The False Prophet

This is the story of a chef who wasn’t what he claimed to be.  As some of you know, I’ve bounced between two completely different careers all my life.  My passion is the restaurant industry, but Information Technology pays the bills.  I would work as a chef until I got tired of being dirt poor and then go back to IT for a while to make some real money.  This story is about one of those times when I was working in a restaurant.

About 3 years before this took place I had bought my first restaurant.  It was a neighborhood place that had once been the gathering place for the whole neighborhood.  The owner had gotten older and was suffering the ravages of old age, alcoholism, and a long and colorful cocaine habit.  He was burned out and ready to retire.  As you can imagine, the factors I listed contributed to the restaurant’s decline and staying open day to day had become a challenge.  I was sure I could return the place to its former glory so I decided to give it a go.  I won’t go into all the details because it’s a long and complicated story, but basically the obstacles were more than I could overcome in the 3 years I owned the place and I eventually closed it before I lost my house and everything else.  This doesn’t really have anything to do with the story but I felt it was important that you understood my state of mind when this odyssey started.

Ok, so back to the story at hand.  After my Italian place closed I was burned out and really had no motivation to work anywhere.  A lifelong friend called me and asked me to take a position as Sous Chef at a locally owned French restaurant as a favor to him so I reluctantly agreed without really investigating the condition of that business.  On my first day I learned that the restaurant was losing about $40,000 per month and the Executive Chef was feuding with the owner.  On top of this they had a restaurant consultant there who was offering some really bad advice and bleeding them dry for about $4,000 per week.  Morale among the staff was very low and sales were terrible.  We had some nights in those first weeks where we had only 10 or 15 customers all night.  This was a larger restaurant and could seat almost 200 customers at a time.  After I started I learned that the owner had hired me after the Executive chef had offered the position to someone else and it had caused lots of hard feelings and bruised egos.

The restaurant was a high end place in Omaha’s Old Market District.  It had been a fixture of the district for about 40 years and was widely known as Omaha’s finest restaurant.  Unfortunately this was not the case anymore and it quickly became evident that the food was only marginal, the restaurant was in disrepair, and the service staff was, with a few exceptions, not qualified to serve fine food.  I didn’t know any of the politics at the time I accepted the position, but the owner’s plan was to push the Executive Chef out and move me into that position.  I started moving us slowly back to classical preparation techniques and improving the quality of the food.  The Executive Chef saw that as a direct assault on his authority so my efforts were not well received.  I decided to just put in my time and look for another position.

There is a lot more to the story, but about a month after I started working as Sous Chef the owner called the Executive Chef to the office in the middle of Saturday night service and promptly fired him.  After service he told me that I was the new Executive Chef and he gave me a small raise.  At first I wasn’t excited about this development but soon warmed up the idea and resolved to continue returning that the restaurant to the high quality dining eperience it was known for.

After a couple of months of retooling the menu, the kitchen staff, purchasing procedures, and service procedures, we started to see stronger sales and a much better product.  Things continued to improve over the next few months until we were seeing nightly customer counts of 120 to 150 and about 250 of weekends.  A great review in the local newspaper also helped immensely.  During this time I continued to look for a Sous Chef, but wasn’t having much luck finding one that was a good fit.  One morning the owner called me and told me another Omaha chef had recommended one of his cooks who was ready to move on to a new opportunity.  When our owner contacted him and told him about the open Sous Chef position, he said that he wasn’t interested in a Sous Chef title but would consider it if the title was Chef De Cuisine.  The owner interviewed Keith and was immediately captivated by his enthusiasm and drive to produce great food so he scheduled a time for me to meet him.

If you’re familiar with the structure of a restaurant kitchen you probably know that the position of Chef De Cuisine is a step below the Executive Chef and a step above a Sous Chef.  Not all kitchens have a Chef De Cuisine, but when one is present his/her primary responsibility is to work directly with the kitchen staff to prepare the best quality food possible.  In a kitchen with a Chef De Cuisine the Executive Chef is still ultimately responsible for every aspect of the kitchen’s operation and food preparation, but he/she spends more time on administrative activities than in hands-on food preparation.  Our kitchen wasn’t really big enough to need a Chef De Cuisine, but Keith wanted that title instead of Sous Chef so we just let him have it.

