lol :lol:

Yeah-butt, Ed B. and Chefhow.....

Those interviews you were describing were for Chef jobs, like, I mean Chef-Chef jobs, not the regular-Chef kind of job, like, you know, Prep-Chef, Line Chef, or Salad Chef.

The jobs that you list above up until a few years ago were not called Chef jobs, they were cooks. Fry cook, roast cook , pantry cooks etc. Then came the open kitchen and everybody had a chefs hat, therefore everyone was a chef. To be chef(or chief) does not mean only cooking ability, its organization, ordering ,product specs, scheduling, fight breaker upper just to name a few things.

Oi Vey...

I made a big mistake, tried to be funny, and I'm not a very funny person.

Ed, read my last post directed to Alaska, in which I tired to explain my position. I'm in the same boat as you guys and it makes me wince every time see I see the word "Chef" written on a resume, or tossed about in casual conversation too.--like the other day when I bought some equipment at a restaurant supply store and was asked which restaurant I "Chef" at....

Not much we can do about it if we don't want to "Educate" the Media, the culinary schools that insist they pump out "Chefs" rather than culinary school graduates, and the Professional Chef's organizations and bodies that perpetuate the whole thing all over again.

Once again, my apologies to Alaska and Ed B.

Edward Suter, A.K.A Foodpump

When I hire I ask 3 questions and test in 2 things.

1. Do not waste my time or yours will you pass a drug test.?? ***
2. Where did you work last and how long.
3.What is Cockaleeki, Mulagatawny, and Puree of Mongol ??


4. Make an Omelette
5. Brunoise an Onion

***Most places here in Florida require drug testing, employers get a discount on workmans comp insurance by requireing this.

Nah. Nope. Never. :roll::lol:

Ed,
Question #1 aside, how many of your 3 questions and 2 tests result in a "hire"?

Tx,
doc

That is great, #1 and 2 weed out about 50% I would be willing to bet. How many actually follow thru once you start with that line of thought?

i love the drug test question myself, i ask it. to get off chef question for a second..In several different ocaisons i have had people get injured they fell hurt their back or cut themselves and would ask to go to hospital. i would always reply with sure and if you dont mind the company's policy is to take a blood test for drugs an alcohol. no one has ever gone to the hospital know ing they are going to be screened for drugs.

OOOOOOOOPS THERE GOES THAT IDEA OF FALLING AND TRYING TO GET ON WORKMANS COMP...

I should mention that it wasnt a company policie, i just had a gut feeling that they were faking and there is no way in **** i was going to let them stay home and get messed up while they were on comp and i would then have to do there job plus mine, F that :smiles:

Now, all things considering, it would make some pretty darn good sense if we could screen potential employees for drugs or alcohol prior to hiring, but over here (La-la-land, a.ka. B.C. British Columbia Canada) We can't

Why?

It's illegal It would be against the worker's rights to do a drug test.

'Course it would be against the OTHER worker's rights to make them work alongside a space cadet operating machinery too, but I digress.

This spring an undercover cop hit paydirt and arrested a user/dealer and confiscated a large amount of drugs. The arrestee was none other than the "Safety officer" of a large construction firm that had two cranes operating on site.

The unions and dope-heads are screaming about "rights" and throwing a lot of money to fight a proposed bill to make it legal for pre-employment drug screening (money garnisheed from paychecks in the Union's case, the dope-heads have their own sources...), and the poor schmuck who just wants to do his job without getting killed is just a tad paranoid these days....

Don't forget about all the pill heads, forget about Illegal drugs. There are a few potheads at my work but mostly the Xanax, vallium and whatever else they can get their hands on. They disgust me more than the illegal drug users, same with the alcoholics (half of the kitchen I work in lost their liscences for DUI at one time or another.) It is the self-riteousness of the "non-drug"users that irks me.

My thoughts are if you can cook and show up on time, then I don't care what you do on your time.

Doc
In Florida 1 out of 5

In New York it averaged 3 out of 5
It should be noted that the ones who past lasted a long time, and proved good and reliable.
In some cases they swear they dont do drugs, but then dont show for the test.
It cost the employer about $35.00 to $50.00 to have a lab perform test, you more then save that amount on insurance premium, plus it is tax deductable.
I feel it protects the other employees to an extent.