Am I a Good Cook?

You may have wondered while reading this blog,

"God, this asshole rants endlessly. Mr. Low-rent, Asian Bourdain-wannabe needs to stop using so many fucking adverbs and learn what a preposition is already. Can he even cook?"

And there it is.

Have you ever wondered, is Eric actually worth a damn in the kitchen?

Well, that's a good question, and unfortunately you have to sit through a wordy examination of it.

Firstly, what constitutes being a good cook?

Well I've gone through what it takes to work in a professional kitchen and excel many times over. But in terms of just food, and heat, and flavor, I guess it's a combination of things. Knowing people, knowing what they like to eat. Being able to hit seasonings on the money, not over or under. Being efficient, having a wide range of knowledge, knowing how to play to each ingredient's strengths or weaknesses. Just making something taste good, allowing someone to be happy, and then being able to reproduce that effect on command.

I don't really know what it means to be a "talented" cook. A talented musician is able produce a silken tone that sings to their audience's heartstrings. A talented athlete is seemingly able to adapt to any sport. Not just possessing raw physical prowess but an ability to affect the game and earn a victory for their team. But a talented cook?

I've only seen it as the "golden touch." I worked with Sergio, the long time prep cook at Va Pensiero here and there. He started working in kitchens when he was 17, and has worked every kind of restaurant and every kind of station. He often filled in to help on the line when the nights got crazy. The salads he made were somehow better than mine, even though we were using the exact same ingredients. We rolled out pasta the same amount of times, but his ravioli always ended up more delicate and thin. The grill marks on his ribeye steak were more pronounced and flavorful. So what's my conclusion? He had a golden touch. He was a talented cook, which really adds up to a collection of so many subtle effects that it is nothing less than mysterious.

So am I a talented cook? No. I'm going to have to learn things the hard way, nose to the grindstone style. You know how coaches in professional sports often weren't superstars in their youth? That's because they were the hard workers who earned some success anyway. They had to learn everything step by step, calculate every move, work their asses off and in the process learned every single thing about their sport. The superstars? The LeBron James', the Kobe Bryant's, the Derek Jeter's? I'm not saying they didn't work hard, but they just knew how to play the game naturally. It just came to them without ever having really known why. That's talent, and in terms of food, I'm not sure it works quite the same way, but regardless.. I don't got it.

Alright, next are we talking about in a professional sense or a recreational sense?

There are many great chefs who have analyzed the differences between home cooking and professional cooking, and they have expressed those differences far more eloquently than I could. But in my opinion the difference is very simple.

An amateur does something until they get it right. A professional does something until they can't get it wrong.

Whereas many home cooks go to the kitchen to relax (although I am very aware that figuring out something your kids will actually eat, while balancing the rest of your life is a nightmare in its own right ... I was an unusually picky eater for being a fat kid), or to enjoy it as a hobby, professional cooks are doggedly pursuing refinement in technique, efficiency and presentation.

Well, the good ones are...

So most importantly, we practice. Yes, we talkin' bout' practice.

Thomas Keller stresses this a lot, and it's strange how many people are surprised by this but, cooking requires practice just like anything else. Sports, music, any sort of craftsmanship, it's all about doing something until your body does it automatically. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing, and I have a lot of firsthand experience with its effects through music. Though that was when my brain was a lot more receptive to learning, and while it was relatively simple for me to learn to play the cello, earning proper knife skills has proven far more difficult.

Regardless of current cerebral prowess, I probably crammed in enough pressured professional cooking in the past one and a half years to surpass the average home cook.

But then again I almost never cook at home, as my roommates have disappointingly realized. They occasionally talk about their aspiring chef roommate, and people reflexively ask "Oh, does he cook you awesome things all the time?" and the answer is a resentful, "No."

So yeah, sorry to all my old roommates for failing to live up to expectations, but I'd like to think yes, I am more proficient than the average home cook. Not because I've stacked up a lot of theoretical knowledge, not because I've burned myself with saute pans and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with ice-cold Mexican line cooks, but because I know how to use salt better than most of you do.

