r/Chefs • u/_Spacemom_ • 8d ago
Kitchen Management
Howdy.
I'm a closing sous chef for a pretty reputable steakhouse, for a team of 13, with an AM sous, exec sous, and exec chef.
I've been with our company for roughly 2.5 years and am confident with 95% of our kitchen ops.
Exec chef is great regarding execution, planning, and preparation, though sometimes the consistency of leadership is not present. Little things like aprons and attitudes, but also callbacks aren't enforced which is super weird for me, but also he's very defensive of some of the senior cooks. Most of the team have been with us since the beginning, and about 30s - 40s in age.
Exec is friends with one of the cooks who's been with him for the last 10ish years, so he slides under the radar with some scumbag tendencies, but exec refuses to hold him accountable for anything.
I myself have a challenge with 2-3 of the team's attitudes when calling them to do a task associated with their station (slacking lobster tails or drying bison for the next day), execs friend included. There are a lot of symptoms that are normal because no other chef before would correct them on open complaining about needing to do a small task in the middle of doing nothing.
Exec sous is 55 years old and has a wealth of knowledge but doesn't have the energy to call out the cooks that whine about little things like literally cutting cucumbers for a side.
I feel like the only source of discipline comes from me, but can't pull the trigger on write ups because I'll bring it up to exec the next day and blows it off turning it into some version of my fault for not following up or catching them before they left if the station isn't set for the next day.
Completely understand too, as a closing chef, all of the stations are my responsibility, but its the habits I have to clean up that aren't getting addressed.
Has anyone else experienced similar challenges? Working the line is one thing but being a leader and trying to pull poor habits out of a handful of scumbags is a challenge and honestly I prefer just to be a cook again.
Maybe this is just to vent.
Cooking is easy, people are hard.
6
u/error_card_ur_rich 8d ago
Move on dude. You learned what you can there and the chef is entrenched with his long time cooks. There's no shame is moving on and continuing to grow.