[phaedrus]

Ah, now I remember how often Exec Chef is a well paid babysitter./img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gif My lead cook got passed over for the sous job and he and the sous can't stand each other. My sous is a good line cook but young, immature, brash and rubs everyone the wrong way. He's fast but a little sloppy and his depth of knowledge isn't the best. The lead is a little older and a culinary school grad. He has pretty solid knowledge but he's more at home with a clipboard- he founders when it gets busy. I kind of forgot how much being chef is like being a den mother.

I also forgot just how much I always relied on the job to have my ego stroked!/img/vbsmilies/smilies/blushing.gif/img/vbsmilies/smilies/wink.gif Having people oohing and ahhhing over the food is a chef's version of having groupies. I really missed that part...

 

[grande]

Oh man. That's the life in a nutshell

 

[panini]

@Phaedrus,

The babysitting is what gets me also. Couple of weeks ago I took over the kitchen of a good friend who's mom passed. Nice big kitchen with ample labor for a private venue. My wife laughed when I cam home and said, the kids seem so young. She reminded me, they were!

This Chef is well known and they don't really know me. So half the staff wanted to please me and show off, and the other half, NOT! The baby- sitting reminded me of playing a chess game and all my pieces had personalities and attitudes. OMG, the Sous was telling me, oh! can't put her over there in that square, she doesn't get along with him. Can't put him over in that square, he's got a Napoleon complex and gets devious when he's by the tall saute cook.

Chef, you can have it. Glad you're back in the saddle again, I respect ya.!

 

[phaedrus]

I actually love my new job! The chess-board/crossword-puzzle issue with personalities is just part of the territory, I suppose. But I have the makings of a good staff. I kind of didn't phrase it right but my lead cook was passed over for the sous chef job before I started, so I kind of inherited my current sous. Each guy has some strengths along with [ample] weaknesses. Just when I was starting to think I should bump him up to sous though he started dropping the ball on some really obvious stuff. It will work itself out but I think odds are good that I won't be able to keep them both long term.

But the restaurant is great! The building is old and beautiful, it looks very similar to what you'd call a Brownstone but I think it's all granite. It's in a small town not too far from a pretty good sized town and lots of folks here have money. I worked for the owner for several years when he was the GM of another restaurant, so there's a lot of goodwill and he's got a good reservoir of trust in me and what I can do. So I have pretty much carte blanche to do whatever I want with the food so long as the customers will eat it./img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gif

 

[phaedrus]

Drats, the forum code here makes it hard to embed a picture!/img/vbsmilies/smilies/mad.gif

 

[phaedrus]

Testing.

 

[chefross]

Don't you find it curious that whenever a new Chef comes into a kitchen, he/she will still see things "wrong" even if these things were standard operating procedure (stop) before?

 

[phaedrus]

You'd probably be hard pressed to find a kitchen where no one is doing anything "wrong".  In the case of my new job they haven't had a chef for a few months so things have kind of been anarchy.  The whole deal with the lead having been kind of the acting KM and then being demoted back to line cook under his old sous isn't something I have seen very often, and creates some issues.