Week Three
Here we go again -- this time it's a three-week summary. If you notice that parts of these essays flow well while other sections seem forced, well, you're right. I get instructions like, "Summarize your first three weeks... and be sure to cover topics A, B, C, X, and Z." In this essay in particular, I wrote for awhile and then decided I'd better squeeze those required topics in there, giving the second half a bit of a disjointed feel. I know, I shouldn't have mentioned it and you wouldn't have noticed.
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Friends and family members like to ask me what I’m learning at Canlis Restaurant, perhaps expecting me to tell them about some fabulous new sauce, that I’ve discovered how to grill the perfect steak, or that I’ve happened across a trick to make people like Brussels sprouts (no trick needed here—I love ‘em). Instead, to their slight disappointment, I tell them that I’m learning how to work.
It’s certainly true that I’ve learned new sauces and been presented with new ways to prepare food, but that learning pales in comparison to the practical, hands-on knowledge gained by actually working the line five nights a week. Despite the best efforts of the CIA’s chef-instructors, there’s no way the kitchens at school could ever simulate the pressure of serving 300 guests on a Saturday night. I liked to think I was setting up my station appropriately and working efficiently during, say, Cuisines of Asia, but what I’ve discovered is that without volume, there’s no way to know for sure. At Canlis I’ve quickly learned how to best set up the vegetable station for my specific style, and am working daily to improve my efficiency both before and during service. Best of all, there’s almost immediate feedback—if your station isn’t set up well, the demands of a busy service will let you know in a hurry (if the chef doesn’t call you on it first!).
In my first module, I commented that the kitchen at Canlis was like that of any other restaurant. That’s somewhat true of the way the kitchen works, as well—despite what people outside the industry may think, the kitchens of great restaurants are not filled with a dozen chefs, each with 25 years of experience, painstakingly assembling each dish with tweezers and a miniature palate knife. The techniques being used typically aren’t anything groundbreaking, either—sautéing and braising have been around forever and aren’t going anywhere.
Rather, I’ve gathered that what sets a restaurant like Canlis apart are the quality of the inputs, the care that goes into preparing them, and that everything is made from scratch. The very best meat, seafood, and produce items available arrive each day, are checked in, and stored appropriately. If something isn’t right, it’s set aside to be returned.
Stocks and sauces are simmered, skimmed, strained, and put away, even thought you could take shortcuts or use commercial bases instead. It costs more to use the best and it takes longer to do things the right way, but ultimately your food, and your restaurant, will be much better off for it.
In the kitchen, up to four stations contribute to each plate: grill, plating, vegetable, and sauté. The flow is such that the plating station sets up the appropriate plate for the menu item, and vegetable and sauté bring their items to the plate. The plate is then pushed out to the grill, where it receives the correct protein before being passed to the server (or is simply passed to the server, in the case of a plate which does not receive an item from the grill). Fire and stage calls come from the grill as well as the plating station, both of which have ticket printers, with the grill ultimately making the “send out table six” call, followed by the plating station communicating what is needed for the table to sauté and vegetable.
As mentioned above, preparations are elaborate and carefully carried out, while presentations are quite simple, as mentioned in my previous essay. Canlis believes they are using the best possible inputs and treats their ingredients very well from receiving to cooking, then gives them top billing on each plate by making the steak or piece of fish the dish’s focal point.
To this point, cooking techniques are very much the same as what I’ve been taught at school. As part of my daily mise en place, I make both emulsion and reduction sauces, and cook vegetables in a large pot of salted, rapidly boiling water, then shock them in ice water. I haven’t encountered any techniques which run contrary to CIA teaching, though it’s worth noting I’ve only been at Canlis for three weeks and have only really experienced one station.
Consistency, while not a stated goal or ideal, is certainly evident in the kitchen. I make my sauces the same exact way each day, and have observed other cooks going about their work with the same exacting repetition. This is particularly important for a restaurant such as Canlis, with its long history, stellar reputation, and established regular customers, many of whom have been dining there for more than 25 years.
As in any kitchen, utilization is very important—but not at the expense of maintaining high quality standards. If something is leftover, such as a vegetable mixture from the fish special, it might be saved and used for an upcoming family meal. Meat and seafood trim are similarly utilized. But if something is going bad, it gets tossed, not used for family meal. The chefs would much rather take the loss on an item than serve anything less than high quality food to either their employees or their customers. Other than family meal, utilization plays an important role in both daily specials as well as the daily amusé (known at Canlis as the “welcoming hors d’oeuvre”).
