Craig Giesecke
I was at work the other day and a friend came in to get a few items. We were talking in front of the chef case, where all the gorgeous stuffed pork loin, herb-crusted salmon and other stuff is displayed. He commented on how great it all looked, but then asked me, “Don’t you get bored making the same stuff every day?”
Well, yes and no.
Those of us who make food for a living indeed get bored with what we do sometimes and, honestly, we don’t eat a lot of our own stuff at home. Matter of fact, as I mentioned in a column several months ago, chefs are largely some of the biggest junk-food eaters in town. Usually the higher-brow a place is, the lower down the fast-food chain we’re likely to eat. This is partly because they might be the only places still open when we’re off work. But another reason is we taste this fancy stuff all day, so it’s not what we want when the shift ends.
But boredom is another matter. Restaurants have menus and, while those menus might change often, those in the kitchen are still making the same stuff over and over, day in and day out, week after week. Even the most upscale dish can soon become assembly-lineish, as if we’re screwing the same old screw. There’s a reason “line cooks” are called that.
This can become An Issue, since the food can begin to taste manufactured and formulaic. The trick is to maintain quality (which is what the customer wants and an owner needs) while allowing those who assemble the food enough creativity to remain engaged and enthusiastic. You can do this by allowing some flexibility in presentation or by giving the kitchen crew some ingredient or spicing options as they construct the dish. Nothing enough to actually change the final product, but enough for the staff to feel they had a say in how it turned out. Examples: vary the stuffing of the pork loin or the herbs on the salmon.
There are two kinds of good kitchen staffers: those who are comfortable going by the book over and over to receive a paycheck and those who chafe against the rule and keep trying to vary and “improve” a dish (sometimes risking abysmal failure at the boss’s expense). A good commercial kitchen staff includes some of both. A good executive chef is willing to think he/she might be wrong (or at least not right all the time), and is willing to allow the experimenters enough rein to either come up with a new winner or hang themselves in the process.
All this said, there are some dishes that are always a joy to prepare and serve no matter how often they’re ordered. Usually, these are the items that were a hit from the get-go and are so unusual they quickly become a mainstay and a signature. They’re the things the entire staff is willing to bring to the table and say, “Taste this, dude.” We’ve been fortunate enough to hit this mark a couple of times and it’s the type of stuff that makes a chef stay in the business as opposed to going back to, well, where they came from. It’s why we do what we do and why we keep doing it – sometimes to our own financial and personal peril.
Creative types have a hard time doing the same thing over and over. We’re the type who was marked early in school as a daydreamer. We’d quickly lose interest in something if we couldn’t ace it quickly and, once it was aced, we’d quickly get bored until the next passion came along.
Our city is full of such passionate types, be they culinary, literary, musical or whatever. It’s one of the reasons we live here and love it so. This is not to say we’re all experts at what we do and, really, any real “expert” will deny it and point to someone else as being the Real Pro.
But as long as the passion is there, we never truly get bored. It’s one of the delightful things that gets me out of bed each morning.
Craig Giesecke has been a broadcaster and journalist for over 30 years, including nearly two decades at the AP and UPI covering news, sports, politics, food and travel. He has been the owner of J’anita’s for five years, serving well-reviewed upscale bar food and other dishes. Comments are encouraged and welcomed.
