Some of my friends who also happen to also own a restaurant were eating here the other day when one of the front of the house girls popped her head around the corner and asked me what was in the white chocolate chip cookies because someone was asking. I smarted off “white chocolate chips.” My friends laughed, and Denver said it doesn’t bother him to tell people what’s in the food he creates. Someone asked him not long ago what was in his steak sauce, he started rattling off ingredients, and they stopped him because whoever asked just wanted to know because it was the worst steak sauce he’d ever eaten.
So, this gave me two things to ponder on:
Don’t be a jerk. Good grief, food is subjective. You don’t have to let someone know that their flavor choices don’t appeal to you. You could… just ask for a different sauce. For instance here, if you don’t care for the side you ordered, we really want to get you something different you’ll like.
Giving out recipes that I create isn’t something I generally do. Yeah, I’ll list ingredients for you, but I probably won’t write out my procedure for making something.
So let’s talk about restaurant magic. I honestly think one of the things restaurant patrons treasure about the places they love to eat is the aura of something special happening. I would draw an analogy between cooking for a living and playing sports or being a musician. Maybe some innate talent is required, but anybody doing either of those things successfully is going to tell you that it’s practice. It’s buckling in and doing the same things over and over that make you good at them. Restaurant cooking is the same way, even recipe development. It’s a matter of practice.
Now I will say that the kitchen setup, even in a small place like mine or my friends’ place from above gives us a definite advantage over a home cook. Our stove burners heat more evenly, we have a big old flat-top, we’ve got bad-ass knives and 20 cutting boards, and countless gadgets that make tasks we do every day just a little better. Y’all didn’t think I shredded all those carrots by hand, did you? Well, I used to, but our volume is bigger now and so I have an actual little electric shredder, kind of like a salad shooter from the 80’s. So cool.
Anyway, I think people come to a restuarant, at least partially, for the magic. When they ask me for a recipe, I smile and tell them the secret ingredient is love. Y’all know that’s a big fat lie, the secret ingredient is practice. In August, I’ll have been practicing cooking in this building for 20 years. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
An afterthought: I realized that when I’m taking notes and writing a recipe out for myself, I never write the instructions. It’s just an ingredients list. If you leave this for someone else to follow, they will most likely not get the results they were expecting. I had to be gone a couple weeks ago so I thought surely someone here could mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Which it turns out, they can, if you include the instructions in your recipe. Shout out to all those ladies with food blogs who write umpteen pages about how to cook stuff.
