Last month, we featured Bimbadgen Shiraz Poached Pears from Esca Restaurant's Head Chef, Mark Bennett, as our weekend recipe.
Mark was appointed Head Chef in January this year - quite an achievement before turning 30. Nearly everyone has experienced what goes on in 'front of house' at a restaurant but not many get to peep behind the kitchen door or window. We sat down with Mark and had a chat about what being a head chef is like on a day-to-day basis.
This weekend in Part 1, he talks to us about organising a kitchen and just why some chefs get upset when a 'Sally'-type walks into their restaurant.
How does a chef organise their kitchen?
The kitchen is broken down into sections and each Chef has a section to look after and work on preparation for the service ahead. The main sections within a kitchen are - Mains, Entrée and Desserts.
In especially busy times there will often be two people to a section. One team member will be cooking and the other helping to plate and ensure timing is correct across the order. Quite often the person looking after the desserts section is free to help send out entrée’s in busy periods and vice-versa.
How much can you pre-prepare?
How long is a piece of string?!
Pre-preparation is a balancing act depending on a whole number of factors. You have to consider how many customers have already made reservations, how many chefs are on shift, the level of skill and time to prepare the current menu, and the list goes on.
The more we pre-prepare the easier our service will be but we need to consider how this will affect the quality of the food. A lot of this consideration is done when designing a menu. We look for a balance between how much we can have ready ahead of time, and how much we will need to prepare to order.
This pre-preparation is known as mise-en-place (French for ‘everything in its place’) in the kitchen. Weddings, large functions and big bistros will have a lot more mise-en-place then an a la carte restaurant service.
As a general rule there is always some type of prep happening in the kitchen, with the busiest preparation days being Wednesday and Thursday, leading into the weekend so that we can focus on smooth service during the busiest period of the week. Coming out of the weekend we top things up and clean up after a big weekend going into the quieter days, Monday and Tuesday.
Do you work on one table at once, or prepare plates for multiple tables at once?
Tables will be grouped together depending on their size, when they sit down and the dishes that have been ordered. As the orders come in a chef will glance at dockets and group them together based on an estimate of how long food will take to cook, whether people are having entrees or just mains but this is always flexible.
If a table is taking longer than estimated to finish a course, then we change the plans so that no one table waits too long for their meals.
What happens if you run out of an ingredient?
Close the restaurant and go home!
On a serious note, I try to design menus that are open to evolution and adaption. If we are running low on an ingredient then we make a plan for that dish ahead of time.
We have two options: substitute the ingredient with something similar and inform the guests when they sit down to order or if it is the core ingredient of the dish (eg. no more fish for the blue eye cod) then we pull the dish off the menu until the ingredient comes in and replace it with a special.
How do you get everything to the fine timing of having an entire table ready almost at once?
Experience and a lot of practice. In your head you know how long the fish is going to take to cook, the medium well strip loin will take longer so that goes on first. Then whilst they are cooking, the garnishes are warmed through and vegetables get blanched at the last minute whilst the meat comes out of the oven to rest. It is all quite complex but it is a completely natural feeling when you are immersed in the service.
When an order comes in a chef glances over the docket and takes out the information that they need to prepare that table. If it is similar in timing and dishes then it will be grouped with another table and treated like one big table. When you prepare the same dishes 50 times each a week, it all becomes second nature.
Every possible combination of dishes comes through and it all feels comfortable. It is when changes to dishes are requested (a bit like Sally in When Harry Met Sally), that a spanner is thrown in the works and the free-flowing kitchen comes to an abrupt halt.
Before the dish changes the chefs were running on autopilot honed by weeks of perfecting timing and dishes. Strays from the norm can make a table much more complex than it needs to be and may explain a little bit of why some chefs are reluctant to change their ‘treasured’ menu item.
What can go wrong in a professional kitchen? Or what hasn't gone wrong?
Plenty of things can go wrong but it mostly relates to staff – not turning up, throwing in the towel or walking out in the middle of a shift. When I was an apprentice we had a chef who informed everybody he was “just going to the bathroom” and we never saw him again.
In this environment with the profit margins of most restaurants, kitchens are running on less staff then they could use. Being one person down in this environment is just asking for trouble. But thankfully it doesn’t happen too often. Other things that pop up are usually guest-related requirements: dietary requirements, extra numbers at functions, time constraints on meals, but this is all part of the industry and you just need to absorb it and be flexible.
When do you get time to plan ahead for the next day/week/month/special events?
Planning for each day usually happens on the drive to and from work. As for special events we try to plan a few months out, so that they can be properly promoted. New menu items and dishes for upcoming menus are always being created as we work around food constantly. Ideas pop into your head and you scribble it down to try out later so that when you sit down to write a menu, you have a good idea of a number of dishes you would like to see on the menu in advance.
Next weekend: More about Mark Bennett, managing and motivating staff and the question everyone wants to ask a chef .... does he cook at home?
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