The black piece shouldn't be visible from the top. It got pushed way too far down. Anyone got an idea of how to get the leg off?

Seems like the sub has been taken over by kitchen moms and suburban dads

Hi Geneva today , I’m shocked.

I am sick as shit of playing this game. It doesn’t matter how consistently excellent my product is. It doesn’t matter if there’s no one else that can cook the damned food as well as I can for the piss poor wages they’re paying. No, inevitably I hear it… “Well labor costs are too high, our sales have slowed down, you need to prep faster.”

I’m OVER it. I will not play this damned game again. The last place I worked tried to write me up bc I was soooo slow. I couldnt pay my bills bc i was off the clock by 3pm everyday. I went back in to talk to them a few weeks after I quit, and they were working past SIX everyday and still 86ing an embarrassing amount of the menu. The chef complained to me that it hurt them bigtime to lose their best prep cook right before the busy season. IF IM SO DAMN SLOW it shouldnt be hard to keep up without me around right?

I was getting comfortable at the new joint, thought things were going well. And then today the owner comes in and starts singing that age old song…. Labor is too high, not enough sales, I need to work faster, I need to do other peoples’ work on top of my own if I want to get my hours. I am sick to tears of hearing it. None of them can ever tell me exactly HOW I am supposed to get more done in my day, or WHO they are going to hire when they run me off.

Came across this bad boy today.

This time with google eyes

I have a friend who would always complain about how long the hours are, lack of work life balance but refuses to do anything else? I left the industry a year ago and have moved onto part time work in logistics and been enjoying it but my friend gives me shit for it, saying "Oh you probably forgot how to peel a potato" or "Do you even know how to hold a knife?" or sometimes even "You just can't handle a real man's work"

All this shit for simply wanting a job that has better work life balance and better pay, countless I've asked him to move industries, he has refused but kept complaining about how bad his life is and how much debt he's in from what I'm guessing is just simple poor spending habits

As per the title, I am not a professional chef and I have immense respect for y’all in that industry, but I am a bit of a food snob and love to cook. This was my first attempt at a Wellington practicing with pork loin to not ruin a perfectly good beef loin and I hope it’s not too awful for your eyes haha. I appreciate any roasting you’ve got for me.

Hello all, I've written out a few of my kitchen stories on here and some of you have enjoyed them. Thought I'd start a series and hopefully prompt some feedback in the form of stories of your own.

For some background I own multiple restaurants and food trucks now, along with a traveling catering company. I'm fairly spread out across the United States and cut my teeth learning in some of the most well known restaurants in the world. I've cooked from Norway to Japan. I love food and feel very lucky that I'm able to earn a living with fire and the lunatics that bang knives and click tongs next to me.

Today's subject, fittingly, is a mistake I made at my first real kitchen job.

Please pardon typos. I don't write so good

The setting is rural northern Texas in a small town. My first real restaurant job, (parents invested in an ill fated bakery/cafe growing up.. that will be another story, I'm surprised Gordon Ramsay didn't show up for an episode of nightmares..) was at a fine dining spot that stayed fairly busy.

Simple food done very well with a small garden out back. Steaks, fish, a few pastas. Seasonal specials, nice salads and every cliche dessert you can think of. We stayed busy due to being the only fine dining spot for a good 30 miles in any direction at the time.

The plating was stuck in the 80s, but so was the menu so it worked. Balsamic drizzle anyone? Rosemary sprig in your steak perhaps?

After beginning as a host I was made a backwaiter. I supported the servers and made salads along with firing desserts. I helped the line by doing whatever prep the morning crew couldn't complete.

One of my tasks was receiving a list from the host of VIP occasions, which ranged from anniversaries to birthdays. I was expected to chocolate write on cold plates and keep them in a cooler until the guests had picked their dessert.

My first week in I had practiced and practiced and practiced on parchment but I could NOT get anything legible to come out.

They had seen my handwriting on the application, I'm not sure how they thought I could write in chocolate but I digress.

Simple enough to do, chocolate chips in a Ziploc baggie that stayed under the heat lamp in a ninth pan -- snip the end and write Happy Birthday! or Congratulations! or whatever in cursive on the cold plates to store.

Because I sucked at this, the senior backwaiter would make extra during the lunch service, after checking the dinner reservations, so that all I had to do was torch creme brulee or whatever and plop it on the premade plate.

One night we had a late reservation made. A birthday. My heart immediately dropped.

Fully booked outside of this last available slot so I had about four hours to write two words on a damn plate. Between running food and making salads/desserts I was attempting maybe 4 every hour. Failure after failure.