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Friends and family members like to ask me what I’m learning at Canlis Restaurant, perhaps expecting me to tell them about some fabulous new sauce, that I’ve discovered how to grill the perfect steak, or that I’ve happened across a trick to make people like Brussels sprouts (no trick needed here—I love ‘em). Instead, to their slight disappointment, I tell them that I’m learning how to work.
It’s certainly true that I’ve learned new sauces and been presented with new ways to prepare food, but that learning pales in comparison to the practical, hands-on knowledge gained by actually working the line five nights a week. Despite the best efforts of the CIA’s chef-instructors, there’s no way the kitchens at school could ever simulate the pressure of serving 300 guests on a Saturday night. I liked to think I was setting up my station appropriately and working efficiently during, say, Cuisines of Asia, but what I’ve discovered is that without volume, there’s no way to know for sure. At Canlis I’ve quickly learned how to best set up the vegetable station for my specific style, and am working daily to improve my efficiency both before and during service. Best of all, there’s almost immediate feedback—if your station isn’t set up well, the demands of a busy service will let you know in a hurry (if the chef doesn’t call you on it first!).
In my first module, I commented that the kitchen at Canlis was like that of any other restaurant. That’s somewhat true of the way the kitchen works, as well—despite what people outside the industry may think, the kitchens of great restaurants are not filled with a dozen chefs, each with 25 years of experience, painstakingly assembling each dish with tweezers and a miniature palate knife. The techniques being used typically aren’t anything groundbreaking, either—sautéing and braising have been around forever and aren’t going anywhere.
Rather, I’ve gathered that what sets a restaurant like Canlis apart are the quality of the inputs, the care that goes into preparing them, and that everything is made from scratch. The very best meat, seafood, and produce items available arrive each day, are checked in, and stored appropriately. If something isn’t right, it’s set aside to be returned.
Stocks and sauces are simmered, skimmed, strained, and put away, even thought you could take shortcuts or use commercial bases instead. It costs more to use the best and it takes longer to do things the right way, but ultimately your food, and your restaurant, will be much better off for it.
In the kitchen, up to four stations contribute to each plate: grill, plating, vegetable, and sauté. The flow is such that the plating station sets up the appropriate plate for the menu item, and vegetable and sauté bring their items to the plate. The plate is then pushed out to the grill, where it receives the correct protein before being passed to the server (or is simply passed to the server, in the case of a plate which does not receive an item from the grill). Fire and stage calls come from the grill as well as the plating station, both of which have ticket printers, with the grill ultimately making the “send out table six” call, followed by the plating station communicating what is needed for the table to sauté and vegetable.
As mentioned above, preparations are elaborate and carefully carried out, while presentations are quite simple, as mentioned in my previous essay. Canlis believes they are using the best possible inputs and treats their ingredients very well from receiving to cooking, then gives them top billing on each plate by making the steak or piece of fish the dish’s focal point.
To this point, cooking techniques are very much the same as what I’ve been taught at school. As part of my daily mise en place, I make both emulsion and reduction sauces, and cook vegetables in a large pot of salted, rapidly boiling water, then shock them in ice water. I haven’t encountered any techniques which run contrary to CIA teaching, though it’s worth noting I’ve only been at Canlis for three weeks and have only really experienced one station.
Consistency, while not a stated goal or ideal, is certainly evident in the kitchen. I make my sauces the same exact way each day, and have observed other cooks going about their work with the same exacting repetition. This is particularly important for a restaurant such as Canlis, with its long history, stellar reputation, and established regular customers, many of whom have been dining there for more than 25 years.
As in any kitchen, utilization is very important—but not at the expense of maintaining high quality standards. If something is leftover, such as a vegetable mixture from the fish special, it might be saved and used for an upcoming family meal. Meat and seafood trim are similarly utilized. But if something is going bad, it gets tossed, not used for family meal. The chefs would much rather take the loss on an item than serve anything less than high quality food to either their employees or their customers. Other than family meal, utilization plays an important role in both daily specials as well as the daily amusé (known at Canlis as the “welcoming hors d’oeuvre”).
posted by JMB at
10:09 PM
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