Overdue

Cleanest kitchen ever? yea.

So I recently left my most current restaurant job at a fairly popular restaurant in DC. I was just wayyyy too burned out to continue, and a bunch of other reasons. I just felt like I was slowly loosing my passion for doing it so I figure I should take a break and pursue other goals that I've had to put on hold for it. It was a very nice restaurant and kitchen with its cons and pros, wouldn't say its my fav. place though. The crew was very fun and skilled and probably one of the best I've had the honor to work with.


Drinking after service

So soon I will be heading back to school to join my peers and be a somewhat "normal" 21 year old I guess :3. Oh, before I left, Peter, an awesome friend and cook made a batch of his infamous chocolate cookies. They were awesome!



So this here is my current past time and obsession, kinda...I will most likely include this in my future posts!


Not road ready...

...but doesn't mean I dont take it out for a walk =]

Recently, I decided to go have a picnic some 2500 feet above ground =D. It could have been better weather but in the end it's always a blast with Hello Kitty

Mmmmmm the rain clouds creeping up behind it..

Isn't she So Dep?!
Im making my rabbit jealous D:



Somewhere along the way, I was a pokemon trainer too

And this is my arch nemesis D: it kicks my ass though..

So yea...We'll see what the upcoming weeks have to offer =]

In New York, going where dreams are made of.

Oh man its been a couple of weeks since the last entry haha. I kept procrastinating on the update. I realllly want to upload pictures but I can't find the stupid USB cable to connect my camera into the computer. It's labor day, and I just got finished walking around exploring and eating at some more small places around the city. I think everyday that goes by, I love this city more and more. I seem to find peace and more about myself every time I go out with no destination. There's all sort of people in this city, rich to poor, short to tall, black to white, sad and happy. I feel as if the world just compacted itself in to these five boroughs. Everyone here is either doing their best to survive or is content with whatever they have. So I feel like I belong here more than anywhere else. Before I chose to move here, I had several options presented for me from my previous chef from LA, SF, to Florida. I think I chose here because everyone says that if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. I really want to see if thats true. From history, immigrants from Europe came here, with nothing. Some became nothing but some became more than they could ever imagined. Perhaps it's also another reason why I feel like this is a proper choice for the beginning of my career. Aside from the fact that majority of the US's top rated restaurants are here haha.

I've been at the restaurant for three weeks now, and I gotta say, I've gained so much respect for the restaurant, its' employees and everyone in the business in general. There was a meeting which the heads of the restaurant expressed how they felt about a recent event that brought a dissapointing mood to the place. Everyone expressed how they felt on their face, I looked around and see how heart broken the employees were and the sadness they felt. But by the end of the meeting, everyone encouraged each other to move on, to work as one. I saw how dedicated all the employees were, how much they love the restaurant. The meeting gave me confidence and a drive to keep improving and work harder, for myself, and for all those who love the restaurant. I never realized it til now that a restaurant is not just a place to eat, or to make money. It's also home to many hard working folks, it's a living breathing environment with the blood and soul of all the workers embodying it. I guess how much work, and love that is poured into a restaurant will ensure it's survival. So next time you go out to eat, take time to see how much work and love was poured into the place, from the decor, the food, to the service. We're all there to make you feel happy.

It took about two weeks til I got comfortable to communicate and talk to the other cooks in the kitchen. Once I did I felt myself improving overall when I worked, now it's fun. It takes time because this is my second home, I spend almost half my week here in the kitchen. The cooks are like my brothers; we're all a family. I have respect for every single one of them. I always thought that it was purely...competitive based on the books I've read written from other chefs. So I came with a mindset of purely working for myself and beating others. Now I don't really care about being better than the next person. Food is about coming together, sharing, and life in general. So I do whatever I can to help the person next to me, staying late to help set up the station. It's all okay because we're all fighting for the same side.

I promised myself one thing. Come the day I become a sous-chef or a exec. chef. I'll always treat my cooks with respect, and will always stick by their side. I always felt like a general should always fight along side his men. I never understood why some chefs treat their cooks like crap and feel like theyre the best or something. Were they not once line cooks? and know how it feels like to be treated like that? Gradually I'm learning to become more patient, which I think something all chefs should have. Patience with food, and with others.

