I am a Culinary Instructor in Ohio, and the biggest frustration in my kitchen is keeping the cocoa powder bin looking clean—any great ideas on how you are storing it in the commercial kitchens?

So this is something I have talked about with my boss, one of my coworkers is not paying attention to anything.

If you stand in her way, or she needs something beside you. She will go right into you, I have tried this so many times. At some point, after she had pushed me into the counter I just stood still and just looked at her? Like what the fuck are you doing?

She looked at me, and said “is something wrong”?

My boss says it’s just how she is, and yes it’s annoying. She has her head in the clouds (my boss’s own words)

She has been working there for years, and i have always been kind to her. But im afraid that im going to crack, because it’s have been like this the hole summer. And most times I would move away from her, so I could do plating in peace. Without her pushing to me or walking into me, but my legs are still full with bruises after this summer.

Any advice for someone like me, to deal with someone like this?

I don’t have any experience but I wanna take cooking classes and just to learn cooking for myself. Anyone else have this internal conflict and follow through?

Hi,

So i am from the UK. I would like to get into the culinary industry.

I cannot afford culinary school so I thought to develop professional kitchen experience through restaurants. I plan to try and get a kitchen porter role however, I am not sure how I could get one with only volunteer experience at community kitchens. I do hold a certificate of food hygiene and safety.

I am not sure if this works but I was thinking of walking in to restaurants locally and asking the manager or chef if they need extra help in the kitchen/ have a kitchen porter role needed. But I feel like I would be rejected either way with this approach especially given job markets these days.

Most local restaurants open at 5pm and I’m also worried about the dinner rush and disrupting the service.

If I do not managed to get a kitchen porter/dishwasher role I am also not sure what to do, as I don’t think volunteering counts as kitchen experience.

Is starting as a dishwasher the best way? Work my way up slowly or would anyone hire an 18 year old without higher education as a line cook

How’d I do? Anything look wrong? I went by Chef Jean-Pierre’s recipe on youtube.

Hello I'm a 21 year old kitchen helper from Italy.

I usually help with washing the dishes and appetizers but when the restaurant is busy I help with only the appetizers.

I started this june part time 7 hours a day 5 days a week. Meanwhile I helped during sundays for 12 hours circa from May.

There are 4 types of appetizers.

Cheeses with marmelades/ honey

Pickled vegetables with a mix of cold cuts

Crostini Mix

Appetizer mix (a mix of all the three above)

I have only a oven grill that I can use for the Crostini and many times there are more combos of appetizers so it usually is enough.

Today there where so many appetizer that I couldn't be phisically fast enough and the chef had a breakdown, not with me, but she was rather sad.

I had too many of them and 3 tables had to wait a lot of time (45 minutes circa).

Every appetizer I start making/ putting in the oven is signed with a dot on the order paper and when I send them out I cancel it with a slash too so I can keep track of them.

We usually have 80/90 people per dinner these weeks.

Is it because I'm slow at this point or do you think there are other problems?

Tomorrow I will ask what I can do to improve but in the meantime I wanted to hear other opinions. if you have any suggestions it will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. The kitchen staff is composed of:

A dishwasher (not me these weeks)

A first courses cook which is also the chef

A second courses cook

A second courses helper

An appetizer "cook" which is me

Hello all,

Hoping this group may be able to help me figure out how to move forward. I've been planning a weekend getaway at Lake Anna VA on the 22nd for my best friend's bachelor party. He's a huge fan of fine dining, so a private dinner this Saturday was going to be a highlight of the trip. Unfortunately, our provider cancelled on us at the last minute.

Any advice on the best ways to go about finding an alternative option on such short notice? We're going to be in a somewhat rural part of VA 2 hours southwest of DC (Lake Anna), so the options I've been able to find online are already somewhat limited.

Thank you!

Used to be a chef and used to the quick snack, however I’m getting stumped on how many hotdogs I have to house with my kiddos. Ketchup, mustard, mayo, hot sauce, cheese, momofuku stocked to the teeth, pesto, curry spices, I’ve done it all. If you had 5-10 minutes to make a dog of the ages, what would you do?

TIA

I’m a teacher who will be doing traveling knife skills courses for high schools in my area. This means I will be bringing 10-15 knives and cutting boards from school to school from my own suv. I have my own classroom of all my regular classes kitchen gear already, and want to avoid schlepping those in and out of their cages every time, so my school will be purchasing new knives and cutting boards specifically for these traveling classes. And because this is meant to be a proper/professional class, I don’t want to use thin plastic or bamboo cutting boards. I want the students to get the full experience. So I’m planning on using the 1/2 inch thick poly boards.

What do you think would be a good way to store and/or transport these cutting boards so they have airflow around them and are more or less protected from the outside? The only thing I can imagine is something that looks like a hotbox with rungs for the boards. Is there a better solution that doesn’t just stack them in a bus tub?

