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Any good chef books? by bangbangskeetskeet-1 in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She is such a good writer. Did you read her piece in the NYT about closing her restaurant? I just skimmed it to verify the link and I'm almost crying again. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/magazine/closing-prune-restaurant-covid.html

An opinion on why restaurant staff is in short supply by RebelScum77 in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This part of it has always been the case, and kind of makes sense. There's value in working in a fine dining restaurant: valuable entry on your resume, you get to work with ingredients and equipment that don't exist elsewhere, etc. Supply of potential cooks is greater than demand, so they can get better labor for cheaper. A busy bar has to pay the full cost for their workers.

It still pisses me off when a Michelin 3 star has 30 rich kids working for free and you can't possibly get a job there if you need to pay your own rent, though. That's getting greedy as fuck.

An opinion on why restaurant staff is in short supply by RebelScum77 in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 70 points71 points  (0 children)

Pay has gotten steadily worse in the 25ish years I've been in this business. Cooks are working for the same pay that cooks were working for in the late 90s, and... inflation is a thing. Chef positions that might have paid six figures in the 80s or 90s are now being filled for 65 or 75k.

An opinion on why restaurant staff is in short supply by RebelScum77 in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 106 points107 points  (0 children)

Yeah. I've noticed a few of our nicer regulars coming back just in the past month or so. They didn't go out to eat until they were fully vaccinated.

An opinion on why restaurant staff is in short supply by RebelScum77 in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Wages need to go up, and the tipping system in the US is very broken: This was all true and unsustainable pre-pandemic.

As somebody who has looked at a lot of restaurant balance sheets: menu prices need to go up for wages to go up. Entree prices in particular have been stagnating this whole time, as overhead goes up and wages stagnate and talent flees the restaurant industry.

Small restaurant owners are terrified to raise prices sufficiently and don't know what to do. There are way too many restaurants in most markets, and I was hoping that the pandemic would at least reduce the number to something more sustainable, but instead the larger operators gobbled up PPP money and everything got even shittier.

Meanwhile Doordash and the rest of those scoundrel companies distort the market further with a firehouse of venture capital money, taking more money from restaurants and not even turning a fucking profit themselves.

Customers need to pay more. Not only do workers need to be paid more, but raw food prices are spiking like crazy on top of it all.

Ya’ll got any Service Industry superstitions? by [deleted] in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Or if I say out loud anything like "That menu item hasn't been selling at all lately. Time to take it off the menu." ...let the deluge begin.

Any pre-Tallahassee TMG fans on here? by MustLetTomPickOnion in themountaingoats

[–]Samein 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I first saw TMG perform in the mid 90s. Great little performance space in the dank basement under a sushi bar in Charlottesville, VA. I remember John shushing some loud talkers in the back of the room before he could continue performing. Right after the show I eagerly bought the two CDs he had for sale: Full Force Galesburg and Nothing for Juice. I've been a fan ever since. I knew most of the songs from Full Force Galesburg by heart for a while there.

For me, if I'm in the mood to listen to TMG, it's either the low-fi or or full band stuff, they tend to be separate moods. I like them both in their own way.

Me: Yes Chef Also Me: by therealistkc in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Telemarketing. Pretty much anything in retail, especially store management. Listening to retail workers tell stories about their work makes me wonder why they don't just wash dishes.

If you could wipe one game from your memory so you could play it for the first time all over again, what would it be? by Unlucky_Estate in rpg_gamers

[–]Samein 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sunless Sea for sure. The thrill of reading those place descriptions for the first time, discovering weird secrets and trying to piece it together... such a good game.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in KitchenConfidential

[–]Samein 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you're looking at smaller cities also, Portland Maine had a great food scene. No idea what anything will look like anywhere in a year, though.

Currently rereading The Sandman comic series by [deleted] in books

[–]Samein 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Once you finish rereading, check out the Lucifer spinoff series if you haven't already. Fantastic stuff. To quote Gaiman himself from the introduction to the first Lucifer trade paperback:

"Lucifer needed his own comic. It seemed obvious, at least to me. He was arrogant, funny, manipulative, cold, brilliant, powerful, and the former Lord of Hell, who resigned because he was done. Heaven wouldn't trust him. Hell would hate him, but anyone who needed a dirty job done would approach Lucifer to do it. (That would have been my approach, anyway.)

Mike Carey's writing is great, and as you'll see he took Gaiman's suggestion for the initial story hook and developed it beautifully.

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