A properly organized walk-in
One thing that the Club did help me to learn that obviously will be stressed in what i do next is the importance of details. I'm going to be VERY annoying about the details of the food and i know cooks will be annoyed by it, but it needs to be done.
I think when one reads critical reviews of restaurants, one will be immediately struck by how much it means to pay attention to the small nuances in a dish and small things that make or break it- a bit more bread crumb on the pasta, a bit of acid in the sauce to cut through the fat, some vegetable stock to emulsify the fat so it doesn't eat greasy. Some parsley warmed in the sauce and then strained out to give the sauce some brightness, but not left in the sauce so it's not overpowering.
Almost any dish can be improved. When i look at dishes i constantly wonder, what can we do to make this better? and if it's perfect, what can we do to ensure it's always like this? We gram out our recipes and give detailed, foolproof instructions. I like recipes that are simple because they're impossible to mess up. It's hard to mess up a smoked tomato and black garlic broth when the recipe is "put all this in a pot, bring it to a simmer, then take it off the heat and strain it the next day" Some of the recipes are laborious, indeed- Grating an entire case of corn for corn pudding or finely mincing 7 types of vegetables and going through the process of sauteeing, seasoning, and deglazing them separately, isn't fun- but it's not hard.
Valrhona chocolate cake- The cake isn't hard but the passionfruit gel and meringue are
I think a good chef knows how to balance this. Making things that are intricate and technique driven, and things that are easy. A good chef also know cooks make mistakes. Though i definitely did'nt enjoy the anxiety of daily pre-dinner mise en place checks and having chef look at, taste, and check everything i made every day-I know the value of it. I did it at the club and, in the future, at a smaller restaurant with a smaller menu an more focused concept, i'll be doing the same.
The difference between a good restaurant and a great restaurant really is consistency. Putting out 300 plates a night between amuse bouche and dessert and making sure all of them are the same, all are delicious, beautifully garnished and cleanly plated-and nothing is scorched, overcooked, undercooked, or overseasoned-it's not easy at all. We can only chase an idealized perfection that we may never reach.
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