What is a chef? (1)

A breakdown of what roles are in a restaurant kitchen.

Happy Wednesday!

This week’s newsletter is the start of a multi-part series called “What is a chef?”. Today will be a deep dive into what exactly a chef is… not necessarily from a cultural and anthropological perspective, but from an objective one - a full breakdown of what the role of a chef in a fine dining restaurant looks like. Today’s is pretty information-heavy. What are the roles that exist in a kitchen? What does each role do? Just the basics broken down.

The weeks after will go into what a chef is for culture and society, the tips and tricks that professional cooks use that can make you a better home cook, how I approach throwing a dinner party and/or hosting pop ups, and other insights that can help you become a stronger home cook and a more mindful diner.

As I have been writing this Substack, I realize more and more that though there is so much information and content about chefs, food, and restaurants… there is still a large knowledge gap between non-industry heads and professional industry heads.

This series is a more intentional attempt at bridging that gap; because at the end of the day… a cook is just a job… right?

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So, what is a chef? According to Oxford Languages (aka Google)

a professional cook, typically the chief cook in a restaurant or hotel.

Is a home cook a chef? Is a line cook a chef? Is a prep cook a chef? Is someone who hosts dinner parties a chef? Are food influencers chefs?

Yes and no.

Personally, though I have been a line cook, or chef de partie as some restaurants would call it, for years - I never called or considered myself a chef. I was a cook, but I worked under a chef. I did the tasks at hand and followed my chef’s lead. I considered sous chefs, chef de cuisine, and executive chefs… chefs. They run the ship. They do the hiring, the planning, the recipe development, the ordering, and they lead the team of cooks during service.

It may help to have a broad overview of the hierarchy of a “traditional” restaurant. Traditional in quotation marks since the “traditional” restaurant hierarchy was implemented by the French and adopted by most of the West, obviously other nationalities have different systems but many are influenced by this system.

This system, better known as the brigade system, was implemented by Chef Georges Auguste Escoffier. He was one of the OG of the OG’s. He helped elevate restaurant kitchens from chaotic, more or less, pirate ship-esque spaces to a space that required discipline, cleanliness, order, and excellence.

Escoffier is the OG of OG’s. His books, systems, recipes, and techniques have shaped modern cooking and dining and his work has deeply influenced food and restaurants in the West. There are copious amounts of information on him online so I will spare the details.

Please excuse the busted mind map, but this is a broad overview of a brigade system that you’d find in most fine-dining restaurants (again, especially in the West). Each restaurant that does implement this system has its own varying brigade to meet the specific needs of that restaurant.

For example, this was Thomas Keller’s kitchen brigade break down back when Corey Lee, now chef of three-starred Benu in SF, and Tim Hollingsworth, now owner of Otium in LA, were running the French Laundry in Napa Valley, CA.

Above is an example of Chef Escoffier’s system. Some serious shit.

Restaurant staff is broken down into two broad levels: management and hourly employees. The management level is comprised of the head chef, chef de cuisine (CDC), and sous chefs. They are often on salary, eligible to receive benefits (healthcare insurance, dental, etc), and lead the restaurant kitchen team together. The chef de parties (line cooks), commis (prep cooks), porters, and dishwashers make up the hourly employee bracket. They do the bulk of the cooking in restaurants. They bring in and break down the ingredients and supplies necessary, organize the kitchen, prep the ingredients, cook the food during service, and clean the kitchen after service.

Executive chefs are also known as head chefs. If line cooks are the foot soldiers, executive chefs are the generals. They oversee the entire kitchen, create the menus, create new dishes for the menu, and work closely with the chef de cuisine (CDC) and sous chefs. The executive chef is the face of the restaurant. They are the ones who drive the kitchen and they are the ones who usually get the recognition for any awards and accolades that are bestowed upon the restaurant. They are essentially the creative director of kitchens that oversees the broader vision and direction of the restaurant.

Chef de cuisines (“chief of the kitchen”) are the Colonels and/or Brigadier generals of the kitchen - if we keep up with the military analogy. They are the head chef’s right hand and they are the ones who essentially run the kitchen to achieve the head chef’s “vision”. They are in the kitchen as much as everyone else, overseeing food costs/budgets, coordinating deliveries from suppliers, managing the kitchen staff, maintaining the quality of food, and often runs the pass*. Sometimes if a restaurant is a part of a larger restaurant group founded by one chef with multiple restaurants, each restaurant will have a CDC act as the head chef of that restaurant. For example, David Chang is the head chef/executive chef of Momofuku. If you are the CDC of Noodle bar, Ssam bar, or Ko you are the head of that said restaurant.

