What It Takes

I can't stress enough how little I know. I grew up in restaurants, I've worked for about a year as a cook, a little more as a waiter. But I think the path to becoming a restaurant owner, a chef-owner, is a long, arduous one. It will take years to reach the point where you can open your own place, and when you do open up and realize a dream, it starts all over again. A learning process starts that will never stop. Or at least you hope it won't.

So that's a great part of the appeal. You can always be improving, you must always be learning. Every time you do something, you can choose to try and do it better the next time. Something as tedious as peeling blanched tomatoes, shelling fava beans can bring to light a whole new dimension when you focus and harness the will to improve. Cooking, management, budgeting, cleaning, all of it. It is a never ending pursuit of knowledge, and a never ending practice session of technique.

The goal for me is to own my own restaurant. I have zero aspiration to be a celebrity, to light up a blogosphere, to become a brand, to own an empire, to be on Top Chef. I don't disrespect any of that, and if it comes to me I won't necessarily say no. But there's too many other things to focus on, there's too many other things to consider first. There are a lot of ideas I have for restaurants. If I can realize a few of them, that'll be many dreams come true. But really, to be able to own and run one respected, good, genuine restaurant will be more than I can ask for in this life.

So that being the goal, I've obviously thought about what it's going to take. What kind of personality, what kind of lifestyle decisions, what kind of education, what kind of people and technical skills it will require to reach that point and hold on. As I said before, I don't know a lot now, but I've dreamed about it obsessively enough that I have a rough idea.

How did I look at it? It starts with education obviously. You look at the best restaurants in the country and you learn their story. How they got there, what they learned, why what they do makes them the best. Overwhelmingly, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park kept popping up. There are more CIA alumni with Mobil Diamond Awards and James Beard Awards than any other school. So that was an obvious step. At some point, you got to go where the best started, especially because I lack a strong culinary background. I would need as much culinary education in as short a time as possible.

It's also important that I be able to excel at school as well. Nobody enjoys struggling and you can't get the most out of your education if you aren't a little prepared to begin with. You can't learn calculus (what's a slope?) before you've mastered basic arithmetic (this one's fading quick, too). So I took an internship, did a stage, moved myself up to the line, learned the basics, and tested myself in the crush of service.

But restaurants aren't just about cooking. Sure, the CIA can lay the groundwork for you becoming a great chef, but that doesn't mean you know shit about running a restaurant, managing people, managing finances. Coming from a classical music background, there was much of the same story. I knew a lot of really talented musicians growing up. At Juilliard a lot of the students had the potential to be a star, but a few things kept them out of the limelight. Some people just couldn't play in front of a crowd. Their playing fell flat, or they got nervous, or they just couldn't command attention. Some people couldn't manage their practice efficiently. They spent too much time practicing the wrong things, or too little time practicing anything (ding!). Some people just didn't know how to play the game, how to get the favor of the professors, get connections for jobs, go to the right music festivals. My point is talent, and especially specialized talent, can only take you so far. You have to be well-rounded to achieve success.

That was the most important lesson I learned from my brief chat with Chef Bill Kim. Here was a guy I knew had worked his ass off, had earned his chops. He was skeptical of me wanting to go in to restaurants. In his words, my "college degree and classical music background already makes me assume you are weak." He assumed that I was doing this because I had bought in to the fairy tale of Top Chef, of Food Network. I wanted so much to tell him "NO NO NO," I promise I have a more level headed approach to this. It was frustrating for him to have so little faith in me, but really I understand why. And then he said something that was really enlightening.

"When you open your restaurant, it's not about food. Food is a given. There is so much more to restaurants than food, and it starts with knowing how to clean a grease trap."

Food is the main reason people go to restaurants. Yes, that seems like an unnecessary observation to make, but it isn't the only reason. And food is so subjective, which is why kitchens have to deal with people customizing the menu for their own palates. That's just the way it is. Yes, something can almost be objectively delicious, but really there is no such thing as perfect food, there is no such thing as "the best" food. The end goal is to just make people happy.

In your own restaurant, you use food as a medium of expression. You hope it represents who you are, what you like to eat, what you think others should try, what kind of food you grew up with. You hope it's well executed and tasty to others. But not everyone is going to love what you do. So how else can you create a restaurant worth returning to? How do you keep the doors open long enough to expand your career?

You need a personality that will keep you and the people you hire obsessively focused on the goal. You could really use a set of technical skills outside the culinary theater that will help you immensely. Like choosing to be a carpenter or a blacksmith on The Oregon Trail, it'll just make your life easier, make running a restaurant a bit smoother. When your axle breaks, or you need to build a boat, it's better to be able to build one yourself, then pay for someone else to do it. When your oxen drown, it's easier to be able to use a Water-Walking Charm to ford the river, then to find a new beast of burden.

Wait ... shit, I think I forgot how this works ... Start over.

For a kitchen, there are some skills that are very crucial that have nothing to do with food. It's pretty much essential that you speak Spanish. Basic repair and maintenance skills will be extremely useful. Even new kitchens start to break down in unexpected places due to daily use. How to negotiate garbage pick up, how to hire dishwashers, busboys, porters. How to fix an oven pilot light, how to maintain a walk-in cooler. If you're real engineering nerdy, how to fix a refrigerator compressor. How to clean a kitchen hood, how to scour a flat top. And how to clean a goddamn grease trap.

There are a whole set of interpersonal skills you will need. How to lead a team, how to hire the right employees, how to retain them. How to make them believe in you. In the S. Pellegrino's 50 Best Restaurants in the World list, the blurb for Alinea is very simple. After a description of their famous interpretation of a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich, it reads,

"We live and die by the vision of Grant Achatz."

You need to instill that faith. Make them believe that working in this restaurant is worthwhile, is fun, is exciting, is worthy of success. The people that are your employees are the most important cog in the machine of the restaurant.

Then even more intangibles enter the mix. Choosing a location that is going to attract the right crowd, and that will allow you to serve food at the right price. Giving your dining room a personality that is welcoming and complementary to your food, your staff. All sorts of personal touches you hope will add up to something substantial. And luck. Straight up luck. You'll need a lot of it.

The point is that there's more to it than just cooking. Yes, I need to learn how to cook. I need to learn how to cook exceptionally, in fact. But there are going to be a million other lessons I need to learn along the way. I jot down notes, I type up new ideas, I bookmark some great pages in my cookbooks. I can only hope that one day they will coalesce into something substantial.

So forgive my thinking aloud, but I have become lost. It's been about a month and a half since I've cooked professionally. The rote mechanics of wrapping containers in plastic wrap, cutting onions, sauteing greens seems so long ago. I miss it. Though the weather is nice, and the leisure time refreshing, I find myself entering a downward cycle of wanderlust. Time is being wasted, there's so much more to learn. My knife callous is growing soft again. Do you know how many stupid butternut squash I murdered to earn that callous?! The cuts and burns and scars are fading, and as Chef Kim suggested, there's a chance I'm becoming soft.

I turn to you, my friends. To allow me to use you as a soundboard through which I can galvanize and refocus. I needed to write out and remind myself how much work it will take, how much sacrifice it will require to succeed. What kind of skills I will need to sharpen. The Chicago summer is a tempting time to loaf and relax, but I think it's a valuable opportunity to learn. I leave this city soon, I have no commitments. I can be a mercenary cook and work in some kitchens unpaid and really learn some more things, broaden my horizons.

So with hopes of doing some more stages, and writing about it for all you folks I go. Knife bag (or Dexter kill bag, as Paul likes to call it) in hand, baseball cap at the ready.

EP6