Restaurants can very well benefit from having a great variety on their menu and it’s the most experienced chefs who can manage a very busy menu. However if you are an inexperienced chef that could in charge of somewhere like a café or small restaurant, you may want to keep your menu less complicated.
It’s very common for big menus to have you running around kitchens in a panic or you end up cooking a dish that you have only done once before, leading to the standard being poor. Furthermore it can lead to a very big waste amount as you will have to stock up your fridges, only for things to be thrown away because the menu is too big for any continuity!
The best way to start is with a simple menu that has real quality products that are cooked well, resulting in your customers being happy, you as a chef will become more efficient and the wastage should be down to a minimum.
Consistency is probably one of the biggest things to take into account if you’re a chef, if you send one plate out that is perfect, you cannot send one that isn’t perfect.
If you don’t send consistent dishes out, customers will complain that someone else’s food is different to theirs. This is wear portion sizes also come into play, your portions must be identical so your diners don’t think they aren’t getting their monies worth compared to the person sat next to them!
Even if you are in the middle of busiest period, it’s not an excuse to send out sloppy plates of food. If it’s not good enough, you simply do not serve it because it could ruin your reputation as a chef. Customers would rather wait longer for a quality plate of food, than get a poor dish in a very quick time.
Your organisation is vital to how your service goes, so if you spend the majority of your morning not preparing for the day ahead you have failed before you have even started.
Your quietest periods should be used to full effect, whether you need salad garnish prepared or even laying out your kitchen that is going to most useful to you, if you don’t keep your kitchen organised, clean and tidy, you won’t enjoy your service.
There’s nothing worse than an unhygienic kitchen, it’s bad for business and it’s bad for your reputation so make sure you have a thorough and decent cleaning rota so that you can keep on top of having a very tidy and clean work area.
It’s also worth trying to get to know your local environmental health officer; they would rather help you than potentially close you down.
Finally, probably the most important thing if you are a chef that has just started a career in catering is to not give up.
Things can become very stressful if you are new to the catering world and you can feel so pressurised among chefs who have been in the game for years. Things will get tough and you will feel as though you should find another career path, but you must not give up.
If you can come through the period where you think you’ve made a massive mistake in your career choice, it will benefit your future and your confidence as a chef, and it will launch you into a very successful career.
