What I Learned Staging at Canlis

I just finished up a two week stint as a stage (intern) at Canlis, Seattle's landmark fine dining restaurant. Chef Franey was incredibly generous to let me spend time in his kitchen; Patrick, Stacy and Jin showed me the ropes on garde manger, and every single person including third-generation owners Brian and Mark Canlis, the sous chefs, cooks, pastry chefs, captains and servers, food runners and dishwashers were kind, fun, professional and just altogether great to spend time with.

After I worked at Cafe Flora for a few months, I wrote a post summarizing what I learned. I thought I would do the same as I leave Canlis.

Fine dining is an altogether different beast; that is probably the single biggest thing I got through my thick skull. At a normal restaurant, you should reasonably expect a tasty, well prepared meal in a pleasant environment. The food will probably be something that a good home cook could manage, but the cooking and cleaning will be done for you and someone will bring it to you with a smile. 

At a fine dining restaurant, the goal is perfection. Nature is taken apart, idealized, and put back together as if there really was a god that micro-managed every leaf and drop of sauce. Very few home cooks have the equipment, ingredients, patience or skill to make this level of food. In the dining room, your every need is anticipated and met. For a few hours, you get to feel like the most important person in the world, with every care lifted away. At Canlis, the valet even makes your car re-appear magically when you get up from the table, without even having to ask for it or present a ticket. They just know which one is yours.

Based on what I saw at Cafe Flora, I'd estimate that there are about 15-20 kitchen-minutes of labor invested in prep and final cooking per diner served. Not so different from home, where one person cooking for an hour can make a nice meal for four people. At Canlis, I'd guess it is about 5 times that much labor. These are just back-of-the envelope guesses, but I bet the ratio is about right. So you can see why a fine dining meal costs as much as it does. One kind of restaurant isn't fundamentally better than the other. They are just different. One is utilitarian, the other utopian.

Many of the prep jobs at Canlis require a lot of precision. For example, on the Restaurant Week menu is a smoked cauliflower soup. One of the garnishes is three little flat squares of cucumber with the skin on, 1/2" by 1/2", and about 1/4" thick. They all have to be identically sized and precisely square, and lie flat. It isn't the easiest thing in the world to transform an unruly cylinder into perfect squares. The first time I needed to make 100 orders (300 pieces), it took me 2+ hours and the net result fit in a quart container. By the end of the week I could do it a lot faster and better. 

The kitchen at Canlis during prep time is much quieter than Cafe Flora. Not a library, but there is no music playing and people tend to be pretty concentrated on their work. Conversations are in small snippets and about food. During service it becomes even more intense, with tickets coming in fast, orders being called out by the chef, resounding shouts of "Chef!" to acknowledge them, and a crew of very intent cooks working at a high level of speed and precision. The chef or sous chef works at the pass, orchestrating the timing of each course for every table and acting as final quality control, making sure that everything looks and tastes up to his standards.

For the two weeks I was there, I spent most of service making the amuse bouche, a tiny and complimentary course served to every diner. Making them isn't hard - I could teach you the basic move in five minutes. A pretty white shot glass is filled with one ounce of a bright green pureed gazpacho. A half teaspoon of brunoised bell pepper and cucumber in olive oil is spooned in, and a single sprig of tat soi or micro-mizuna is hung carefully over the edge.

There were some things that added challenge though. The soup needed to be seasoned with salt, white balsamic vinegar and cayenne, quart by quart over the course of the night. If we pre-seasoned it too far in advance, it would lose color. There is a bit of pressure in getting that seasoning just right when tickets are coming in fast and you really want the guests to get their amuse promptly.  And then there is the usual challenge of just making sure you have enough of all the items for service and keeping your area clean. Once I had that stuff under control, I was able to pitch in when we'd get a rush for other items in garde manger, or start on prep for the next day.