*At a restaurant that serves food in different courses, the pass is the control tower of the kitchen. The pass is where dishes are fired (called to the staff so that cooking can commence) and where the flow of the kitchen is directed from. This is also where the back of the house (kitchen) and front of the house (servers) communicate. Servers come to the pass and talk to the chef running it if there are any corrections needed, if there are VIPs at a table, and if there is other intel that the kitchen needs to know from the front. Some restaurants hire a specific person to just run the pass, they’re usually called the Expeditor (aka, Expo).

Sous chefs (“under-chief of the kitchen) are the 1st/2nd lieutenants of the kitchen. They are officers that are usually on a salary and help the head chef and CDC run the kitchen. Depending on the size of a restaurant, there can be many sous chefs. There can be Senior sous, junior sous, and/or just a sous chef. They are ranked right above line cooks and are usually line cooks that have been promoted after showing that they are not only strong cooks who carry out what their chefs ask of them well but also prove to have a desire to grow in kitchen administration.

If a restaurant is running brunch/lunch and a dinner service there are usually A.M. sous chefs who manage the morning crew and a P.M. sous chef who manages the evening crew.

CDCs report to the executive chef. The sous chefs report to the CDCs and executive chef/head chef. The line cooks report to everyone else above them.

Chef de parties (“chief of the group”) are the sergeants. They are often the head line cooks who have usually worked every station in that kitchen and lead a station if there are multiple people who work a station. It can get confusing but some restaurants choose to call all their line cooks chef de parties - some don’t. It depends on how the head chef wants to organize the kitchen.

Now we’re getting into the main crew of a kitchen. The line. The line cooks are the enlisted privates, the grunts on the front line. They are the unsung heroes who actively make every dish that comes before you when you eat at a restaurant. The line is often broken down into two groups, the hot line and the cold line. The cold line is made up usually pastry chefs who are in charge of desserts and of garde manger cooks. Garde manger cooks handle all the cold hors d’oeurves (appetizers), salads, charcuterie, cheese, crudos, pâtés, terrines, etc. Once anyone first becomes a line cook, they start here. This is where the cook learns the foundations of that restaurant.

They learn the important fundamentals about how a chef wants a station to be properly set up. This is where you learn how to work clean, organized, and quickly. This is the station where you learn the palette of the chef you’re working for. This is where you nail how they like their food seasoned. How salty does this chef want their food? How much acid? What is the scale of flavor balance that they want? Are they a chef that highlights acidic notes? Savory notes? Sweeter notes? This is where a cook learns their knife cuts. How fine of a brunoise does the chef want their shallots to be for that vinaigrette? What about the à la minute (prepared to order) chiffonade of herbs for that crudo dish? Is that julienne perfect? Fuck around and find out.

I remember at the first fine dining restaurant I worked at, our head chef would go through our mise en place before each service. He checked our knife cuts, our sauces, and whatever else prep we had done that day 10-20 minutes before service. The most anxiety-gripping moment of the day. One day, I got bogged down because I kept messing up a sauce during prep. So I rushed my shallot brunoise. They weren’t uniform and they looked messy but I thought I could get away with it since they were going to be “hidden” in a raw fish pickup… He saw them, took the 9th pan full of shallots, walked over to the trashcan, and dumped it. He put the pan back onto my cutting board and proceeded down the line without saying a word to me. Did I know what I did wrong? Yes. Did he have to do that? No. Did I want to throw up and cry a little bit? Yeah. But there are five minutes left before service. Do I go cry in the walk-in or do I just grit my teeth and let a tear drip down as I am redoing my shallots? The latter would be the only viable option if I wanted to work my way up.

Garde manger positions are often prep-heavy roles. This is where the lessons of organization are put to the test. This is where a cook learns what it feels like to sink or swim. If they aren’t organized, clean, and fast… tickets will start to stack. If you didn’t organize your time well during prep and have to prep into service… you’re going to have a long night with your chef breathing down your neck and making sure you know that you’re on the shit list for not finishing your prep as everyone else did.