I met with Keith at a Bruegger’s Bagel restaurant to see if we would have the type of synergy needed to work together.  Keith told me his favorite chef was Thomas Keller and it was immediately obvious that he had no patience for anyone who did not also idolize Thomas Keller.  Keith had a huge Thomas Keller chip on his shoulder.   I knew of Thomas Keller as the owner/chef of The French Laundry and Bouchon, which are both known worldwide as among the best restaurants around.  I appreciated this, but still didn’t know too much more about Thomas Keller.  I was just happy that Keith’s idol was not Colonel Sanders.

During the interview Keith said a few things characteristic of an inexperienced chef who doesn’t know much about the financial aspects of kitchen management or the practical side of actually being able to prepare food, serve it to a customer, and accept payment for it.  Since I would be handling the operational part of our kitchen I thought this was worth noting but not serious enough to disqualify him from the position since most of those functions would be my responsibility.  I had previously worked with Keith for a time at Omaha Country club and knew that he was very, very good at food preparation and presentation.  I also knew at that point that the owner was completely sold on this young man and ultimately he would overrule my decision if I rejected him and I would end up working with him anyway.  So Keith was hired.  Sorry for the long lead-in, but you needed to know all that stuff to understand what came next.

He started on a Tuesday night and that’s when this story actually begins.  As I showed him around he just shook his head and sneered at everything he saw.  It began with the chef coats.  Keith was outraged that they didn’t have knotted French buttons rather than plastic ones.  I listened to him rant about this for about 5 minutes before cutting him off and moving on to aprons.  The aprons we used in the kitchen were also wrong.  We apparently needed bistro aprons in order to serve fine food.  Keith and I were to share an office just off the owner’s office.  Keith insisted that he needed his own space to plan and create and couldn’t be bothered by me being in the same room for the 10 minutes each day when I was placing orders.  We had a restaurant cat named Tigger who had been a resident of the downstairs area for about 12 years.  Ketih declared that Tigger had to go.  And he needed his own computer, but it had to be a specific brand and model.

After the initial shock of showing Keith around, I needed to get in the kitchen with the cooks and prepare for service.  Keith decided he would go through our spice rack and then see what was in the freezer.  I told him I’d like him to spend some time observing the line and see how we prepare food and send it out.  He told me that our food was terrible and he was going to change it all anyway and teach us all new preparation techniques so there was no reason for him to observe.  We were all mildly amused by his assessment and he took off, nose held high in the air, to go check out the freezer.

We had an unusually busy night and I was glued to the line for the duration of service.  I could see the freezer door opening and closing occasionally and I hoped that Keith was straightening it up and organizing it a little bit.  We had a very small freezer.  French Café ordered almost everything fresh and we rarely bought anything frozen, with the exception of some New Zealand lamb, Dover sole, and some hash browns for brunch.  We used the freezer when we had small amounts of something left over from fabricating steaks or perhaps fish trimmings or shrimp shells.  We would accumulate them in the freezer until there was enough to make a nice soup or maybe make something for an employee meal.  By using it for this purpose were didn’t waste anything and we were able to keep things in our inventory for longer periods of time instead of having to throw out spoiled products all the time.  At that time we probably had about $8,000 worth of food in there, none of it more than a few weeks old.

At the end of the night as things calmed down on the line I went back to the freezer to check on Keith.  He told me he had cleaned out the freezer.  I was impressed and asked to take a look.  When I looked inside it my heart stopped for a minute.  All that was left in there was a case of lamb racks and a box of hash browns.  When I regained my composure a little bit and made sure there were no knives or other sharp objects nearby I asked him where everything went. 

“I threw it out,” he said.  I asked why.  He answered by starting to spew out an endless list of reasons:   It was labeled with masking tape instead of freezer labels.”  “The date was written in pencil.”  “It wasn’t wrapped properly.”  “We’re no longer going to use that product.”  “I don’t like that product.”  “They would never use that at The French Laundry.”  “I don’t like that brand.”  And the list went on and on.

