Hot take: plating tweezers are hurting young cooks and I said it out loud on Friday | Chefs - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Hot take: plating tweezers are hurting young cooks and I said it out loud on Friday
Last Friday I had a 22 year old line cook, good kid, and he spent four whole minutes placing micro greens with tweezers on a plate during the rush while his saute pan sat there burning. I finally walked over and told him to use his fingers and move, and he looked at me like I insulted his mother. Everyone in this sub loves to hype up the tweezer thing and those 18 ingredient plates, but in my 15 years in kitchens around Austin the best plates I've seen were four things done right. The kid could not tell me why the greens were on the plate, not the sauce, not the balance, just that it looked cool on Instagram. Meanwhile his sear game was weak and his timing on the grill was off, and none of that got fixed because we keep telling kids that how it looks is the job. I'm not saying make everything ugly, I'm saying a cook who can run a station beats a cook who plates pretty every time. Anybody else out there fighting this with their younger crew, or am I just getting old?