Chef Mil
Berkeley, CA
Female, 49
I have been working in restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 20 years (two of the restaurants had been in the SF Chronicle's Top 100 Restaurants). I have cooked mostly Mediterranean food, but have some experience with Asian food. I went to cooking school, and worked my way up from being a prep cook (think--prepping 3 cases of artichokes, de-boning 100 quail, and juicing a case of lemons!) to being a chef at a well known restaurant in my area. And no, I am not the yelling type! :)
Hi Amy, Tomatoes!!! Stone fruit, such as apricots. Oh yes, when tomatoes are in season I would make salmorejo, which is a type of gazpacho and tomato salads. As for stone fruit, I totally incorporate them into desserts or pair them with roasted duck. I know tomatoes are available the whole year, but those unseasonal tomatoes, I don't consider tomatoes. Yuck! :) Can you tell I love summer produce?
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Hi 7, Not sure if that is an American custom because I've seen in Europe where they serve the salad after. They do eat smaller portions there, so it works for them. I suspect here in America it's because people HAVE to eat their vegetables before the main event or else they won't eat them. It's hard to get people to eat their veggies sometimes. Can you split the salad with someone, so you'll have more room for the entree?
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Hi Myra, Definitely not. I've cooked with so many cooks that didn't, and they were damn good. It's all about the attitude and heart, I think. I worked with a lot of people who were products of cooking schools that sucked! They thought cooking would be glamorous and it ain't! A lot of these cooks learned on the job. Great question!
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Hi Taylor, In the restaurant I worked, we did food cost times 4. I'm not sure what they did on the bar side; industry standard seems to be about 5 times the cost. The owners of the restaurant/bar I worked at must've done something wrong because we made more money on the food side than on the bar side, which is not normal. It was almost a 50-50 split with the food edging the alcohol out by a percentage or two. I've heard that many places want to make about 70% of profit off the alcohol.
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Hi Mike, My first concern, always, is to make something taste superb. That said, one of my priorities is to use the best ingredients possible within the parameters of the cuisine I work with. I wonder what your definition of healthy is. Do you mean no frying? Or vegetarian? If so, the last restaurant I worked for would not qualify. But I have heard stories of folks who had come to the restaurant because it was a special place they came with their mom and sister or else they felt nurtured by the food after their divorce. If that promotes their health is some way, then I am happy. As for the nutritional info, I think that would be very cost prohibitive to do so, especially if the chef liked to change up the menu often. I would find it constricting to have to do it for every dish I felt inspired to put on the menu.
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Hi Jen, Thank you so much. It is fun to answer all these questions. :) If a customer says they got food poisoning, I take it very seriously. I always ask them what they ate and when they got sick. At one restaurant I worked at, the owner would always ask them if they had been drinking and how much. He always contended it takes at least 24 hours for food poisoning to happen. Anyway, I would also talk to the staff and find out what was going on that day and what was the state of the food. I would try to make sure we took ultra-precautions to make sure we are very, very careful.
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Jason, I'm beginning to think that food critics matter less, especially since newspapers are getting less play. The food section in my area has gotten small; it used to have its own section every week. In a way, I think Yelp is more democratic and pretty accurate, although I know it does solicit money to give restaurants more coverage and to remove any bad ratings.
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