I managed to control my urge to crush his skull with my bare hands and told him that before throwing out anything else he needed to consult with me first.  He was not happy with that plan and said he didn’t want to do it because I was part of the problem.  I told him he would be required to consult with me before throwing anything out if he wanted to keep his position.  In a classical French kitchen the Executive Chef is the Supreme Ruler and disobeying a direct order is the kitchen equivalent of murdering a young child in a terrible and painful way.  You simply don’t do it or you might lose a body part, be blacklisted in the restaurant community, or maybe just disappear completely one day.  It is the worst possible kitchen offense.  The worst thing that can happen to a kitchen employee is for the Executive Chef to have it in for you.  If this happens you might as well just give up and move on because it will not just simply blow over and everything will be fine one day.  Keith grudgingly agreed to my demand.  I started to think about how I was going to tell the owner that we were going to take an $8,000 hit to our food cost.

The next day I got to the restaurant about 10:00AM.  We were not open for lunch so this left 7 hours before service.  I usually spent the first couple of hours of this time to handle ordering, scheduling, costing parties, and other administrative tasks. By the time the cooks started to roll in all that stuff was out of the way and I was able to be in the kitchen working directly with them all afternoon and through service.  Normally I would be the only one in the kitchen until the cooks got there, but on that day Keith was already there when I arrived.

He had been there for about 2 hours when I arrived and had spent that time throwing away all of the prep items from the saute and pantry stations.  His rationale was that in order to serve the highest quality food we needed to prepare these ingredients on the day they will be used.  One day old will not work because the ingredients will be of lower quality.  I was stunned.  Another $800 into the dumpster.  In most kitchens he would have been out the door at that point but I knew the owner would just bring him back immediately and that would only embolden him even more.  I reminded him of our discussion from the night before when I told him he wasn’t allowed to throw anything out without consulting me first.  He just sneered and smiled.  I resisted my urge to pound a butter knife into his face and resolved to just let nature take its course when the saute and pantry cooks showed up for work.

In a professional kitchen one of the rules is that you don’t mess with another team member’s station.  If you need something from their station you must ask them for it and they have the option to tell you no with no hard feelings from either party.  That’s just the way it is.  The Executive Chef, Chef De Cuisine, and Sous Chef have more access to a cook’s ingredients on his station.  You still have to ask for something, but the cook will never tell you no.  If you take something before the cook gets to work, you must find him immediately right when he gets to work and tell them you took it.  If you are a real team player you will replace the item(s) before he gets there and notify him what you did or offer to prep that item for him before service.  This is true even if you are the Executive Chef.  Again, that’s simply the way it works and there are no exceptions to this rule.  Keith broke this rule and I knew he was going to pay dearly for it.  And he did.

When the saute cook, Carlos, got to his station he began to see what he needed to prep for the evening.  The saute station is a particularly complex station and is only for experienced cooks.  It requires a high degree of accuracy, consistency, speed, and most of all preparedness.  I had watched Keith work the saute station at Omaha Country Club and I knew he was very good at it.  Carlos was better.  Anyway, Carlos immediately noticed that many of his items were missing.  He asked me if I had used anything.

Carlos and I had a good working relationship.  If I really, really got into a bind and took something off his station then he would cut me some slack with the rules of the kitchen as long as it didn’t happen all the time.  This only happened once and I made it up to him with a brand new and very expensive chef’s knife.  Yes, it’s that important.  I told Carlos that he needed to talk to Keith.  He did and a loud argument immediately ensued.  I let it go for a while and decided to end it before Carlos gutted Keith with a boning knife.  In the end Carlos agreed to prep smaller quantities of everything and prep all the items in small quantities every day.  Keith agreed that as long as Carlos followed through on this he would keep out of Carlos’ stuff.  The pantry guy just prepped all his stuff over again and didn’t say anything.  Later I helped him take his trash out to the dumpster and assured him I would try to keep Keith off his station before he got to work.  He would need to prep enough product to get through service but no more.  He was ok with that plan and thanked me. 

We had all come to an agreement that worked for everyone, but now Keith had 2 cooks seriously pissed off at him.  I understood where Keith was coming from about fresh ingredients, but one day in the life of a minced onion doesn’t really make a difference, especially if you’re going to saute it anyway.  Having 2 very good Mexican cooks mad at you is never a good thing no matter how good you are.  They will hold a grudge forever until you apologize and promise never to cross that line again.  I explained this to Keith but he refused to do it.

