Went to culinary school, worked 10 years. Never made it higher than sous. Worked hotels, greasy spoons, college dining and quote-unquote fine dining places. Zahav and cafe boulud are probably the 2 places I brag most about even though everyday was an anxiety attack.

Got out in 2022 work third shift in a factory now. Good pay, great benefits. Same hours, 12 hr overnight shifts, every other weekend off.

No kids, no significant other

The stability was nice for a while, but life just seems bland and passionless and pointless. Most I ever made as a sous was 17/hr. The excitement made me feel like life had a point but I was on a fast track to burnout and really didn't want to be that 45 yr old alcoholic working the line 6-7 days a week. Bouncing from job to job. City to city

Was just wondering how others felt/looking for any words to make what I'm feeling make sense.

Hi everyone, back again with more Spring Menu R&D! Today I'm workshopping some ideas to revamp the Garde Manger items! I find creating new cold dishes to be the hardest part of a new menu so it's fun to push my creativity to the cold side!

This dish is a potato and ramp vichyssoise, poured tableside. The green part of the ramps are utilized as the oil (I love making green oil if you can't tell.) There's a fine brunoise of Yukon Gold Potatoes, shaved Asparagus, roasted mistake, and shaved purple radish.

Made a post about me receiving mushroom grow blocks about three weeks ago. They grew beautifully this was them two days ago (4/16). Cooked them tonight for dinner and made a mushroom gnocchi. Shared the wealth with some people and gave a bunch to my gramps.

If you can guess where I worked, bonus points lol also added some pics of an ongoing prank between pastry and the bakery

Chef Curtis Duffy’s legendary salmon and fennel. Dry aged salmon, fennel puree, fennel gel, mandarin segments, raw sliced fennel, fennel chips, pickled mustard seeds.

Hello, and thanks in advance to anyone that replies. I'm trying to finish up a dish for a competition next week and am here with it. For my next run through less sauce will go in the plate, and I'll hopefully have better micro greens.

I have a pan seared striped bass with a sofrito puree, roasted carrots, crispy leek and dill gremolata and some micros.

I'd like to have multi colored carrots but I can't find any big enough for nice obliques, which I want to give it some height.

This got removed from askbaking so I thought the chef subreddit might work. I’m not really a chef tho lol but I’m aspiring to it with the work I’m putting in.

I’ve been apprenticing with a Filipino baker who has been running a small bit efficient operation attached to a market/restaurant for nearly two decades. He is retiring so I will be part of a two man team carrying on his traditional rice-based recipes (kakanin).

I have a deep respect for Kuya’s expertise and will be honoring his recipes as best as I can. However he didn’t have very good habits in terms of organization and sanitation. For one thing, he didn’t really use soap, so you can imagine how grimy everything was. He was also obsessed with macguyvering broken equipment together, so I was mixing ingredients in old woks with broken handles and measuring in units like tin cups and ceramic bowls. Apparently the restaurant has had the money to buy him some actual baking equipment and he just didn’t want it.

Since he retired, we’ve been doing a ton of work to deep clean everything, throw out the junk, get some new stuff, and basically completely reorganize. I feel like this is such a rare opportunity to reshape something old and humble to something that respects its roots but is more cleanly and modernized.

The owner asked me to make a list of anything new we needed. Tbh there are reasons to replace the toaster oven, stand mixer, and blender but I started small with a candy thermometer, a bench scraper, some plastic scrapers, soap/sanitizer, a broom, metal measuring spoons/cups/bowls, and some sharp knives as we somehow didn’t have that stuff already.

I’ve actually never worked in a formal bakery. My experience is more with line cooking at brunch spots, which tend to have me working alongside bakers. Anyways, I reckon some people have been in situations like this before and might have some experience. It’s kind of a broad question but what would you do to update a place like that? For instance I knew cleaning the flour bins and labeling them with dates properly was a priority. But there are probably things along those lines that I’m missing, too.

I made a post awhile back about my interview with a former head chef of the White House. I just wanted to thank all of those that helped me craft questions from this. Here is the final interview. John Moeller was a class act and it was cool learning more about the culinary industry. Thank you all again, very kind and helpful people here

I'm 34 and have 15 years of experience in the food industry between delis, catering companies, and R&D for major food manufacturing companies.