It was eye opening for me to see just how much so-called molecular gastronomy is incorporated routinely into the life of a fine-dining kitchen these days. Vacuum compression, sous vide, reverse spherification, xanthan gum and ultra-tex for thickening sauces and so forth. This isn't even thought of as high tech stuff anymore. It is as basic as knowing how to blanch and shock vegetables, or strain a puree through a tamis. Chef Franey explained to me his philosophy on using these techniques - he wants it to just make the food better without most diners even really being aware of what happened. I think the quote was something like "we should be the cool kid who knows he's cool and doesn't have to show off". That approach is perfect for Canlis, which has this incredible tradition dating back to 1950. He's been able to update all of that food (retaining a few classics) in a way that keeps the regulars coming back while making big fans among a new generation.

I was a little concerned that at a restaurant famous for meat and seafood, it would be hard to be a vegetarian in the kitchen. I didn't need to worry about that at all. Naturally, folks had questions about it, but no-one gave me a hard time, and there was more than enough work to be done with vegetarian ingredients.

I really enjoy Chef's plating style. I think I could recognize one of his plates as distinct from any other chef's whose food I've had the pleasure of eating or seeing. He often has a juxtaposition of geometric and more organic forms, with lots of detail but no unneccesary frills, inedible garnishes or contrived service items. As I look through Art Culinaire and everyone's plates look the same, I like the idea of developing a personal and recognizable style.

This experience has helped me hone my vision and be more realistic about what I want my first place to be like. I want to serve great, thoughtful, delicious, beautiful food. But I don't want it to take an army of people to execute. I could easily have had the ambition to serve plates with as much work on them as those at Canlis. Seeing firsthand what that really takes, I know that I will need to serve many fewer people, have fewer components on each plate, and have a much shorter menu. On today's dining scene there are plenty of models outside that traditional spectrum from neighborhood joint to fine dining. We've got mobile trucks serving highly original food and white tablecloth joints serving sliders. I just have to precisely define my own vision, execute it, and keep refining it.

I could go on and on about everything I experienced in these two weeks. Heck, I could write a whole post about how we breakdown the kitchen at the end of the night, or the philosophy of what and how much should be prepped in advance vs. made new every day. But I imagine I've already gone into more detail than most folks want. So I'll stop there and just say thanks again to everyone at Canlis! I had a great time and learned so much from all of you.

What I Learned At Cafe Flora

Friday was my last night at Cafe Flora. And I'm sad. These few months of sabbatical from my engineering job, immersed in food and life in the kitchen, with all my new friends there, has been a really happy time for me.

Since this was an internship, it is only fitting that I try to write down what I learned. Of course this is only my experience, over a limited period of time at a single restaurant with all of its particularities of people, style, location and size.

I learned to prep hard and fast. Part of this is looking for efficiencies, like gathering all the ingredients you need for a recipe on a single trip to the dry storage, or knowing which projects can be done simultaneously. One recipe can get to a step where it needs a prolonged simmer while you do the chopping for another.

Another factor is repetition. When you small-dice 20 pounds of roma tomatoes by hand a few times a week, your hands just get quicker. Even little things like where you place your compost bucket and the container you are putting the goods in make a big difference.

Probably the biggest part of getting faster is just the desire to give yourself that extra push and try to keep your hands moving as quickly as they can while doing a quality job. That and watching the people around you, picking up on everyone's tricks. You'd be amazed how many ways there are to do even a simple task like filling and rolling the famous Oaxaca Tacos. The end result is the same, but each person has their own special way of doing it faster and leaving less mess to clean up.

I learned the importance of taking responsibility for your own cooking. Most of the time no-one is looking over your shoulder. It is primarily on you to uphold standards of food safety, quality and flavor. You have to do that because you love food and you care about serving it as good as it can be. Likewise when you make a mistake, you've got to own it, talk it over with the sous chef to determine whether to fix it or start over, and move on quickly.

Watching all of the managers and leads do their things, I began to get an idea of the organizational systems required. Some of those systems live on computers, some on clipboards and whiteboards, and many in the minds of the cooks. Especially in a large restaurant with multiple shifts and teams, you have to have good tracking of ingredients and preparations or you can easily end up with menu items that are 86'ed because you didn't make enough, or food that is going to waste because you made too much. Or menu items that you are losing money on because the food costs are too high. Or junky produce because purveyors may give you their less desireable stuff if you aren't firm about checking everything that comes in.