Most home cooks are afraid to push it with the salt, either for health reasons, or simply out of fear of overseasoning. When I watch you cook I can sense timidness. Though under or over seasoning something in a professional kitchen are equally criminal, I agree with you that when you over-salt something, there is no going back. You get a haircut you can always cut more off, but you can't grow it back on the spot. So I get it, better to fix it later and gradually adjust. But even then I don't think you go far enough. You will learn as you experiment with your palate, and cook more, but just know that it's almost impossible to over-salt a steak, and it's very educational to constantly taste your own food as you cook it. If you make soup or sauce, take a taste every time you add a pinch of salt. You will very quickly learn the evolution of flavor, and how big a difference salt can make.

Okay, so now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's assume we're talking about me as a professional cook.

Well ... I'm not sure how much my former employers appreciated me. Chef Mark was a perpetually cheerful kind of dude, who only offered occasional instruction. And I was mostly playing as dishwasher in his kitchen anyway. And Chef Jeff? Well, he hired me full-time from a stage position, but then again he liked to reiterate how much I sucked on a daily basis. Not in a harsh way, but when I think I'm working at full speed and keeping on top of everything, he would swoop in to say "Not fast enough" or "How about you try being first in the window?"

But in general, I think he liked me. He liked the Asian jokes I made at my race's expense and, being a cheap bastard, liked that he was getting an enthusiastic, English-speaking line cook at $9 an hour. The one time he gave performance reviews he sat me down and said "You underseason the tagliatelle. Stop that." (Funny, right? After I spent a whole paragraph telling you how I use salt well) And that was it.

I got better evaluations from Chuy. Ever the big brother figure, when Sergio or Jeff would yell at me to hurry the fuck up he would quietly help me plate and say, "You're doing very well, Eric, don't worry I help you with the scallops." I don't know if he was being nice, or if he was being honest, but it made being in the weeds less painful. Especially when Chef Jeff turned me in to a chef-de-tournant, and had me filling in on every station throughout the week. As Va P started to struggle with business, it would often just be me and Chuy in the kitchen, working all four stations with a dishwasher, the other cooks getting cut and sent home early. It was just busy enough to be crazy for two people, and proved to be a bizarre line cook experience. Cooks usually just focus on one station, one kind of cooking technique, but during these times I was doing everything. One minute you're roasting a whole sea bass, the next you're torching a creme brulee, and then back to check on your raviolis boiling away in the drink after you make that endive salad.

But let's put aside other people's evaluations, and consider my own.

Critical self-analysis and evaluation were skills I learned at Juilliard. That hyper-competitive environment forces one to constantly be humbled and learn from each humbling experience. Every time you become very proud of yourself, some eleven-year old Korean robot gets accepted and starts showing you how to really play your instrument. The practice rooms on the fourth floor had curtains to isolate your sound from one another, but I like to think they were just thin enough for you to hear your neighbor, so as to foster a cutthroat, hateful environment where classical musicians fight over scraps in a highly cultured, but ruthless dog-eat-dog world.

There was nothing worse than being singled out by a conductor during rehearsal to play your part in front of 70 of your classmates, be publicly excoriated and expelled from the room. Though your classmates' eyes seemed to plead sympathy, inside I think there was a feeling of sadistic pleasure in your humiliation.

I might be a little scarred.

So, all those past nightmares aside, I've learned how to analyze myself pretty closely. Not just to avoid embarrassment, but also because I've been roughed up to be competitive.

I think I'm ... decent. I'm good farm system material. Put me in the minor leagues for a year, let me work hard and one day I think I can be your starter. I don't think I'm exceptionally gifted, whatever being a talented cook means, but I have enthusiasm, no lingering lower body injuries and a decent noggin that is resistant to substance abuse. What I lack in experience, I make up for in determination, and what I lack in practical skill, I somewhat compensate for with theoretical knowledge.

I was never blessed with a lot of natural athleticism. I learned how to be an effective ultimate player through technique, field awareness and game intelligence. I think that is much the same for cooking. I don't know if I can just visualize and create an eyes-roll-back-into-head, orgasm-inducing dish on the spot, but I can realize how you did it and execute accordingly.

