Restaurant Truths...

Your friends tell you on an hourly basis you make the best boiled ‘whatever’ and you must open a restaurant. Perhaps you DO make the best boiled whatever. I don’t care, and chances are, no one else will either…Reality.

Opening up a restaurant requires far more than the ability to sauté a vegetable, or that banal excuse…“I love to cook…my friends are always telling me I need to open up my own place.” Tell ‘ya what, next time your friends say that, just have them write you a check for $100,000 instead.

Let me explain…I love the food business. I have dedicated my life to it. Although my career has evolved to the private chef sector, I’ve had over 15 years in the restaurant, hotel and upscale catering business. I have sacrificed family, relationships, money, health and a personal life, all to create wonderful foods and develop eateries with great energy.

If you actually think that the self proclaimed ‘Mother Teresa’ of the culinary world, Alice Waters, has even a remote grip on reality, with her visions of hand picking an individual sprig of lavender to be placed loving on the plate by ethereal cooking cherubs…then its time to understand the reality of the business.

For example, in a restaurant, those Roma tomatoes that are coming in from the produce company might be chopped very quickly as part of a fabulous chopped salad. The truth is, I would go through 20-lbs of tomatoes a day, and I didn’t have time to form an emotional bond with them.

With 100 ‘covers’ coming in that night, all I’m thinking about is creating my little signature salad as fast as possible so I can sell it for $11 and make my clients happy. (All the while, chain restaurants are breathing down necks of independent restaurateurs, trying to capture that client base as quickly as they can.) At the end of the day, and I actually really hate that expression, your feet are just as calloused as your personality, after enduring the hundreds of mundane special requests plus an additional 100 annoying questions an hour from actors posing as wait staff. When you get home, you smell like the bottom of a deep fryer.

No matter how many times they have washed their hands, if one were to slice a chef open, his or her age in the business could be determined by the layers of spices, meats and fats that have permeated the skin. And, despite playing with some of the planet’s finest ingredients, many chefs opt for a diet of cigarettes, a drive-through epicurean experience and a bottle or two of liquid relaxation. 

The culinary gods like Thomas and Charlie and Ming and David Burke are one in a million. We are talking about the hard working, culinary driven, trying to ‘create a vision without pretense’ restaurants. Forget about the multi-unit or chain places; they aren’t part of this conversation. They are a needed entity for our conveyor belt society. These places are generally affordable, family friendly and usually not offensive…albeit mundane.

The working atmosphere of local bistros, restaurants, independent ‘gastropub’ bars and lounges is gritty, tough, laborious work; overwhelming at times with all the details that must be attended to hourly. This is the real restaurant business.

Designed with the best intentions and very little capital, a typical executive chef earning less than $70,000 a year and working over 70 hours a week, will develop creative menus that are unique and flavorful with creative presentations.

The chef will train usually both front and back of the house on everything from culinary details to how to up-sell appetizers and desserts. The chef will write or assist in writing a wine list and dealing with the nickel and dime negotiations with every vendor. Also, the chef is most likely responsible for all scheduling, food costs, labor costs, helping to develop marketing, socializing with the guests and educating generally inept restaurant managers.

Leaving at 8-pm on a Saturday night, just because your favorite band is playing…is not an option.

Celebrating Valentines Day with the mate that you adore…Is not an option.

Coming home exhausted after a shift, and actually being able to focus on your family or loved ones…is not an option.

Eating a balanced meal…never an option.

So, Mr. Barbeque and Mrs. Cupcake: You still think you can stand out and make your place special? I applaud you with my swollen, calloused, burned, cut hands.