Keith’s next personal mission was to reorganize our dry spice rack.  We used some dry spices, but we mostly used fresh herbs.  He declared that the spice containers wouldn’t work and he wanted deli containers for everything and he wanted them that day.  We had no use for deli containers so we didn’t have them.  When he was through telling everyone in range about this perceived deficiency I offered to let him go over to the restaurant supply place a few blocks away and pick some up himself and charge them to my account.  I got our sales rep on the phone and handed the phone over to Keith to explain what he needed.  They had all 3 sizes in stock and Keith told them to bring over a case of each size.  They told him all the trucks were done with deliveries but he could come pick them up before 5:00.  It was almost 4:30 and it was a 2 minute drive to get there.  He promptly told them to bring them to him immediately or we would never do business with them again. 

When the restaurant had not been doing well some of our vendors extended us a lot of credit -- way more than they should have and the restaurant supply place was one of those vendors.  We were still paying off a sizable balance with them.  I took the phone away from Keith, apologized, and then told him Keith would be over shortly to pick up the deli containers.  He made his way out the back door mumbling about how everyone was against him.  I think this may have been the only thing he got right during his employment there.

In about 45 minutes Keith got back with the deli containers with his wife in tow.  The spice rack was near the station I was working that night so I listened to him tell his wife about this asshole and that asshole all night as they transferred all the dry spices from their airtight factory containers to semi-airtight deli containers.  During the process Keith found some spices that were obviously very old and he rightfully disposed of those.  He and his wife finished up about the same time as we sent out the last order on the line.  His only comment was that all the food served that night belonged in the dumpster rather than the dining room and we would be making some changes the next day.  We all adjourned for the evening and went our separate ways.

By now you might be wondering why I, as the Executive Chef, didn’t just can this guy and move on.  I did consider that but decided on a different strategy.  Our owner was a prideful man and I knew if I gave Keith the boot then he would just be hired back immediately.  If this happened then he would come back knowing that he had free reign to do anything he wanted and there would be nothing I could do about it.  I would still be responsible for food cost and kitchen operations even though I would be powerless to do anything about any of it.  I decided to let him hang himself.  At the rate he was going I knew it wouldn’t take long.

The next day Keith started “improving” some menu items.  He made a basil olive oil cake that was phenomenal.  He changed our house salad from a handful of spring mix with a few candied pecans to a delicate sculpture of organic butter lettuce and a beautiful vinaigrette and a few small embellishments that I can’t remember.  All these were really good changes and we needed them to freshen our menu.  The only one I didn’t like was when he offered a dessert of 3 sugar cookies.  That was all that was on the plate.  He called it a “playful interpretation of a classic.”  The only thing that made the cookies unique was their very small size.  We didn’t get may takers at $9 per order.

Keith made a number of small changes to the menu that were welcomed because of their simplicity, ease of preparation, and quality ingredients.  For example, in our Caesar salad that we had made tableside for many years he switched out the regular anchovies for some special order (and very expensive) white anchovies.  They were somewhat less salty and didn’t have a strong fish taste like the regular ones.  Very nice.

We had several discussions about the saute oil we were using.  He wanted to switch from the high temp saute oil to grapeseed oil because it had a higher flash point and didn’t impart any unwelcome flavors to foods cooked with it.  I thought that was an excellent idea until I found that grapeseed oil was $105 per gallon and was next to impossible to find in Omaha.  Keith also wanted to upgrade the olive oil, which I thought was a great idea.  I found some organic first cold pressed olive oil and we quickly switched over to it.  We didn’t cook anything in it but it was used in Caesar salads and for some finishing and flavoring on a few dishes so the better quality oil greatly improved the taste of some of these items.

