Photo lifted from the web, since I am too busy to stop and snap a shot of my own…
A wise man once said: “If at first you don’t suceed – Oh, just give it to me, for crying out loud!”
Among the daily battles I’ve been fighting in order to get the food quality up from where it was has been the Battle of the Chicken Salad and the Battle of the Tuna Salad.
These are two pretty straightforward products but I was appalled at how awful they were. My first day I had every one of the prep staff take a spoon and taste the concoction one of them had just made. They all dipped their spoons in and tasted and all nodded in ageement that it was good. I looked around with unabashed amazement and told them that I simply did not believe them. There was no way they were telling the truth if they said that mess was actually edible. More lessons on seasoning, flavor, balance, yada-yada-yada.
The prep person assigned to make all the cold salads, including chicken and tuna salads, asked me to taste two big bowls she’d made and was preparing to send out. I tasted, but reserved my comment. I asked her what she thought. She said she thought it was good. I looked at her steadily without saying anything and she added that she didn’t actually taste any of the salads because she didn’t like the flavor of chicken salad or tuna salad. I raised my eyebrows and asked (because I wanted to be sure I understood): “Are you telling me you don’t taste your food before you send it out?”
“No, I make it the same way all the time so I really don’t need to, and I just can’t stand the taste of this stuff anyway.”
“Well,” I said. “That stops today. Right now. From this moment on you have to taste every dish you make and you have to get at least two other people to taste it also.” This isn’t punitive, it’s sensible. I pointed out to her that was the reason Chef and BD and I were always calling on each other to taste one another’s soups, sauces, marinades, salads, dressings… It wasn’t ego or “taste this, dude, it’s awesome’. It was because we needed to know if it tasted the best it could. Handing her a spoon, I made her taste each salad in turn. She put the smallest samples on her spoons and slipped them over her lips. She made a couple of little gagging motions that made me want to clock her right in her jaw (metaphoricallly… metaphorically). She shrugged and said it was okay. I asked her how much would she pay for sandwich made with these salads and she said she wouldn’t order chicken or tuna, she’d have a hamburger. I gave her a scalding look, trying to decide if she was being a smart-ass or an ignoramous.
Slowly, deliberately, I took the bowls of sloppy, amatuerishly chopped and mayonnaise smothered salads and scraped them into the trash. Extreme, I know, but sometimes the best way to get across the point that people are producing garbage is to actually shovel it into the garbage right in front of them. I trashed 2 1/2 hour’s worth of labor on her part (which, btw, should only have taken her about 30 minutes – but one crisis at a time, please) while she and the rest of the staff watched in silent shock. Across the tables BD grinned and said: “Niiiiiiice!”
I turned back to T and said: “Let’s begin again. I’m going to teach you step by step how to make these dishes and how to do it more quickly. I’m going to treat you as if it is your first day and as if you don’t know anything about cooking or food whatsoever. Based on the dishes of your’s I’ve seen, that is the only conclusion I can come to. If that’s wrong, then I apologize, but I can only go on what I have seen.” I made her follow me with a notepad as we went into the cooler and collected all the ingredients. I demonstrated how to clean and cut the chicken, mark it on the grill and bake it in the oven. How to drain the canned tuna and prepare all the mis en place. I showed her how to lightly sautee the finely diced onions to take the sting out of the flavor and allow more sweetness to come through. I taught her how to balance sweetness from the onions and some smoked chili powder with sour from lemon juice and sharpness from mustard, melding it with the right amount of mayonnaise and seasonings. I demonstrated how to shred the chicken instead of hacking it into huge chunks, how to fold in the tuna and not reduce it to a cat food paste. Most importantly, how to taste and season, taste and season. In 30 minutes we had two new bowls of salads and the vote from all the tasters was “Wow, very good”. “Now this,” I told T, “is a salad I would pay for.” We sent it over to the bistro and rolled out more prep for the day.
The next day J makes chicken salad. He pretty much follows the recipe I showed T, but makes a few changes, showing some initiative and thoughtfulness. He calls me over to taste. Okay, it’s not fabulous, but it is miles away from the crap they were making. I make a couple of very small adjustments and tell him it is a go, it is a salad I’d pay for. A little later I get a call from the manager of the bistro. He tells me the chicken and tuna salad we sent over the day before got rave reviews, and they saw a 25% increase in the sale of chicken salads and a 15% increase in tuna. The one he got earlier this day was pretty good, but could we just make more like the kind they had the day before? Could that just become the house salad recipe? One customer had bought 4 chicken salad sandwiches to take home for the family for dinner. Chicken salad… for dinner! She proclaimed it the Best Chicken Salad Ever. I wouldn’t go that far, but it was pretty good. I hung up the phone and told T when I saw her the next day what the response had been, and explained that right there was an example of why we always do the best we can, always prepare our food like we are feeding our own families, and how making food that people will buy is the difference between having a job and looking for a job.
She said she understood, but I’m not convinced she does. Not really, down in her gut. There’s a place for everyone but if you are not going to engage your brain or your heart then maybe you should find a job where those things aren’t required. I promise you will be unhappy trying to skate by in this kitchen.
Chef told me I have to create some kind of recipe for my Best Chicken Salad Ever. I hate recipes, by the way.
First up I made an escolar ceviche salad with wakami seaweed, pineapple and samsutra oranges. That was really awesome and cleansed out palates for the next course.
I whipped up a very simple but very delicious butternut squash soup with two spice-crusted seared scallops. I used turmeric in the spice and I don't think I will do that again because it gave the scallops a yellow coloring I didn't care for. But they tasted great.
Next course was coriander and ginger seared tuna, sliced and served with an heirloom tomato and heart of palm salad with a little crumble of Bulgarian feta. Really nice but I overcooked the tuna a little bit.
For the entree, I kept it simple and made it a crowd-pleaser (that is, what S. likes best). Smoked salmon filet, green bean casserole and mashed potatoes. The potatoes were some fingerlings I was just trying to use up, and they were good, but not fluffy. I played around with the idea of a sauce, but opted to just go with the salmon as is.
