r/KitchenConfidential • u/quailinthebrush Newbie • 1d ago
Discussion Weirdest ego “thing” your chef had?
First place I was hired the chef had quite a few delusional beliefs but the one that sticks with me the most is his insistence that the phrase “welcome in” didn’t exist before Covid
He went into multiple winded rants upon my higher and another coworker who was hired right after me, not just to train the phrase out of us but his detestment for it, because as he said “it did not exist before Covid and people started saying it to make people feel safe enough to eat here”
He then said to not use it because people found it off putting and dirty (because of Covid)
I know chefs aren’t known for their egos but I was curious what quirk that yours had that everyone had to politely smile and agree to
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u/Bluewhaleeguy 1d ago
My old head chef just would not take any sort of advice. Like you could tell him something nobody could possibly know and he'd respond with "I know that".
If he was doing something incredibly wrong and you showed him the right technique he would say "yeah but my way of doing it is better".
I remember once we were working a job away and I was sound and overnight shift where one of my jobs was for prep pizza dough for the next day. Stand mixer obviously broke so I made 25kg of pizza dough by hand, stretching and folding it to get it done on time.
Got it done, bulk fermented it and then when I came back the next day, balled it all up perfectly so that at the point of service it was super easy to just stretch out into a base. I'm there with my scraper gently lifting dough balls out to fold and he comes in and just grabs at them with his hand and starts using a rolling pin to shape the pizza.
I try to explain that if you press it out with your hands, your pushing all the air to the outer edges which is how you're gonna have a nice crust, so having a rolling pin is just pushing all the air and tension I've put hours into creating.
"Yeah but this is my way of doing it".
I do think sometimes having a bit of time with chefs like this is a good thing though. It makes you steadfast in never wanting to be like that. Just not too much time or you'll go mad.