A small fire broke out in the kitchen when my sous chefs and I were working on a new menu earlier this week. The stove top was full with French Onion Soup, Basque Sauce and Beef Bourguignon. I didn’t want to spray the line with the fire extinguisher, what with the food cost and all. […]

In the last 3 or 4 years, Father’s Day has become as big as Mother’s Day, usually with a more adult crowd.  Yes, we have some well behaved little ones, but mostly grown children taking their dad out.  I guess they just can’t find anymore ties that he doesn’t already have. My crew started at […]

Covered for my Sous Chef last week, covering for my manager this week.  Liquor orders, prep lists, recipe tweaking, costing updates. Waiting patiently for a new version of my recipe costing software to be sent to me.  My old version was so old, the data had to be converted and loaded on the new disk and mailed […]

Ah Mel.  A couple days a week I find myself working with my AM Sous Chef getting ready for dinner service.  Mel comes in between 9 and 10 am each day and at 7 am on Sunday mornings.  He’s in charge of production levels, soups, sauces, desserts, meat cutting and many other things.  He has […]

We just did some hiring and I am surprised by the quality of some of the resumes and applicants. Here’s my advice on How to apply for a restaurant job: 1.  Please update your resume.  It doesn’t take but a minute. 2.  I would encourage restaurant employees to stick out their current job and all […]

I know I have blogged about this before, but it’s a big deal.  I am currently sitting on the porch of a beach house in Florida, watching the waves.  I am in a sweatshirt.  Back home in Atlanta snow and sleet is falling.  We need to close the restaurant tonight because of weather.  I am […]

Seating waiters. This is an expression used when quests are seated at a table in a waiter’s station.  A server is sometimes “double seated”,(two tables are seated within a few minutes) and then there is the dreaded “triple seated” event.  This is when the waiter’s eyes start to roll back in their head and they give […]

A good friend told me he thought my blog was courageous.  I didn’t know what he was talking about. Most customers have told me they love reading my blog.  Great. Recently a customer commented that they thought it was not appropriate.  Not great. So I’m a more than a little nervous now about what I write.  […]