SF Cribs: The places behind the clothes

you may also have to concede one obvious truth: Chefs are difficult assholes.

The shinier the restaurant, the more difficult the asshole in the kitchen....accept this, suck it up and deal with it while they are barking orders at you and treating you like crap, and accept that it is part of a process that ends with you being a pedantic, difficult asshole with the power to bark orders and treat others like crap.

It's cyclical dude. You may have revealed your own tendencies to be a difficult asshole a little too early in your norcal tenure.

Oh, I'm certain you're right. Chefs can be, and more often than not are, difficult assholes. But that wasn't really what it was here. It's not like I got yelled at and went home crying to my teddy bear and decided to quit.
Anyway, I know that on paper it looks pretty goddamned stupid. I'm okay with that. I've accepted it and moved on. In my heart and in my mind I know that this was the right move for me at the right time. Now it's time to put the head down and get to work*.







*I mean, now is the time to pack up my **** and wait a week and then move and THEN put the head down and get to work.
BTW guys, I appreciate the concern that many of you have shown me and I also appreciate the gesture of the older successful man giving life advice to the guy starting his career. I'm just saying, I'm optimistic about this and will always land on my feet. I'm a cat--- just a really fat one.

sigged.

BTW Kyle, me and two friends pay the maid 30 bucks a week to cook for us all. That includes ingredients. Move to Vietnam, and the job is yours.

$30/wk + a benefits package including Rollin' and I'm in.

I'll have Alex Kabbaz buy you a ticket immediately.

Where is Vox's studio?

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

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Basically. All the gigs I had lined up couldn't add up to cover the bills. And I mean everything. I was getting desparate, applying at gas stations and whatnot. After a month of it, I realized I gotta man up and realize it's not working. It's all good though. I'll go to Indy, work at a restaurant where I'm allowed to actually cook and not spend the day playing w/ chemicals and plating sous vide food, learn some ****, make some dough, get my chops straightened up, etc. I'll be back to this level of cooking someday, this time hopefully in a kitchen that I don't find myself hating.



That sucks dude. Were they not paying you? Or were you just not getting enough time in the kitchen? I hope you have something decent lined up in indianapolis because it doesn't really sound like a temple of high-end food... gl though.

I'll send you a pm today. I don't want to badmouth someone's restaurant on an open forum.

Kyle, check out Cleveland too. Not much farther than Indy, and it seems to have a real food culture going. I know why won't agree, but that West Side Market is phenomenal. There's this little store up front, the cheeses. The meat? Real market hogs, well marbled pork loins, lamb...it's very nice.

Also, there are a ton of restaurants and bistros doing great things, judged by the three I stopped at.

I may be convinced into checking out Cleveland. Although I have to admit, I'm still waiting for MetroStyles' answer to my question about Indy. If that falls through, I see no reason whatsoever for me to stay in Indiana.

kwilky, you're doing a good thing. the whole thing about those stages (and even early jobs after) is learning what you can and then moving on to someplace where you can practice it. you're at that point now ... you know about the discipline and the focus and the level of finish that's required to be at the cyrus level, now it's time to do some real cooking. from the folks i know, you'll only get into a position to have an impact at a restaurant like cyrus if you've got 10 years or so in the bank. fun fact: wolfgang puck started out in indianapolis ... cooking at a country club.

plus ... i just noticed, it was positively vox-like how you took a thread about sfers sweet cribs and turned it into kwilk-land. you have learned well, grasshopper.

Originally Posted by foodguy

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kwilky, you're doing a good thing. the whole thing about those stages (and even early jobs after) is learning what you can and then moving on to someplace where you can practice it. you're at that point now ... you know about the discipline and the focus and the level of finish that's required to be at the cyrus level, now it's time to do some real cooking. from the folks i know, you'll only get into a position to have an impact at a restaurant like cyrus if you've got 10 years or so in the bank. fun fact: wolfgang puck started out in indianapolis ... cooking at a country club.
Thanks man, glad to hear that, especially from you. The thing with Cyrus is that I was going to spend the rest of my future there as an entry-level line cook, or at most a garde manger chef de partie. I would likely never make it onto the hotline b/c I didn't have the foundation of knowledge and experience that everyone else there (and the hundred people applying for a job each month) had. That level of kitchen isn't the kind of place you go to learn how to cook, you go there with a high level of expertise and refine it into as near perfection as it can get. So I feel good at the chance to go to a kitchen that is a little lower than Cyrus, but where I can learn to be a badass line cook and pound out quality food and get the foundation.

BTW, between the wolfgang puck thing and the fact that Grant Achatz worked at Charlie Trotter's right out of culinary school but quit after 6 months, I feel like I'm not going to spend the rest of my life dropping fries w/ truffle oil and parmesan at some ****** "upscale" bar & grill.

Originally Posted by foodguy

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plus ... i just noticed, it was positively vox-like how you took a thread about sfers sweet cribs and turned it into kwilk-land. you have learned well, grasshopper.

Originally Posted by JetBlast

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I think Roy wins the thread.

Seriously.
Roy it looks terrific.

Originally Posted by Douglas

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I have alluded a few times to a new project I'm working on - it's a total re-model of an older (1928) house in Baltimore City. I'm essentially gutting a lot of the inside, tearing out a secondary stairwell and a bathroom to make room for a normal kitchen/den up to 21st century norms, and a lot of the bedrooms and all the bathrooms are being totally re-configured, in addition to all kinds of boring stuff like storm windows, new HVAC, plumbing, electrical, lighting, roof and structural work, etc etc. The house hasn't really been properly lived in for 30 years or so, besides very temporary renters now and then. Anyways, more photos will follow in probably 6 months when we've wrapped everything up (still haggling out details with the architect and contractor right now), but for now here's a sneak preview of the bones we have to work with. Sorry for the large-ish images, I didn't intend for them to come out this big:

Wow, Douglas, I really like this. This is a great project that I'm sure will look terrific after completion. I like it a lot, and can see that it has great potential. Good luck!