There are also systems that everyone in the kitchen uses, like organizing the walk-in so you know where to look for lemon juice or kale that has been washed and cleaned without having to search the whole place. This will be part of the learning curve in any restaurant, just knowing where to look for a whisk, the rice flour, even a pen or rubberband. It is annoying at first, but there just is no way around having to ask for awhile until you know the place.

In the same vein, I learned that there is almost always a good reason that something is done a certain way. For example, when I first got there I wasn't sure why there was such an emphasis on "downsizing" food as is partially used. (For example, moving the rest of a sauce from an 8 quart to a 4 quart container). It seemed like a waste of time. Why not just leave it in the larger one until we use it up a day or so later? Turns out there are many good reasons - changing the container is good for sanitation, it gives you more space in the walk-in, and it makes it easier to assess your situation so you know if more needs to be made, because you can see at a glance how much is left.

So again the key is asking the right questions, at the right times, and with the right attitude. Ask because you genuinely want to know, not because you assume you know a better way. Ask when someone isn't too busy. Most folks are happy to share what they know if they see that you are genuinely interested. And once in awhile that conversation will lead to you both improving a system or a product.

I learned a ton about how to move and talk in the often-crowded, fast moving kitchen environment. From letting someone know that you are about to go behind them with a knife or a hot pot, to confirming that you are getting the backup supply of Madeira sauce so they can go back to what they were doing, communicating clearly and concisely makes the whole machine flow.

I definitely learned a lot about food. It was really cool to see the creative process of other cooks, and try techniques and flavor combinations that were outside of my well-worn pathways.

I also got a better understanding of what food works in a restaurant setting where large quantities are prepared, tools are different, and final cooking happens on a tight timeframe. Some things just work better at home, and some things are vastly easier to do in a commercial kitchen. For example, very few folks I know will deep-fry at home, but in a restaurant it is trivial to include a fried component in a dish.

One thing I really wanted to do during my internship is try my hand at running a station during service (as opposed to doing prep work). Chef Janine gave me ample opportunity to do this, starting with my very first shift when I worked on the pantry station. I got good at that one, and also can handle lunch and dinner pizza (which also does sandwiches and other grill items), and the lunch line. Dinner line during the rush on a busy night is still a bit out of my comfort zone, but I feel confident that if I worked on it for a week or two solid I'd get my speed up to where I could handle it. All of my fellow cooks were amazingly generous about teaching me the stations and letting me work parts or all of their shifts.

I got to see a lot of the interactions between the front and back of the house. I think Cafe Flora is probably very much on the positive side of that spectrum. The cooks and servers all know each other well and generally get along great. If I have my own place somewhere down the line, that is an attitude I'd strive to keep: we are all part of the same team, working to make sure that the customers are happy and the restaurant is successful.

One of the questions I had going in to this internship was whether I really had what it takes. Did I have a solid foundation of knowledge of food and cooking and culinary common sense? Were my knife skills up to the task? Would I have the physical stamina? Could I even stand on my feet for a full shift? At the advanced age of 41, could I still hang? Would I actually like the day-to-day work as much as I thought? I'm happy to say that the answers to these were yes (at least in my opinion :). I loved going in every day, and I've never felt so physically strong in my adult life.

As in any business, whether you are the owner or the most entry-level employee, the keys to enjoying yourself and reaching your goals are the same. Show up on time. Work your butt off. Do the best work you are capable of and try to do it even better the next time. Stay late. Go above and beyond. Say yes to opportunities and no to the little jealousies or gossip that you find in any workplace. Get to really know the folks you work with, and let them get to know you too.

I think ultimately that is the most important thing I learned. I really loved all the folks I worked with. We have a lot of fun in the kitchen, talking about our lives while we work, listening (and occasionally dancing) to music, and giving each other a hard time. Sharing the hard work, and the sense of accomplishment when it goes well, or when we just survive a long shift. And sharing the love of good food and the curiosity to keep learning about it. To any of my Flora buddies who are reading this, thank yous are not enough, but they are all the words I have.

Better Picture of the Dumplings

I've been promising a better picture of the winter green dumplings, and the review in the Seattle paper finally got me to drag the good camera in and do it. Our sous chef, Lisa, stood the chives up in it to make it "3D"! She's right, it helped the picture a lot.