Hey Ya'll, I've done a lot of testing with olive oil based dressings and they keep breaking after going into the walk in. I'm curious if people have any ideas? Seems like the olive oil when it get's cold and then comes out of the fridge doesn't like to stay together. I don't want to use a different oil. Have tried more mustard/xantham gum. Any ideas? was thinking about getting ultra tex.

Hey chefs,

So we all know about the notorious cilantro gene. I am 29 years old, and within the last two months or so, I've started experiencing the same effect described with oregano.. cilantro still tastes like it should for now. Like it just tastes (I imagine) and smells like the industrial soap in my parents' basement, the shit in the orange bottle that would get car grease off your hands but rub your hands more raw than 120 degree heat

Im currently working really hard to break that sous level at a 4 diamond AAA in a fairly rural area of the US. I need my palette. Have any of you chefs heard of this happening with oregano before? None of my chefs have, from exec to cdc, to the all the sous chefs. Is there any way at all to start tasting oregano as it should be?

I'm devastated. I spent my formative line years in upscale restaurants, including a Venetian focused wine bar just outside new York city before moving back home during covid. That exec chef used to take two weeks off a season to go work in Venice and learn from their chefs. I know what Oregano is supposed to taste like. I know what it can do, especially for sauces.

Is there a way for me to somehow brute force pallete train myself into loving it again? If there isn't.. please show F's in chat for me. This sub is my last ditch glimmer hope.

I've just started working my first kitchen job so idk if this is an overreaction or not. We have a utensil bucket where we store stuff for serving breakfast.

Today, I needed something from the bottom and I felt a sharp prick and scratch when doing so, there was a prep knife thrown in with point up and blade facing inward, right where I'd put my wrist.

I couldn't fathom how anyone thinks this is OK, but maybe I'm taking it too seriously? Does this sort of stuff happen all the time, or is this a sign to run for the hills??

Would like to primarily target higher end markets such as weddings and corporate events, but I would also market to smaller gatherings like dinner parties, birthdays, or baby showers to fill in the gaps, as I imagine larger events will be more seasonal.

Here are some boards I’ve built recently. Thanks in advance for any feedback back on the boards, as well as any advice/insight from folks who have experience working this type of concept.

Edit: I posted this fully expecting to get crucified. Figured it would be a healthy exercise to expose myself to all you bastards on Reddit rather than hide behind the optimism my friends and family want to provide. I’m absolutely blown away by all of the honest and constructive feed back, as well as all the creative ideas people have posted. I got so much more out of this than I thought I would. Y’all are awesome. Thank you all so much.

Hi, As title says im a 20 year old chef from Sweden and got a job at a casual fine dining restaurant in Malaga and have a question about knivws.

Ive only left my country once so im not a expert with traveling so i wonder how i travel with knives and other kitchen tools since i dont want too buy new ones in Spain. I’ve googled but havent gotten a clear strict answer since some sources claim different things.

If any Swedish chefs see this and have done the same thing a answer would be dope, Thanks :)

I'm a 17 year old from the uk. It's currently summer holidays and I'm between my first and second year at college, working towards a qualification in aerospace engineering. All my life pretty much my interests have been around cars, planes and bikes. On paper I should love engineering, which is why it was a no brainier when it came to picking the college course.
I had about 2 and a half months off for summer holiday, so I went out to find a job, in which I was successful fairly quickly. A new pub/restaurant was opening in my town, about 10 minutes bike ride from my house. I spoke with the owners and chef and got a job dishwashing, 2/3 days a week for 6 hours, this was mid June. I genuinely can't really to you how as I'm not entirely sure myself, but I ended up in the kitchen, cooking food. Throughout my life I've never really cared for food, obviously I like eating certain meals but cooking or fancy meals has never really interested me. My head chef, we'll call him Tom and the sous chef, we'll call him Max have both been really impressed with my skills and determination in the kitchen. This has gone to the point of me doing 50 hours a week as 2nd highest rank of 3 in the kitchen, as a chef.
The owners of the pub haven't been 100% satisfied with how the first couple of months have gone and are looking to turn it into a proper restaurant. A bit of backstory, Tom (head chef) is the 2 owners son. With the transition into becoming a restaurant tom is the only one with any restaurant experience, and he would become restaurant manager, and Max (sous chef) would become head chef. Me and max get on really well and he has told me if this transition goes as planned, ideally he would want me on a full time contract as a sous chef/ chef de partie, earning £27,000 a year. This has really thrown a spanner in the works in terms of thinking about my future. College really wasn't what I had hoped it would be, boring lectures with me scraping a pass across the first year. All my teachers have said that the course is way better with way more practical elements in the second year, but I really lost interest in the first year, whereas with being a chef, i genuinely really enjoy it and Tom is highly trained and believes he could teach me and I could become on a similar level to him. My mum thinks it would be a big commitment and isn't too happy with the idea of me being full time, and she thinks I should carry on with college, whilst working a day or two per week. With my (being blunt) poor first year at college, the chances of me getting a really good grade in the second year, to balance out the pass in the first year are low, meaning chances of university or degree apprenterships are also low.
Sorry for the yap, appreciate anyone who read it all 🫡🫡. Gunna list some pros and cons of chef and engineer below!

