Culinary Tales

Recently I was recounting a story to one of my team members to illustrate whatever point I was trying to make, a learning opportunity I suppose, one in which I got to relate on a personal level since I had a similar experience. And that experience triggered a memory that continues to make me laugh at the absurdity of it all....30 odd years later.

Shortly after graduating college with my Culinary Management diploma myself and two friends decided to open a business together. Peter and Caesar and myself formed Chiltons Catering. The name had no significance to us, it simply sounded good at the time. We were under no illusions to begin with, we would have a part time business in addition to our regular jobs. A way of earning an extra buck when we could and slowly start the process of building an empire. Don't quit your day job boys, this will take sometime to build. Three or four weeks later we got a call from the college about some sort of catering gig. Thinking it was an event someone needed a caterer for we go ahead and set up a meeting. Well, not too long after that meeting we became the official caterers for a sailing club on the Toronto waterfront. That was fast and totally unexpected. Since this was for the following season, we all kept our jobs which is actually the focus of this little story.

One of my jobs was at a hotel in Mississauga, in the interest of improving pastry skills I had joined the pastry department part time. That place was so poorly run that it could have made it's own TV show of ridiculousness; think Fawlty Towers. For myself, it was two or three 5:00 AM shifts a week. Which meant I was up at 3:30 to get out to this hotel. In addition, I had a job at the Boulevard Club, a private members geriatric gathering place on the waterfront...not too far from our soon to be club actually.

The Boulevard Club was simply weird in my book, like all member driven clubs they seemed designed to lose money and offer up nothing in the way of innovation or sometimes even flavour. Caesar worked there in banquets and I worked the restaurant line under the tutelage of one Robin the sous chef. All under the steady of hand of an Indonesian chef named Ramli. Robin, as it turns out was struggling with being a woman in a position of responsibility in a slow to evolve kitchen world. She would have been a pioneer of sorts back in the late 80's as there weren't a lot of women in supervisory roles back then. Thankfully this has changed to a degree but for certain there hasn't been enough of a change I think. Too many old fart attitudes out there still.

I felt that she tried to hard to be all things to all people. With the chef she was somewhat submissive and quiet, with her underlings she was simply trying to be hard as nails, as I'm sure people have been with her. Instead she came across as prickly and unstable. Prone to emotional outbursts...with some of them directed at me of all people.

I had on one occasion showed up a few minutes late for my shift due to the notoriously bad traffic along Lakeshore Blvd, I am never late but this was simply out of my control, and before the advent of cell phones I could do nothing but fume as I sat in my car waiting to move at times. The minute I walked in I apologized profusely and made for my station. "Wait...office please" was the command from Robin. At which she felt it necessary to read me the riot act on the importance of punctuality. An over reaction in my opinion but I come from the era of "yes chef" as the only acceptable response. Yes chef.

Wouldn't you know it, the same thing happened the very next day. The hotel was busy and I had to stay an extra few minutes to clean up because the pastry chef coke head was off doing who knows what. So sure enough I walked in late two days in a row and she lost her shit. I had no recourse but to simply take the dressing down, I was, after all, late. There was no dispute to that fact. This is where it got weird and than comical.

My punishment for the night was to stand the line but do nothing. Read that again. Stand at the end of the line and don't do a thing. I'm not entirely sure how that was supposed to be a punishment for me, if anything she would end up suffering trying to run the line herself. Maybe she thought she could teach mke a lesson in how easily I could be replaced by nothing at all. That she did not need me if I didn't care enough for the job to show up on time. "Yes chef."

So for the next two hours of prep time and the first few hours of service I did nothing but stand there. Personally, what a waste of labour I thought, but sometimes you just go with the flow. Normally the dinner line consists of nothing too busy at all, truth be told a capable chef could handle the whole thing by themselves. Doesn't take much to over cook some salmon with dill sauce or slice a hunk of well done prime rib for the crowd. Not tonight though, she was busy and getting into the weeds. I so desperately wanted to jump in and help but my earlier attempt was rebuffed in anger. So I stood and watched her sink deeper. It would have been funny if wasn't completely absurd. At some point the chef walked by on his way to leaving, looked at me and asked why I wasn't doing anything to help. I explained that chef Robin had instructed me to touch nothing and observe. He looked at me, looked at her, tilted his head in a funny manner, turned on his heel and walked out. I tried hard not to laugh.

Twenty minutes later she relented by way of saying, "OK, I think you've learned your lesson, please take your station." Yes chef. I helped get her out of the weeds and that was that...or so I thought. After the shift was over she pulled me into her office and waxed on about all manner of scary things coming our way and how I needed to get my shit together. She thought I was nuts going into business with this new GST thing coming down the pipe, it's a very dangerous time to take risks and so on. Then she cried a bit. Told me that she was worried about me because I seemed to not care about the job, what with me being late twice. Cried a bit more and than cried a lot more. I simply wanted to get out of the room and go home....but she seemed to have more crying to do. Then she threw down the gauntlet, so to speak. "I want you to come up with the special tomorrow night, show us what you can do." Yes chef. I'll think about one tonight. Can I have another chef. See you tomorrow chef. Whatever.

Tomorrow came, as it always does, I wasn't late and my stuffed pork tenderloin was a hit with the old fuck crowd. I think I pissed her off with that. At this point I didn't care of course. I had lost respect for her and my chef, since he did nothing to address an obvious problem. Today I know different, he was letting her stretch her wings a bit I imagine. Oh, who knows, maybe he really didn't want to deal with it so whatever once again. I had one foot out the door at both the hotel and the club since they were both fucked up places.

Chiltons went on to spend two years at the club, providing daily service and all manner of catered events to deal with. Having a good time and working hard, a few laughs and a few bruised egos and I am sure it was par for the course. Learning a lot about business and when it was all said and done we parted ways in the pursuit of other experiences, for me specifically, moving east to begin the Nova Scotia chapter of my life.

Of course I have come to learn that just about every place is screwed up in one way or another. Nothing works as you think it should, so simply work with what you got or blow it up and start again. What I have learned from that experience was the same I had learned from other managers that were either bad at what they did or simply had no respect from the team; watch, learn and do the opposite. I'm not saying I am perfect in what I do by any stretch but I have learned to work the floor in such a way as to get the best from my teams. It's a continuous learning journey and just when I think I have it figured it out, the pony arrives GDFP!!!

Ciao
D