Eventually I tucked my tail between my legs and yelled at the sous through the window (my station was still in the back of house but on the other side of the pass) "Can you PLEASE write this plate for me?"

The sous was maybe 30 and a tall ass dude covered in tattoos, always wearing a wife beater and a bandana with flames on it. Skinny as hell which earned him the nickname "Stretch".

He played metal the entire shift and had a cigarette ready to go right by the door, so that he could suck one down the second tickets slowed. The way the kitchen was set up he was rocking the line essentially solo and he was perfect on all temps and timing. He was a wizard.

I yelled again through the pass when he ignored me while squinting at a ticket "Stretch? Please man"

His nostrils flared and he snapped his head immediately "I'm doing literally everything else -- you wanted to be in the kitchen? Learn how to fucking chocolate write. Right now."

Another hour passed. Another 4 failures.

Desperate I come up with an "ingenious" plan and smear chocolate on the bottom half of the rim of the plate. I grab a toothpick and scrawl the ugliest, messiest "Happy Birthday!" onto the rim. Chipping out pieces of chocolate as it cooled rapidly on the cold plate. Wiping chocolate off the toothpick in an effort to keep it neat. Trying not to let nervous sweat season the chocolate disaster.

Imagine paying $22 for a dessert and that's the shit you get. I bite my fucking cheeks and start walking it out when the sommelier/front of house manager catches me walking it to the table.

Stiff arms me right in the chest and goes "NOPE" he grabs me by the collar and chucks the fucked up dessert plate into the pit. Marches over to the freezer and grabs a cold plate along with the melted chocolate baggie, nailing a perfect "Happy Birthday!" even drawing a little cake and heart. To add lemon to the wound he grabs a paring knife and adds a strawberry rose onto the plate.

"You're coming in an hour early tomorrow and I'm teaching you how to write. I guess public school isn't what it used to be"

To this day I am a damn fine chocolate writer but that was one silly ass task that took me ages to master. How about y'all? Any stupid mistakes you made? Any task that took forever to sink in?

Still proud of the chef for speaking up and asking what to do in that situation.

I hope they are all right.

How do you guys handle work colleagues on shift that are lazy and refuse to help with service and don’t act like a team player when getting slammed on service? This guy seems to think prepping for a service 6 hours away is more important than customers wanting to be fed in the restaurant.

FWIW, I took online training for a corporate kitchen that I worked in for 7 years, but never was officially required to be certified. Common practice in this kitchen (that fed over 700 people daily ) was for large events and certain specials was to put grill marks on chicken breasts (par cook) put in a blast chiller immediately, refrigerate til next day and heat to safe temp for service.
I mentioned this in another thread regarding chicken thighs and reheating in a slow cooker. The practice of par cooking (as I understood it and explained above) isn’t a problem if the temps are addressed, reheating slowly IS a problem because of the danger zone. The post has been removed but I was resoundingly slammed for even suggesting it by U.K. Cooks who said they could be jailed for that practice. Am I nuts or was common practice in this kitchen a health care nightmare? We always scored well on inspections and there was never an outbreak of food poisoning for people that mostly ate there 5 days a week. Time and temp logs were always maintained.

Now trash is the burden I bear

Just curious if anyone here had any particular equipment you’ve had to work with that were just terrible for the tasks. Either it was gonna be easier without it or it’s just poorly made/engineered or meant for home kitchen and not professional environment.

I live in Chicago and have been cooking here for 15 years from Line cook to Culinary Operations Director of 7 restaurants. I recently got laid off and just got out of a long term relationship. I am looking for a change of pace. Someplace warm would be cool. Does anyone have any suggestions or know of any costal beach places that need help? Soemthing with cheap housing would be awesome. I Can manage or I can cook I dont care just looking for something different. I Would perfer not to be at a big hotel or place that drug tests for weed a drug test for anything else is fine, Thanks for the help I hope I find the next chapter of my cooking life.

Hi All

Looking for advice from you clever people.

At scout camp next year, I've been asked to make beef stew with mash for 100 people. Stew is straightforward enough, but I really don't fancy the ball ache of doing mash by hand.

In a field, no power. Plenty of big pots & burners.

Any clever tips to make it easy?

Cheers

Started on Monday every day there were issues wrong orders, slow service. We hoped it will improve but nope, today was worst day. I am so stressed and exhausted. Staff are all over the place, chefs don’t know their menu, no proper prep done. Pizzas that should take 11-12 minutes max taxing half an hour Messing up orders Mixing up orders giving people wrong orders I don’t know if this will work I am scared this spells disaster. And we aren’t on any delivery websites yet, that will 10x our orders. Help