I may not be able to saute six orders of skate wing, baste with butter, blanch haricot verts and emulsify a beurre rouge at the same time, perfectly and on cue during a Saturday night crush. But I can tell you exactly how a saute pan affects fish, why basting is important, why wet heat is very beneficial to certain vegetables like green beans, and why the more RPMs you put in to whisking the better your emulsification turns out.

I may not be able to beautifully cut up a case of chickens, debone and butterfly them in under a half hour. But I can tell you why white meat is white, why dark meat is dark, and why they react differently to heat. And I definitely respect a well butchered chicken, and the whole process of presentation. Frenching a wing in to a supreme may be a pain in the ass, but it makes a difference to your customer.

I may not be able to plan my mise en place well enough so I have time to strain a light chicken stock ten times before service, but I can tell you why straining through a cheesecoth-lined chinois is crucial, and why perfect stock makes perfect sauce.

I may not be able to tell you how I plan on respectfully and tactfully blending various food cultures together, to represent my own personal style, but I can assure you I will try my damnedest to figure it out over the next decade. I may be way behind, there may be kids younger than me working in three Michelin star kitchens, so what I may "lack" in youth I will have to make up for with maturity (HAHA) and determination.

My goal is to first be a great cook, then a great chef, and then a great restaurateur. What makes a great cook is relatively simple. An ability to reproduce dishes consistently, quickly and in dogmatic dedication to the chef. What makes a great chef could fill endless blog posts. An ability to command and lead people to carry out your vision is probably the most significant distinction. And what makes a great restaurateur, well that still remains mysterious. There is no one way to do it, there are many paths to success, and there is an expansive skill set one must master. But being able to read people, the current restaurant climate, and express oneself in an attractive manner through food are among them.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. In the words of Bourdain, "There's a gulf the size of an ocean between adequate and finesse." Though I've worked in some decent restaurants, pressed my ability to learn, I haven't even gotten a canoe out to traverse that gulf. Maybe by the end of this year, we'll make it a speedboat. Maybe by the end of culinary school it'll be a cruiser. Let's just hope it never becomes a Titanic. Though I have faith that the chefs I work under will make sure to keep my ego in check. If not, I'll always have horrifying memories of Juilliard to remind me that there's no such thing as being the best.

EP6

People

I've come to realize that in lieu of having 50 or so posts in this stupid thing I've probably accrued enough pages to write a book. I'm not sure exactly, I don't use Microsoft Word anymore because it causes post-traumatic flashbacks of panic-writing history papers at the crack of dawn. Not to mention I stole that bitch, and am afraid Bill Gates is cinching in the net around me. But if I had to guess this blog full of long-winded profanities, and nonsensical culinary rantings is getting pretty hefty in the metaphysical sense.

So continuing on nonsensical rantings I'm going to put that last paragraph aside and just say...

Thank you. Thanks for reading. I know there are about 40-50 of you dedicated to reading each post and I really appreciate it. This began on a whim at 4 AM one sleepless night, and continues to be written largely in the twilight hours when my brain is at its peak operating speed and coherency. I didn't really think anyone would care, I think one of the douchiest statements a human being can make is "Well I have this blog..." but you've made it fun. And you've certainly helped maintain my sanity because most of these posts are the product of existential frustration, released via intellectual masturbation and consequently, grammatically messy money shots.

Ahem...

I've mentioned the importance of employees before. The golden rule to restaurants, if such a thing exists, being that before you fill it with high thread-count linens and Limoges porcelain you must fill it with good employees.

And once you get those good employees, you hold on tight.

The employer-employee relationship is like any animal relationship. You give me something, I give you something, we come to an understanding about what and how much, and hopefully we both gain from it. Guy buys dinner, he's at least expecting a handy, depending on which number date we're talking . Girl cooks dinner, maybe expects ... what do they call it? Cunning linguist? I forget exactly, but that never made sense to me...

