03.31.07
Creative Differences
As a chef at a fine restaurant, I am able to create a huge array of different dishes with lots of creative spins and ideas associated with them. It is probably the best perk of the job, that I am allowed to flex my “creative muscle” in the kitchen to some degree.
 A typical amuse bouche - small, flavorful and decorative. Why did they put ME in charge of that? |
For our most recent wine dinner for example, my boss gave me free reign over the amuse bouche - so long as it involved goat cheese in some way. (There is a full description of the creation of this dish and the final results on the other blog I write for: Eat Foo.) The dish was received well by both our guests and my bosses, which is all I could ask for in a situation like that. Creating a new dish from scratch and then immediately “testing” it on the public is absolutely nerve-wracking. But at the same time, it is probably the best of the many types of adrenaline rushes that this job produces. Especially when the resulting feedback is positive.
All is well and good when one chef gets to use the plate in front of them as a blank canvass. But what happens when more than one chef gets involved? Well, it can go one of two ways:
- They can agree on everything, and produce a dish together as if they are of one mind.
- There will be disagreements
 I ran out of scratch n’ sniff stickers… |
Pencils down. OK, so I am assuming you all guessed #2, and of course you are right. Congratulations. The gold star is suitable for printing and framing if you got it right. Indeed, there are differences when two chefs get together to put a dish together from scratch, and of course, this blog post is about just such an occasion.
Spring is upon us here in DC, so it is time to update our menu to reflect the changing of the season. More fresh green vegetables and light, herbed vinaigrettes, and less winter squashes with cream sauces. Even our beer menu is getting a tune-up as we move off some of the heavy stouts in favor of crisp lagers and ales. In accordance with that theme, one of the specials we are running as of late is a Niçoise salad with some nice touches like purple fingerling potatoes and white asparagus. The resulting colors on the plate are just fabulous.
But the devil is in the details, and there was a disagreement between myself and Jay as to the dressing. The description they had resulted in their wanting a sesame dressing on the salad - that is, they wanted to put a twist on it that gave it a sort-of Asian flavor to go with the sesame-crusted tuna that was to be placed on the salad. While I thought this was a neat idea, I didn’t know if we wanted to take a dish with such a French name (”Niçoise” - jeez - it even has a curly-cue coming down from the “c” for crying out loud!) and suddenly spin it half Chinese. I would have been more in favor of this idea if we had done a few more things Asian on the plate as well, like soba noodles in place of the bed of greens and maybe water chestnuts in place of the white asparagus. To me, this dressing just seemed out of place.
Additionally, there was a nice bunch of fresh tarragon leftover from the wine dinner where I made my chevre trio, and a fresh lemon-tarragon vinaigrette on this salad I think would have been wonderfully traditional, more appropriate, and downright delicious.
 “Sesame dressing, and hold the plague of locusts…” |
But there is a hierarchy in a kitchen for a reason, and even though I am for all practical purposes the Garde Manger, which makes salads my domain, I am also subordinate to the Executive Chef, so his word is final. So let it be written. So let it be done.
The sesame dressing that I made came out quite nicely, and I was at least allowed to plate the salad mostly to my own specifications (so there was a little touch of my influence in there when all was said and done) and the result was quite good. I am not going to play the game of speculation as to which way would have been better, since that is counter-productive to what we are trying to accomplish in the kitchen.
The simple fact is that we are all on the same team, and trying to achieve the same goal. It is inevitable that there will be times when we disagree on the best way to get there. But at the end of the day, when the customers all go home happy and we are cleaning the kitchen, we can all be friends once again. After all, they’re just creative differences - they’re nothing personal.
Stumble it!