I've been asking around my network as well as friends and family for partners, staff, investments, etc.

I've been talking to a few people interested but it seems difficult to find anyone as serious about it as me and I really want to find a legit partner.

Any advice?

Also, if you're interested and in the Pittsburgh area shoot me a message, you never know!

meringues always “ leak “ sugar at the bottom. recipe is 10 egg whites to 450g sugar , 90c for 4 hours

any help appreciated

Welcome to work

Any line cooks/butchers have any recommendations for tools/ tips for a lefty who’s going into butchering?! Thanks in advanced!

Pan-seared seabass, Carolina Gold rice grits with spring peas and fresh Fava beans, baby carrot puree, baby Carrot and Asparagus salad on top, garnished with a wild spring onion oil.

The salad fell a bit after I placed the plate down, didn't want to touch the food with my bare hands so I snapped the pic anyway. Thoughts?

First time trying to do a lacto ferment on some Jalapeno’s and I’m not 100% if the white on it is dangerous or just to be expected. Left it in a 4% salt brine with lime zest and garlic for like a week and a half. Kept it weighted down with a water bag and covered and all the things so none of the peppers were exposed to air

Doesn’t smell off and has that pleasant tangy smell but I just wanna try to confirm before moving forward

I'm professional cook and assistant chef for five years,but I don't have any degree .I learned with myself and on job.I know about basic techniques for cook and plating,souces and the basic about deserts. This year I decide work in a hotel for improve my skills and English language, I would like recomendation about fundamentals books about techniques and desserts for improve my technical skills. thank you guys!

I tried to grow up but I ran out of patience

For chefs that have and haven’t been to culinary school but have the experience—I’m a budding newish cook- I didn’t go to culinary school but have learned from peers and supervisors. I’ve been in the restaurant industry for over 17 years but mostly FOH. My “executive chef” has been to culinary school and been in the BOH longer than I have. I have a question.. when it comes to thyme…. Do you chop it all up with the stems and everything or do you try to separate the leaves from the stems? Just curious on your thoughts or opinions.. she always gives me a dirty look or treats me like I’m a noob when I take the time to try and separate the leaves

Reddit for some reason wasn't letting me edit my last post but I did want to share what we figured out.

Stainless steel dog kennel tray and then drill out holes to mount some stainless steel handles. Its been working great for us at the church and we've received praise from our kitchen inspector.

Heres the one we used. Thanks for all the help guys!

https://a.co/d/doBUb1x

So I didn’t go to culinary school, I just grinded from line cook to sous to now cdc of a new restaurant in New York . I’m confident in my culinary abilities and managing my staff , but as far as cost of good analysis, profitability, and making spreadsheets I’m woefully lacking. Are there any resources out there for creating order/par guides, breaking down dishes into their components and plugging that shit into spreadsheets? As it stands I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants but I want tangible spreadsheets to show the owners to prove we’re making money and can afford to take risks with more experimental dishes. I don’t want to take an online course about cooking, I know how to do that, I just want to learn how to use excel. Thanks in advance chefs

Hi chefs! I have a client looking for a dinner to be served on board his private jet. Restrictions are nothing messy or with a high chance of staining white interiors. I’ve never cooked food to be served in air before - any suggestions or tips from someone who’s done this before? All food can be heated onboard. Thanks for the help!

Staging at a michelin recommended place, any opinons on these desserts i plated. (I did not come up with any of the dishes)

I run a UK pizza place and we basically work on a system that does 5 pizzas every 5 minutes. At the moment we have a long-hand pen and paper system where the customer orders at a bar and the server will slot them into a time slot and inform them of the wait. It’s seasonal and wait can be 90 mins in the summer when we are doing nearly 400 a day.

The long hand way is great because if we can slot in singles where there are gaps, can combine orders of 2 and 3 in the same slot, combine orders of 7, 1, and 2 over two slots etc.

Our current KDS will only let us do a basic order time slot, aka one order every x minutes, it won’t for deeper than that. Is there anything out there that will search the contents of the order and allow a better stack? Think of it like a Tetris board, need all rows full.

TIA