For anything to work in the long run it's got to be mutually symbiotic. Work is a fact of life and I think a great gift you can give someone is an intellectually stimulating environment to work in, while being surrounded by like-minded and talented individuals.

I'm not going to be an employer anytime soon. But seeing as my mother has been an employer for the past 30-odd years, she's seen some shit. She's seen hundreds of employees come and go, and learned a great deal about people and how they treat work. And working alongside her, I am beginning to learn a little bit more about management. I don't think I can make any effective judgments, but perhaps some observations.

Firstly, let me establish that what has limited my mother the most is the employees she hires. She is an immensely talented woman, with a strong work ethic and charisma, but she is self-admittedly frustrated with her inability to expand beyond one restaurant. This is a shared fault between her and her worker bees. At her peak, she was running three restaurants, but after my father passed away, the infrastructure proved too unstable to be held up by one person.

To create a restaurant empire, which by no means is something I ever want to accomplish, you need to be very, very picky about the people you hire, and how you develop them. I know my mother wishes she didn't have to be at the helm seven days a week, but at this point it is unavoidable. Her customers depend on her to have a good restaurant experience, and my mother in turn depends on them for a livelihood. She wishes she were more like some of her peers, who are hands-off restaurant hegemons running multiple establishments, and putting away gold like Scrooge McDuck. But I think it is the kind of hiring decisions she made years ago, that make that unlikely.

To make just one restaurant run well, and to do so consistently while growing in to the future, requires talent, dedication, good work ethic and integrity from every employee ranging from dishwasher to floor manager. But to get such desirable employees and to hold on to them is difficult. Is it going to be the pay, the environment or the prestige that draws them in? Or all the above?

Whatever causes the initial interest is irrelevant. You're going to get a certain kind of person who is motivated by different things. The key is for you as an employer to be selective about who you choose. They have to fit your model, your philosophy for hospitality and business. And you can never compromise on that vision.

I was watching Tony Hsieh give a speech about his innovative company, Zappos.com, and he went to great lengths to describe the unique work culture. During the interview and training process he offers $2000 to anyone who wants to quit right there and then, and he makes this process long and scrutinizing to gather as much information as possible about a potential employee. The idea of offering a "quitting" incentive is to really separate the people just looking for work, from the people who really want to be here. Once he has those people, he takes a long, hard look at them and hires based on an unwavering set of standards. The idea there is that if you make just one minor compromise on hiring an employee, then you're going to set off a chain reaction of future compromises, until one day you have a company that is unrecognizable to your original vision and philosophy.

If you hire someone, you ideally want them to hang around. I think Emeril (gasp I know, I can't believe I'm quoting the Fozzie Bear of the food world) once called it the deadly "revolving door." If you take in talent, talent is going to want to grow because it has ambition and drive. You had better give that talent a place to grow to because if not, they are coming through, getting trained at a great investment from you, and then going right out the door.

So being that you want someone to hang around near indefinitely, you probably want them to match your vision for business to a T. If you make just one compromise, like "Oh, she's really sweet to customers, but can be rude to her coworkers" or "Well, he works hard, but his personal life is a mess, and keeps interfering with his ability to perform" then you're going to run in to some problems down the line. I'm not saying it's easy to spot these things in a relatively short hiring process. Nor am I saying it is impossible to train a person to excellence, and bring them round to eliminate their own personal demons. But that's what firing people is for, and generally it's very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks if they don't want to learn them.

My mother considers employees in a few different lights; their capability, their work ethic and their motivation. First are the skills, can they handle the volume we do? Do they have good fundamentals? Can you describe a dish, carry a tray, serve a plate and pour a glass of wine? Can you cook a fucking fried rice or not?

Second is the integrity. Will customers notice that your apron is wrinkled? 99% will not, but the fact that you have not taken note and care of this detail speaks volumes about your character. If you're the kind of person who cares about your own presentation, which I don't care what you say is very important to restaurant work, then you're most likely going to be the kind of person who's going to notice a lipstick-stained wine glass, or a chipped tea cup, or that a customer isn't loving their dish. It just means you fucking care, and you're willing to work hard to do something right. Not because you want to suck up to the boss, or get a good tip, but because doing something wrong is heresy to your personal religion of labor.