Keith’s next project was to start overhauling entrée items.  His first victim was the Duck.a l’Orange.  Our method of cooking duck was called confit (con-FEE).  This means slowly cooking a highly seasoned food in a bath of pure fat.  It sounds disgusting but it yields a fantastic result if you do it right.  Keith didn’t like this idea so he decided that the duck should be a single breast braised in red wine instead.  He opted for a medium quality cabernet sauvignon from our wine list.  Our cost of this wine was about $30 per bottle and it took 6 bottles to braise a batch of 6 duck halves, so the cost of cooking a duck was $30 even before the cost of the duck.  Of course the duck had to be from a boutique duck farm somewhere in Vermont.  Then there was the sauce.  Keith insisted that we use a highly concentrated duck stock to make the orange sauce.  He started with a case of 6 whole ducks and made a stock from them.  The cost of the ducks he used for the stock was about $75.  He started with about 5 gallons of liquid and after it had cooked for 2 days he had about 2 cups of insanely expensive and highly concentrated stock.  When we figured the total cost of serving half a duck it came to about $54 per plate.  To make this profitable we would need to sell each order for $200.  Keith didn’t see any problem with asking $200 for a 3 ounce duck nreast accompanied by 1 teaspoon of orange sauce served atop a single thin slice of poached turnip.  He said that over time our customers would learn to appreciate fine food and soon everyone would be breaking down the doors to get an order of duck.  I disagreed.  I adjusted his ingredients to make the whole thing less costly and we came up with a combination that he grudgingly accepted and would cost us only about $19 per plate.  We would sell it for $32 and take a loss on this menu item with the intention of using it to draw new customers.  This was a horrible idea but we went with it anyway.  The next time I spoke with the owner I told him that I had doubts about Keith’s ability to develop a profitable menu and he said that part of the process was mine.  I had to make it profitable.

The next item was the lamb rack.  Our racks were served as 4 small chops marinated in an herb and oil mixture and broiled to the customer’s desired degree of doneness.  Keith had other ideas.  He opted for grass fed South Dakota lamb instead of the New Zealand farm-raised product we had been using.  They do not taste the same because the grass-fed lamb is very gamey.  He cut the center part of the loin out of the rack in 2 small sections and then squared off the sides.  Next he used a product called Activa to reattach the pieces.  Activa is an enzyme product that is essentially a “meat glue.”  It binds to the protein molecules in the protein and forms an unbreakable seal.  You could use it to glue a piece of beef to a chunk of fish and it would look and act like it has come from some hybrid land/water beast.  Really a cool product, but you don’t want to do stupid things like that with it because your customers will think you’ve lost your mind.  Anyway, Keith’s method of preparation only used about 30% of the lamb rack and the rest was waste.  He used it to make a very strong lamb stock much like his duck stock only with lamb.  For the next part of this shit show he shaved the sides of the lamb until it was a perfect cube shape.  South Dakota lamb racks were about $26 each, so the cost per order of the 3 oz portion he planned to serve was already $26.  To finish off the plate he served the lamb propped up against a single cippolini onion.  Cippolini onions are similar to a pearl onion but a little larger.  The total price per plate was about $48 which meant we would need to sell 2 ½ ounces of lamb (after cooking) and a single onion all topped with a tablespoon of madeira sauce for $119.  I knew this would never fly in Omaha but I decided to just let him continue hanging himself.

One of French Café’s signature items was our Feench Onion soup.  It had been made the same way for 40 years and was very well known and loved, so he immediately decided to change it.  He switched it from using a beautiful veal stock to a vegetable stock with very little flavor and a taste similar to lukewarm dishwater.  Again, the owner told me to be patient and let Keith make his menu changes.  We started getting every other order returned with some unpleasant comments from our customers.  Keith’s response was that those customers were philistines who knew nothing about good food.

Our most successful and profitable menu item was our peppered filet.  It was an 8 ounce filet served on a beautiful demi-glace sauce finished with a little heavy cream and lots of whole butter. This item had been a staple since the first days of the restaurant and it comprised about 50% of our orders.  With this in mind, Keith set out to completely overhaul it.  His vision was to shape it in a cube much like the lamb and serve it with marble sized sphere of a vinegar sauce encased in sodium alginate.  Sodium alginate is a chemical used in molecular gastronomy where you can take a warm sauce and wrap it up into a sphere ahead of time.  The sphere is transparent so you can see the sauce inside.  Then you warm it in a water bath and spoon it out and serve it with something while it is still in a spherical shape.  It’s a magical product, but had no place on our menu.  I’ve only used it a few times and it is difficult to work with as well as very time consuming and prone to error.  Keith wanted to put a dollop of parsnip puree in the center of the plate, place the filet on top of it, and place little spheres filled with vinegar sauce on and around it.  When he told me about his plan I just told him to leave the filet alone and that my decision was non-negotiable.  He reacted by going out to his car and ranting to himself while he smoked some weed.  The cooks said they would chip in to pay for more weed if it would keep him out of the kitchen.  I told them to be patient so they backed down rather than killing and dismembering him.

