(or starting work in the industry).
Here you have it. The question most asked (after “how do I become a chef“). “What’s the worst thing about going to C-School?”.
The answer – your dining experiences will begin to suck. Suddenly that small bistro restaurante you were so fond of starts to make less and less sense. Those onions aren’t julienned properly and just slapped on the plate. The mashed potatoes oxidized and became brown, something even the cowboy butter/cream approach can not fix. The skirt steak is cut the wrong way, the sauce separating, and the salad is tossed without love for its ingredients.
Can you find the six plating sins committed in this picture? Click for a larger version.
You’ll expect more from your food, and you’ll notice those things you never really looked for previously. Dirty plates, for example. Leeks or basil that isn’t chopped properly and sits on top of food like an afterthought. Mandoline cuts where knife cuts would have been much more gentle on the food’s texture. The sauce supreme that could have used a little less flour and a little more stock. A cooks’ futile attempt to revive wilted or overcooked vegetables.
Your palate will develop slowly (and make no mistake, even if you can’t taste for crap right now, come a year on the line you’ll be a tasting superstar), but your eye for technique and execution will wake almost immediately. That’s the single worst thing about becoming a cook or chef – you’ll become way more critical of food and realize how often those $80 meals are, more or less, not worth the expense.
I guess this is why the majority of the better food critics that I follow have gone to culinary school. Their reviews display depth of knowledge about food preparation and an almost hyper-sensitive palate.
By the same token, I would assume that when a chef, who has worked his/her way up from stage, recommends another restaurant, that restaurant has been reviewed by a peer.
The question I now have is whether or not the general patron can appreciate the same qualities; technical prowess; subtle flavours…I for one can’t tell the difference between knife cut and mandoline cut, unless I see rampant bruising…
Sigh. It’s true. So true. And the second worst thing is understanding food costs. Like, say, for a garlic noodle dish someone, and I won’t say who, who is in culinary school and should know better, ordered at a Chinese restaurant and paid, I dunno, like $14 or $16 or whatever for and now know cost them, what?, all of $1 to make, okay, maybe $2, but not only was it stupid cheap but it involved monkey-level skill level and it serves aforementioned student right for going out to eat when she wasn’t all that hungry and only wanted some noodles, not that it was her that ordered this, oh no.
Sigh. Glad to have gotten that off my chest.
Not that it was my chest it needed to get it off.
(I’ve blown my cover here, haven’t I?)
Sigh.
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