And finally, why are you here? Is this just a sinecure to you? Do you like this work, or are you simply at the end of a very long rope of poor decisions?

Most of the employees we have gotten have been through an agency. A liaison in Flushing who helps connect restaurant employees and employers. They have a very ancient and tradition-bound system like that in Europe, especially Paris, and I believe Jacques Pepin simply called it "La Societe." He was dumbstruck that America didn't have something similar.

Anyhow, when you're getting employees through someone else's (read: nonexistent) screening system, you're going to get a lot of questionable people showing up at your restaurant. Most of these hopefuls show up for one day of work, and are sent home by my mother at the end of the night with some cash and a "thanks but no thanks." Sometimes people stick around. Dishwashers and cooks see the most turnover. The floor staff, managers and waiters, have been the same for years.

My mom keeps a mental All-Star team of employees she's had in the past that she really cared about, and really valued. They had talent, charm and skill but they also had ambition, and almost all of them have gone on to do their own thing.

There was Georgette, a Malaysian woman who spoke many dialects of Chinese and near-perfect English. She not only could handle all the mundane duties of taking phone calls, booking parties and reservations, and gauging customer satisfaction, she could manage. For an Asian woman to command a restaurant full of lightly misogynist, Confucian ideologues and to crack the whip is no small task. She essentially ran one of the three restaurants during the Minor Golden Age of Huang, with my mother and father running the other two respectively.

There was Freddie, the old, wizened waiter. He was from an era where Chinese waiters were expected to wear tuxedos to work. Every morning, a crisp and starched uniform with a hand-tied bow tie, and silver hair parted at a razor's edge. He was what you would imagine a kung fu master would look like if he decided to try his hand at restaurants; disciplined, kind, sagacious, and fiercely loyal. He was unfortunately diagnosed with Alzheimer's years later, and in a mishap of memory showed up to Lily Pond in full garb, years after we had closed the restaurant. My mother greatly appreciated this gesture of loyalty, reasoning be damned, and in true Huang fashion sent his family a truckload of food.

And then there was mysterious, unnamed Sichuan chef who she worked with when she was in her late twenties. I never got his name, but to this day she remembers his cooking. She calls what we do now "peasant food," even our elaborate banquets are nothing she says, compared to this chef. Chinese cuisine of such elegance and exquisite preparation that thirty years after the fact, she still remembers his Goldfish Soup with Watercress (not actually goldfish, more like fishballs and dumplings shaped into goldfish). She also notes his meticulous management and orderliness. If you asked him on the spot, in the middle of dinner rush how many cases of red bell peppers were left, he'd rattle it right back to you with militaristic precision.

So she knows talent when she sees it, it's just very hard to hold on to. It's up to you as an employer to make that happen. Now she is generally unsatisfied with her staff as a whole. Her kitchen is run by a chef she has worked with for nearly two decades. She admits he is a fantastic cook, with a sharp palate and ability to create, but messy management habits. Food waste is very costly, and his negative influences trickle down through the whole kitchen.

And her floor staff comprises of multi-year veterans, and certain managers that are less than stellar. They all have their good's and their bad's, and sometimes they shine, and sometimes they falter. But they are disappointingly human, in her eyes. They are like that warm body you start texting on a Saturday night after you've had a few drinks. Ladies, don't pretend like you don't know. They aren't exactly going to rock your world, but you can depend on them to be there and at least give it some effort. At the very least you'll get a big spoon out of it (Who doesn't like little spoon, honestly?).

But sometimes you have to accept people's faults. When you're running a ship out in Long Island, you have to come to grips with the fact that you're not going to draw the best talent. Hell, even LeBron left Cleveland. Maybe you should learn to work with people's weaknesses, accommodate for them, and play their strengths. Try your best, keep your head down, count your blessings.

Or maybe if you're a control freak, stricken with neuroses and an abusive relationship with perfection, you start fresh and you do it the only way you know how; the right way.

EP6