The final nail in Keith’s coffin was New Years Eve.  The owner allowed him to design a limited menu with 4 or 5 items on it especially for the occasion.  We ordered in some special ingrdedients (foie gras, chanterelle mushrooms, Beluga caviar, and many others) and begin to prep for the night a few days before.  I can’t remember all the items we made, but the ingredients were all the finest available worldwide and they were expensive.  On the day of New Years Eve it became evident to me and the cooks that we would not be ready by the time service started because Keith insisted on preparing everything himself.  He told us all that the only reason he wanted us there was to help him serve it all.  That would be fine if we were only serving 30 people, but we had reservations for over 400.  The menu was designed in such a way that every plate had to be prepared ala minute.  That means that the ingredients are all prepared beforehand, but they must be meticulously assembled at the time of service.  Keith demonstrated a couple of items and it took him10 minutes to assemble each plate.  I questioned him on this and he said that the customers would just have to wait if they wanted great food.  I quickly calculated that it would take us 67 hours to plate the food for 400 people.  About 4PM I told Keith that his job for the evening would be making onion soup and that the cooks and I would handle everything else.  He flew into a rage and screamed at everyone before going right out the back door to his car for some weed. 

I was hoping he would just go home, but he returned in about half an hour and took his place on the soup station.  While he was gone I had gathered the cooks and together we had formulated a plan to get through service.  I enlisted the help of the expeditor and working as a team we were all able to get everything served in a timely fashion with almost no complaints from our customers.  For the whole duration of service Keith stood back on his station and heckled everyone else with a stream of insults about our cooking abilities, national heritage, and fashion choices.  Several times I told him he could either shut up, go home, or continue his tirade and face certain death.  At the end of the night he walked out the door without a word to anyone.

In the morning I called the owner at home and told him Keith had to go.  He had just gotten the prior month’s P&L and had come to the realization that he was going to have to write another huge check to the restaurant in order to keep the lights on and pay his employees.  Ketih had already called him and told him that he couldn’t work with me because I was holding him back and that the owner would have to fire me in order for the restaurant to be successful.  The owner told Keith that they would talk about it on Tuesday when the restaurant reopened.

On Tuesday I had my doubts that Keith would show, but he did.  He unpacked his knives and told me how upset he was at my decisions on New Years Eve.  I let him rant for a while and then told him that his services were no longer needed.  He proceeded to tell me that the owner and I had set him up for the sole purpose of stealing his ideas and that we had planned to fire him from day one.  This was not true, although I had doubts from the beginning that he would succeed in the role he chose for himself.  I had agreed to hire him anyway because of reasons I discussed earlier, but I didn’t expect him to last very long.

Keith left without further incident or discussion.  The cooks were overjoyed when they arrived and they immediately chipped in to buy me a 6 pack of Modelo.  They were so happy you would have thought that they just won the lottery.  From that minute on the morale in the kitchen was exponentially better as though the team had just collectively vanquished an enemy.  The difference was like night and day.  We reverted Keith’s unsuccessful menu changes over the next few days and things started to run smoothly again.  We kept the salad and the olive oil cake but changed everything else back.  Our regular customers were ecstatic and sales doubled to previous levels within a week as word spread that our experiment with Keith was over.

Some months later I was browsing the book selection at our local Sur La Table and came across a beautiful hardcover called “Bouchon” by Thomas Keller.  Curious, I opened the book and the first thing I saw was a full color photo of our new house salad.  I continued browsing and saw the olive oil cake as well as the cookies and some other items that he had added to our menu during his tenure with us.  The recipes were the same as Keith’s.  I bought the book and later went through it cover to cover where I found all of the items that he had told me about and intended to add to our menu.  A little later I was having a late lunch with my fiancé at a Tex-Mex place in Omaha and saw Keith behind the line shoveling piles of cheap cheese onto the various entrees and then putting them in the salamander before they were to be served.  That was the last time I ever saw him and I have never heard anything more about him from anyone in the industry from Omaha.  I imagine he found that he could no longer get a good job here and just moved on.

At this point I’d like to thank you for being patient enough to read through this long post.  I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for some time and I appreciate you helping me do just that.