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Authors: Marcus Samuelsson
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your bloody finger in the fryer.”
Nik, being more moron than comedian, chose this method. His finger wasn’t in the fryer for more than a second before he began screaming, a shocked look on his face as if he hadn’t actually expected it to hurt. Chef John was screaming, too. “You stupid fucking bastard!” he said. “Why the hell did you put your fucking finger in there? Have you lost your mind?”
Niklas quit the program a couple of months later, but I learned an invaluable lesson from his stupidity. The kitchen is a dangerous place and if you want to stay safe, you’ve got to not only watch your own back, you’ve got to keep your eye on all the weak links.
I N ANY PROFESSIONAL KITCHEN , the lower-ranked staff responds to any request from above with military-like respect. “Yes, chef” is what I was taught to say whether he or she asks for a side of beef or your head on a platter. Yes, chef. Yes, chef. Yes, chef. I had failed at soccer and the failure made me humble and determined. At Mosesson, I was determined to be the best. Soon I was serving up not only classic three-course Swedish smorgasbords but damn good renditions of coq au vin, steak au poivre, and bouillabaisse.
Halfway through the first term, my class started working in the restaurant school, cooking for customers. Most of the time, our lunchmenu was pure Sweden: plates of gravlax with boiled potatoes and herring in all manner of sauces—mustard and dill, cream, curry, and 1-2-3 with slivered onions. We also prepared contemporary classics like toast Skagen: a sautéed round of bread topped with shrimp salad, finished with a spoonful of whitefish roe. Dinner, on the other hand, was typically French, which was considered an elegant cut above homey Swedish fare: sole meunière or duck a l’orange.
We worked in rotating shifts, so I might be a waiter for three weeks, then a dishwasher, then a line cook. I was a decent waiter and I knew it was useful to see how customers behaved in the front of the house, how they ordered, and how they regarded their meal once it was served, but I never felt at home in the front like I did in the back. The back of the house was where the real action, the real creativity, was. Even with only forty seats in the restaurant, and even if only half of them were filled, the kitchen was guaranteed to be humming at a pitch that bordered on chaos. And it was that organized chaos that I loved. I still do.
At restaurant school, the kitchen hierarchy was structured like most professional kitchens—using the classic French
brigade de cuisine
. Each
chef de partie
was assigned a distinct task—meat, fish, salads—and one person was designated the expediter, who organized and dispensed orders as they came in from the dining room.
Although teamwork systems had been around in professional kitchens since the Middle Ages, it was the now legendary French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier who codified it and put it all down on paper at the beginning of the twentieth century in his classic book,
Le Guide Culinaire
. The success of the
brigade
depended on employees understanding and embracing two tenets: one being the hierarchy system, and two being the
chef de partie
division of labor, which compartmentalized the tasks of the kitchen into
parties
or parts, each with its own managing chef. Whatever your status, from
garçon
and
commis
at the bottom to
chef de cuisine
at the top, you had to learn where you were in the pecking order. When anyone above you asked for something,you said yes and double-timed it to meet his demands. In turn, you had the right to order around whoever fell below your rank.
In restaurant terms, an expediter is only as good as her or his ability to “order fire.” This means that as the orders come in, the expediter must order the dishes so that everything will be ready to serve at once. A table of four might be having a broiled chicken, a medium steak, a rare steak, and a poached turbot fillet: Each entrée would
Nik, being more moron than comedian, chose this method. His finger wasn’t in the fryer for more than a second before he began screaming, a shocked look on his face as if he hadn’t actually expected it to hurt. Chef John was screaming, too. “You stupid fucking bastard!” he said. “Why the hell did you put your fucking finger in there? Have you lost your mind?”
Niklas quit the program a couple of months later, but I learned an invaluable lesson from his stupidity. The kitchen is a dangerous place and if you want to stay safe, you’ve got to not only watch your own back, you’ve got to keep your eye on all the weak links.
I N ANY PROFESSIONAL KITCHEN , the lower-ranked staff responds to any request from above with military-like respect. “Yes, chef” is what I was taught to say whether he or she asks for a side of beef or your head on a platter. Yes, chef. Yes, chef. Yes, chef. I had failed at soccer and the failure made me humble and determined. At Mosesson, I was determined to be the best. Soon I was serving up not only classic three-course Swedish smorgasbords but damn good renditions of coq au vin, steak au poivre, and bouillabaisse.
Halfway through the first term, my class started working in the restaurant school, cooking for customers. Most of the time, our lunchmenu was pure Sweden: plates of gravlax with boiled potatoes and herring in all manner of sauces—mustard and dill, cream, curry, and 1-2-3 with slivered onions. We also prepared contemporary classics like toast Skagen: a sautéed round of bread topped with shrimp salad, finished with a spoonful of whitefish roe. Dinner, on the other hand, was typically French, which was considered an elegant cut above homey Swedish fare: sole meunière or duck a l’orange.
We worked in rotating shifts, so I might be a waiter for three weeks, then a dishwasher, then a line cook. I was a decent waiter and I knew it was useful to see how customers behaved in the front of the house, how they ordered, and how they regarded their meal once it was served, but I never felt at home in the front like I did in the back. The back of the house was where the real action, the real creativity, was. Even with only forty seats in the restaurant, and even if only half of them were filled, the kitchen was guaranteed to be humming at a pitch that bordered on chaos. And it was that organized chaos that I loved. I still do.
At restaurant school, the kitchen hierarchy was structured like most professional kitchens—using the classic French
brigade de cuisine
. Each
chef de partie
was assigned a distinct task—meat, fish, salads—and one person was designated the expediter, who organized and dispensed orders as they came in from the dining room.
Although teamwork systems had been around in professional kitchens since the Middle Ages, it was the now legendary French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier who codified it and put it all down on paper at the beginning of the twentieth century in his classic book,
Le Guide Culinaire
. The success of the
brigade
depended on employees understanding and embracing two tenets: one being the hierarchy system, and two being the
chef de partie
division of labor, which compartmentalized the tasks of the kitchen into
parties
or parts, each with its own managing chef. Whatever your status, from
garçon
and
commis
at the bottom to
chef de cuisine
at the top, you had to learn where you were in the pecking order. When anyone above you asked for something,you said yes and double-timed it to meet his demands. In turn, you had the right to order around whoever fell below your rank.
In restaurant terms, an expediter is only as good as her or his ability to “order fire.” This means that as the orders come in, the expediter must order the dishes so that everything will be ready to serve at once. A table of four might be having a broiled chicken, a medium steak, a rare steak, and a poached turbot fillet: Each entrée would
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