Can a chef make or break a restaurant?

bobcat

bobcat

Well-known Member
Location
Northern Calif
Ever been to a little hole in the wall restaurant where the food was excellent? Will you remember it for life?
On the flip side, have you been to a well-known restaurant where the food was simply overrated?
Personally, I don't care about the credentials of the chef. I only care if it's great tasting food, but that's just me.
Sometimes it can be a great restaurant, then it changes hands, or chefs, and it turns into an utter disappointment.
Why would a new owner make such a poor decision?
 

There were two restaurants in Charlotteville, NVA. One was a higher end mexican, the other a cheaper burger joint. I was working in the kitchen (not a cook, but washing dishes etc,) Anyway, I worked in the kitchen on the ground floor. However, there was an internal back stairway that led up to the Mexican restaurant. In other words, two restaurants, one kitchen, same chef. :D
 
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I'm not sure why, but this reminds me of the chefs who buy large fresh live prawns/shrimp. These come with a straight pin inserted into the brain which paralyzes them without killing them. They pull out the pin, wait for the legs to flail, and dump them into hot oil or broth or something.

Bleh, who eats this crap?
 
They can but in this area it’s more a larger than life promoter or maybe executive chef.

The hands on folks in the kitchen are mainly anonymous.

The specialty at one of the area’s oldest and historic restaurants is popovers.

It frustrates me that they have trained hundreds of high school kids and drifters to turn out perfect popovers and no matter what I do they always seem to disappoint.
 
Apparently, today, anyone who can open a box of pop tarts is a "master chef". Cooking the food is routine, and no big deal. A chef is someone, who recognizes who his customers are, caters to their tastes, in keeping with the ambiance and location of the restaurant; and do that and still make a profit.
The shelf life of most restaurants is not long.
 
I've eaten if a few upscale restaurants over the years, but as far as I know, none of them were known for their chefs. But I may not be a part of such a knowledgeable in-crowd. However in my defense, most of my life was spent in tiny communities of loggers and miners where no highly trained chef would come to advance his career.

Someday when I'm at a fine restaurant, maybe the chef will come to my table and ask me if everything was up to my expectations, but I doubt this will ever be the case. I would be floored. I mean literally floored. I would wrap my arms around his ankles while he tried to walk back to the kitchen dragging me along behind as I made a spectacle out of my gratitude.
 
Eric Ripert is not an internet chef, though he has appeared on several shows (Anthony Bourdain's in particular). Eric is a master chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin in NYC. I wouldn't mind having a meal there, but there are two problems with that -- one, I have an outstanding parking ticket from 1983 in NYC and I'm quite sure a warrant has been issued for my arrest; and two, I would have to take a second mortgage out on my house to afford said meal, even after declining the obligatory cheese and dessert.

Sorry, Eric. But I do appreciate your tour of your restaurant (I think a video of it is on YouTube) and it's pretty clear you and your team are definitely worthy of the Michelin 3-star rating.

Another thing about Eric -- he's the world's nicest guy. Not like most chefs who devolve into tyranny. Cases in point -- Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White.
 
One bad meal and I‘m done with that place. When a few people have a bad meal, it’s all over social media and that place can be gone. The main chef needs to have decent backups for the days off.

There are no high-end chefs around here, at least that I know of.
 
JustDave said:
I've eaten if a few upscale restaurants over the years, but as far as I know, none of them were known for their chefs. But I may not be a part of such a knowledgeable in-crowd. However in my defense, most of my life was spent in tiny communities of loggers and miners where no highly trained chef would come to advance his career.

Someday when I'm at a fine restaurant, maybe the chef will come to my table and ask me if everything was up to my expectations, but I doubt this will ever be the case. I would be floored. I mean literally floored. I would wrap my arms around his ankles while he tried to walk back to the kitchen dragging me along behind as I made a spectacle out of my gratitude.
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One of the best steaks I've ever eaten in my life was in a very small town, in a cafe most would have driven right past. It was fantastic.
 
Some time back, we had guests who were wild to go over to Tampa to eat at a new restaurant owned by a chef who had won on one of those shows where someone like Gordon Ramsey screams at and berates the contestants for hours.

We're sitting there and she gasps, "The chef! He's heading right to our table!" I look up and all I see is what looks like a shaggy-haired 14-year-old skateboarder with ripped jeans, high-topped basketball shoes, grunge t-shirt, and baseball cap worn backwards, but who was the famous chef.

The food was awesome, though, and he was a very nice guy.
 
bobcat said:
One of the best steaks I've ever eaten in my life was in a very small town, in a cafe most would have driven right past. It was fantastic.
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I've come across a couple of those during my life. They are very unexpected in odd places, but they exist. Those few that excel like that have always been single ownership one offs. Never part of a chain. The restaurants here in rural Virginia, have never been first class, be they chain franchises or mom and pop, and all have been on the "less than" side. During the pandemic, everything but the big chains went out of business. The chains were hurt too, but the single owner places all went extinct.

The only thing the chains have going for them is a bit of consistency. You know what to expect, but none of them rise to the level we are talking about in this thread. I don't know how many of those places of excellence exist elsewhere. Maybe some are still there. Maybe new ones will appear. But right now it seems like we have little else than mediocrity. But my area is not a typical sample of what's happening in the nation.
 
Upscale doesn't impress me. Prefer "hole in the wall" type places with great food. Seldom eat out as I know I'm not going to be served organic and most likely the food contains a lot of added sugar and ingredients I can't pronounce.
 
JustDave said:
I've come across a couple of those during my life. They are very unexpected in odd places, but they exist. Those few that excel like that have always been single ownership one offs. Never part of a chain. The restaurants here in rural Virginia, have never been first class, be they chain franchises or mom and pop, and all have been on the "less than" side. During the pandemic, everything but the big chains went out of business. The chains were hurt too, but the single owner places all went extinct.

The only thing the chains have going for them is a bit of consistency. You know what to expect, but none of them rise to the level we are talking about in this thread. I don't know how many of those places of excellence exist elsewhere. Maybe some are still there. Maybe new ones will appear. But right now it seems like we have little else than mediocrity. But my area is not a typical sample of what's happening in the nation.
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Yes, it's sad that one has to pay a considerable amount for dinner, and it's just mediocre. To me, the chef has one primary job, and that is to make great tasting food for the customers, not just fill orders. If they fail at that, then perhaps they might be better suited for something else in life.
 
Some dishes are a lot trickier to execute than others. A great steak at a steak house is almost a certain but something French with a complicated sauce requires an experienced chef.
 

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