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 Dr. Nick, Good question. I am not familiar with that rating system as I'm used to the health inspector just coming in, making comments on a sheet, and leaving us a yellow copy. Can you tell me more about the A rated restaurant and why it was gross? I would imagine that B rated restaurant would have to be doing something very unhealthy with the food such as cutting vegetables on a cutting board that had raw meat or perhaps cooks weren't washing their hands. I once walked by a restaurant that had been closed down by the health department and it just reeked of grossness; there was a cockroach in the window and looked pretty shabby.
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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 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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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 Some, No, it's usually the case. I sometimes feel sorry for waiters as they have to get the brunt of the customer's ire. Hopefully, they give them something a little extra to smooth out any ruffled feathers.
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Hi Colette, A good, sharp knife!!! That actually is a less commonly owned piece of kitchenware in homes. Otherwise, a microplane, a benriner, mortar and pestle, a knife steel, and a Vita-mix blender. I had to look in my kitchen. Plus, a sense of humor!
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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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