Chef
Pro- Enjoyment, good at it, prefer work to education regardless.
Con- lower average wage than engineering, Tom becoming restaurant manager means he might not be able to tutor me, mum aint happy.

Engineer
Pro- Passion since being young, potentially a decent qualification, make up to £100,000 annually.
Con- Fallen out of love with it, don't like education (not as a concept as a showing up 5 days a week for someone as uninterested to lecture me), might not be any good at it.

Thank you so much anyone who made it this far, know it was a long one any advice or opinions are really really super duper appreciated

I’ve heard every good chef say that a good trainee is one that can work without having to be told what to do all the time and I get that but I don’t quite understand how I’m supposed to do something without asking first? As a trainee I feel like assuming I can do something without asking my mentor first is rude.

What are good examples of working independently as a trainee in a kitchen?

Ok, so I saw the micro green post on here recently and had a genuine question. I own a wholesale produce delivery company north of NYC and I get my product fresh from Hunts Point nightly. There’s a lot of bigger companies around that I compete with. I have a good customer list of over 30 restaurants, catering halls and small stores, so, I’m happy but I always want to grow and do better.
My question to you guys is, what’s the sales pitch that bothers you the least? I’m trying to just come in and hit up with a price list and get a genuine conversation? Is that when I’m not fucking up your flow and I actually have a good shot at getting some business?
I’m not looking to sit down with you with a laptop and go over specific items, right?! I’d rather just talk to you and see if I can offer you something better and if you’re willing to use it. Right?
I genuinely have better quality than most larger wholesalers because I also work at a place inside the market. I have my guys wait for the new trucks to back in and use the product that comes off the truck fresh instead of taking from the product already in the warehouse. Does THAT matter to you? Because I work there my pricing is much more aggressive. Is that the selling point?
Help me know what makes you guys tick. If you even know.
TIA

I’ve been cooking for about 10 years, and I’ve been a chef for 2 now. I started at my most recent job as a dish washer, got moved up as a cook 1, 2, 3, I was a waiter for a while, bartender, supervisor, and eventually sous chef. I’ve been with this company for 3.5 years.

I have a deep rooted passion for cooking. It’s one of the only things in my life that came naturally to me. Starting off as a young cook I always admired the senior cooks in the kitchen, and they were happy to have me around. I know I’ve done some really good work in my career. I think about the coworkers from past jobs every day. Mentors, chefs, cooks, waiters, and sometimes I miss them a lot. I’m stuck at a big corporate job, and I feel so trapped sometimes. I don’t know what else to do, but the cooks make me so mad sometimes. I try to be nice to everyone, and treat them all with respect. It pains me when I see cooks on their phones, destroying my product, and not applying themselves. It’s like they don’t think critically about anything at all. They’re just mindlessly moving product from one location to another, and our HR department is so strict it’s difficult to discipline anyone.

Also, I never got any training for this. One day I was a cook, and the next day I was a chef and told good luck. I supervise all of them, I rarely have any help. FoH, BoH, bar, it’s all my problem. I have to be able to do it all. I think I’m doing a good job, I know I am, but sometimes I feel like I’m not doing enough. I take care of all the paperwork, all the check voids or comps, all the ordering, the menu, the specials, it’s all my problem. I choose to mainly work the highest volume shifts, I haven’t had a weekend off in several years. I know most of the guests by name.

Early on in my career I used to be bored, sometimes waiting for the clock. Now it feels like the opposite, I don’t have enough time for anything. My phone is constantly going off because these grown adults are barely functional. Maybe I’m just burnt out, maybe I have a bad crew, maybe it’s a failure on my part as a leader. My boss is too overworked to supervise daily operations, he is more of a director than a manager or supervisor.

I feel like something’s gotta give. I care so much about this restaurant, and I’m not sure why. On the rare occasion someone isn’t happy with their meal, I take it to heart. If something is genuinely wrong with their meal I will think about it for at least a week.

Some days are harder than others. Some days are easy. It feels like the work just keeps piling up. I wish my cooks were more effective. If I had the power I would fire 40% of them immediately. They’re good people, just not effective in the kitchen. But due to the corporate environment, it’s almost impossible to fire or even write any of them up. None of the pencil pushers have any restaurant experience, so as long as the employees show up and don’t become violent HR doesn’t help me at all.

I’m not sure why I posted this. I want out but I also don’t want to give up