Archive for Catering Advice

If you have a thrill for cooking, and want to step up your game a bit you may want to stop what you're doing, and listen closely to these helpful tips. If you’re going to do something, you might as well be as good as you possibly can at it, and in the cooking realm no exceptions are taken. Most people think they can go from recipe to recipe, and be consider a top dog in the cooking world. While recipes are the fiber of the cooking world, they won’t give you the full key things in becoming a better cook.

1. Listen to Those Around You

If you are a professional cook, or even just a home cook make it an effort to listen closely to someone you know that has skills when it comes to cooking. Their are so many different strong points each cook holds, and if you get to take a journey into a  friend, or chefs strong point listen to what they have to say. This will help make your more rounded in the cooking world, and not just a one trick pony. By personally working with different chefs, and friends with different backgrounds, I now know how to cook more cuisines from different countries then I can name on a map.

2. Research

Not all culinary work comes from out of the kitchen. If your going to prepare good food, then you need to do your research behind it. Different foods have different times  in the year when the are in season, and at their best. Food has different way of being seasoned, prepared, etc. to make it at its very best. And any good chef in the world will agree that sometimes you can not rely on a recipe for a dish, but by having to go in, and taste the dish until it is perfect.

3. Have Confidence in Your Dish

No one is going to want to eat a dish that a cook made if you describe it as “ yea it’s alright”. You have to put your heart behind it, and know that the dish will be a home run no matter who is eating. Cook how you would want your food to be cooked for yourself, and prepare the dish as if it has a piece of you behind it(not literally though).

I had the pleasure of working side by side with a chef that new Italian food as good as anyone in the world. Maybe he knew it so well because of years of learning or maybe because he grew up in Italy. I worked for him in a successful restaurant for years, but he told me the first place he acquired didn’t run as smoothly as this on.

I wonder why this was? He told he used the exact same menu for the restaurant, and the location was even better then the restaurant that he owned now. It didn’t seem to make any sense to me of why the first place didn’t work out. Finally, it began to come clear to me why the place didn’t run as well as the current spot he owned, and cooked at.

He began to tell me he ran the place with his brother, and how their was a huge glass window into the kitchen so you could see exactly how your food was prepared, and cooked. He said his brother, and himself ran it that way for a couple months, and at first had a lot of customers, but later fell to almost no one coming in.

He believed in showing the people where the food was coming from, how top quality the dish is, this would make them appreciate the dish more, and the work that goes into it. He said some night he left the place just to his brother, the only person he trusted to run the shop when he was away.

His brother still currently works with us, and when my boss isn’t around he is the one running the restaurant, and cooking. One thing my boss, didn’t seem to notice is how messy his brother is when it comes to cooking, and how hygiene isn’t on the top of that charts for him. There were times where I say this man pick a wedgie from his butt while picking up chicken he dropped on the ground only to later be cooked. I know this is gross, but whenever I brought it up to him he threatened to give me the boot.

This made it all clear to me though, the reason this place is successful is because his brother only works in the back part of the kitchen where no one can see him. I could see how no one would want to go to a restaurant to see a live show of a chef preparing their food while grabbing at himself, and destroying their dishes.