The pâtissier (pastry) chef is an interesting position. They are often in their own category. They’re often grouped in with chef de parties, but they don’t always work the line. I’ve only worked in restaurants where there was one designated pastry chef and they always worked different schedules than the rest of the cooks. They were at work earlier than everyone else to get all the prep done before the cooks got in. They worked directly with the chefs to develop desserts that were in line with the rest of the menu and they worked at their own pace. They worked closely with whoever was working the garde manger station since that was the station that picked up any dessert orders and they trained them on how to plate up each dessert. Once service hit, they usually stuck around the prep kitchen areas to finish up their work and clean but were out before the thick of dinner service since they came in earlier.

This is just how the pastry chef’s in the past few restaurants I was at worked, and I am sure it’s different at restaurants with an extensive pastry, baking, and dessert program.If the restaurant is large enough, there is usually an executive pastry chef, another chef under that executive chef, and however many more pastry cooks under them as well - as that break down of the French Laundry’s staff showed.

I have never worked as a pastry chef, but I respect the hell out of them. To not only develop interesting and delicious desserts but also to teach other cooks how to do them requires a lot of skill. Pastry chefs are more scientists than cooks. Sugar is a beautiful ingredient that can be manipulated in ways that I still am learning about. They tend to use scales, calculators, and thermometers sometimes more than knives and if you were to throw a line cook into a pastry chefs position… they'd be hard-pressed to stay afloat.

Once a garde manger cook proves their stripes, understands their chef’s style and palette and excels at their position, they’ll be bumped up into the hot line. The hot line has the saucier (sauté) cook, the rôtisseur (roast) cook, grillardin (grill) cook, poissonnier (fish) cook, and whatever ever else that particular restaurant needs. This is where you’re working with stoves, grills, CVAPs, deep fryers, and whatever else is used to get that food cooked. This is where pots and pans are flying around. This is where you are getting your cuts and burns that show the world you cook for a living as you feel the sweat roll down your legs since the oven is opening, the grill is rolling, and the range is on full blast. This is where the expensive shit gets cooked. The aged duck breast, the dry-aged rib eye, the halibut, the lobster. This is where the sauces are kept hot or made à la minute. This is where you’re cranking out the main courses. This is where you really earn your stripes.

This is where you really fuck around and find out. This is where you learn your timings. How hot to get your pan before searing fish. How hot that grill really needs to be. How long that steak needs to sear for before basting it. How to properly emulsify a sauce for it not to break and leave a puddle of grease around the final savory dish. That duck breast that has been aging for weeks has to be perfectly scored so that when it hits the grill that fat can render out and leave a crispy skin. It needs to be perfectly grilled so that the meat is perfectly medium-rare. The binchotan grill is too hot? Your duck skin is going to get dark and crispy on the surface leaving the fat underneath not fully rendered, meat still rare and lukewarm, and a chef very angry. That expensive duck from that expensive farm was butchered and seasoned by someone getting paid; fucking up that duck breast up enough to go into the trash means you just threw a lot of money in the trash and you know it. Not only that but now that 7-minute pick-up needs to start over, forcing your line partner who was preparing the vegetables and sauce for that duck needs to pivot.

As I’m writing this, I can’t help but have a little grin. Sure, working the line is stressful and tough on your body… but it’s so damn fun. Nailing every fish that gets ordered that night, cutting into a perfectly cooked steak, and knowing that you seasoned everything just right at the end of the night makes that beer at the end of the day extra crispy and that first cigarette extra delicious. When you work the hot line you usually get to have a station partner that spends more time with you than anyone else in your life. No romantic partner or family member gets as much quality time within your proximity as your station partner. If you’re lucky y’all become close friends. Inside jokes, camaraderie, and the burdens of working in a kitchen are alleviated when you get to work with friends you make in the kitchen. Though I have no desire to go back to working full-time on the line, I had a ton of fun, and if I am completely honest with myself… I miss those days. Good times.

I digress - back to the brigade.

Commis (Prep) cooks are the unsung heroes of the unsung heroes. They’re either younger cooks who don’t have any experience and are working up to become a line cook or they’re more experienced cooks who are usually burnt out and want a life outside of a restaurant’s dinner service lifestyle. Sure, they are the bottom rung of the brigade system, but they’re an essential part of the kitchen team, and starting off as one provides a young cook with plenty of opportunities to practice knife cuts and a ton of basic skills that will all eventually be used on the line. Commis cooks are the ones doing a lot of the heavy lifting for line cooks. Bigger bulk projects like fermentation, pickling, stock production, butchery, processing ingredient deliveries, etc.

If you’re a line cook that works in a restaurant with prep cooks, you’re a lucky one. I’ve worked in a few restaurants without prep cooks, which means… you as the line cook are doing all the prep cooks tasks, while setting your station up, and cooking through the night. Prep cooks are truly a beautiful thing.

And below even the prep cook is the wonderful stagiarie position, also known as a stage. A stage is basically an apprentice, which is a PC way to call someone free labor. Before the pandemic hit, the upper echelon of fine dining restaurants that were lauded with multiple Michelin stars were tough spots to land a full-time job. There are only so many stations and most of the cooks that landed a job, want to keep that job. And if a cook is promoted up there are plenty more below them that are gunning for that opening. These fine dining establishments with a respected chef at the helm are more than just restaurants to work at for cooks, they become institutions, schools, and even temples. When competition is tough and the slots are scarce, eager cooks who want to be under a chef’s wings will do anything to get their foot in the door. Some restaurants like Benu, Le Bernadin, Arpège, El Celler de Can Roca, Noma, Eleven Madison Park, Alinea, and so many more had a little army of stages. These were the people who were down and happy to work for free for however long their savings would allow them, just for a shot at a job.

When I was starting off as a prep cook at a Vietnamese banh mi restaurant in East Atlanta, I was sorely under-qualified to work at any kind of fine dining establishment. But I wanted to get into that world, badly. So while working at the banh mi spot and while going to school full time, I spent all my free days as a stage at Staplehouse just to learn and grow. I wanted a job there but I knew I didn’t have the experience necessary, but I thought that if I could pester them and come in enough, they’d eventually bring me in. Long story short, I landed a commis position and got my chance to grow there. I then busted my ass there to make sure I could 1. keep my job, 2. work hard enough to do more than just survive each service, 3. one day leave Atlanta to work at one of those iconic institutional restaurants I noted before.

This was before the pandemic. Now… this doesn’t seem like the case. During the pandemic, it was rare to get a fresh job application and even harder to find a stage. A lot of cooks left the industry once it all started to falter during the pandemic and to work for free sounds laughable. This topic could be a few substack posts alone, so I won’t go down that rabbit hole… yet.

The grand finale of kitchen roles goes to… the dish washer. You always see big time chefs with “professional dishwasher” on their IG bios, and that shit drives me nuts. No chef wants to be a dishwasher. Cooking is intense and hard labor, but dishwashing is a different kind of beast. Have you ever manned a hot ass industrial dishwasher for 8 hours? Scraping off food scraps because even though the servers are supposed to do that they don’t because they’re too lazy, then carefully placing dishes into the racks, taking them out of the racks while they’re still piping hot, drying them, and do it all over again for hours? Or have you just spent hours standing over a three-sink scrubbing stacks of pots and pans with a steel wool and actually scrubbing to remove any blemish, only to have them come back after a cook destroys the pan with because they forgot that the pan on the range at full blast leaving burnt oil that takes a few minutes of pure elbow grease torque to remove? The job ain’t easy. But someone does it at every restaurant. If the dishwasher is sick, a no show, or quits an hour before (which happens a bit too often) that is when the chef becomes “a professional dishwasher”.

Not a lot of people want to do that job. There is no glory and there is no glamour at all. But the people who do wash dishes are cut from a different cloth, and usually they all have interesting life stories and reasons of why they chose that job. Badasses, all of them.

All these roles work tirelessly and harmoniously together to make your meals on your nights out.

This eludes back to the first question of what is a chef?

I see it as one who runs a restaurant. Whether they are sous chefs, CDCs, and/or executive chefs. Within every restaurant I’ve worked at, we call all of each other chefs as a sign of respect. “Yes chef. Behind you chef. Thank you chef.” Yet, when I am out and not working, when I meet someone or when a friend introduces me, I rarely say that I am a chef. I always just say that I am a cook.

I have never been a sous chef (mostly because I never wanted to and avoided becoming one) and I have never been a CDC. Sure, I’ve run my own pop ups and will continue to in the future… but is that a chef? Maybe. If we’re talking strictly about what the definition of a chef is, I am not one. Maybe one day. I was always happy to just be a cook and I was always honored and happy to call myself one.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this week. I’m sorry if it was a bit… dry with the information dump. But I hope it was informative at least and a good glimpse into how a restaurant kitchen system is laid out.

In the next couple weeks, we’ll take a deeper dive into what tips and tricks you can incorporate into your home cooking that can hopefully make you a stronger home cook.

Thanks for reading, subscribing, and sharing!

All love,

Edmond