So to end this I will say, the worst thing about living in NYC. Is that I live wayyyyyy too close to clothing stores. I don't smoke, I don't really drink, I don't gamble, I'm fairly "straight-edge" some will say. People always wonder how I don't have money sometime. The secret is I like clothes and I shop a helllllllaaaaa lot >.<. It seriously does not help with me working several blocks away from SoHo either haha. Maybe I'll include some fashion things here and there on this blog =D

Intro

Okay, so this will be the first post to hopefully many more to come. I've just moved here to NYC last saturday. Not knowing many people (like 2) and is just by myself here. So I figure why not start doing something somewhat productive with my freetime and write about something. I thought hey! why not about write about my job, give the world a little bit of a view into what goes on behind the kitchen, and what a cook goes through. Yea, I'm sure I'm not the first to write about this but meh. I'll be documenting on my life in NYC and whatever cities I'll be journeying to and part of my life too I guess...and whatever randomness I decide to post. I'll try my best to focus it on food though haha.

The Title, well...I want to be a Michelin rated chef, and I want to work under a Michelin rated chef. I'm still young so I haven't really thought too much about owning my own restaurant and what not. I just want to work under the chefs I really admired. Such as Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Ferran Adria or Grant Achatz. Yea those are pretty big name chefs but I would love to work under anyone of them. Let me also say that I do not watch the Food Network, I have much respect for the chefs and cooks on the network. However, the environment they deal with is a bit different from what goes on in a restaurant, the one I get extreme "culinary boners" from. Points for those who can get where that phrase came from haha. I personally do not care about the money, or the business aspect of the restaurant world, as much of a part as it plays. I care about the food, period. Yes I know theres alot more to a restaurant than just food such as decor, service etc. If I cared about those things then I would have gotten a business degree or something. I want to learn more about food, why we like certain things certain ways. Why plating it this way looks better than another, or why certain things just go together, and what is that special magic those Michelin chefs possess that makes their food stand above all others.

Don't see me as a highend food nazi or anything though just because I want to work in a Michelin restaurant. I'd take Takoyaki(Japanese octopus ball), a bowl of Pho or a Nathans hotdog over some fancy fine dining joint when hunger strikes. Maybe it's the environment I don't know but I never like eating in fine dining restaurants. My best memories of food are either home cooked meals or ones I ate off of some side walk or street. However, when I do go to a fine dining joint (not often) I just order water, and food. I dont care about the decor, the colors, or how much the server treats me like a king. I'm there to eat, not filling the void in my ego. So to sum it up, food is all I care about.

My self. I'm 20 as I'm writing the first post. I started in the restaurant business about 2 years ago or so. Young, inexperienced, and naive. Applied everywhere but noone wants some kid to cook for them. The only experience I had was homecooking, reading books from Julia, Jaques Pepin and Harold McGee. Oh yes and awesome knife skills from a certain fruit place ;D. Then one day with luck I got a number from a restaurant in Baltimore and I called. I got a trailing day (it's like a job interview for cooks) and then an actual interview. I was hired. I trained and worked on Garder Manger making salads and desserts. I learned to cook many things but most of which I had already had experience making. My days of reading books paid off and I accelerated quick and before you know it I was on the hot side grilling meat and serving the main courses. It took me a while before I learned that I was working in the top rated french restaurant in baltimore, based on zagat rating. What luck huh? of all the places to take me in, it was the best place for me. The chefs there, Chef Michel and Sous chef Pter taught me alot of things, the skills, the mind and the qualities I would need to be successful. It was there in the small home restaurant that I learned more about food than I had from any book, and what it meant to put care into what I cooked and the story every dish had.

Eventually, time had come for me to move on to the next path in my journey. I started to trail at a restaurant in New York City. Driving at 3AM in the morning for 3 hours to make it there by 6AM to work. I had no Idea what I was getting myself into, all I knew was that it was the most popular rated zagat restaurant in New York. The expectations, the quality and the volume here was on another level. Regardless, the restaurant in Baltimore taught me all I needed, the rest will be up to me. So I packed my bags and moved to Astoria away from family and friends to work here. I have no idea what will happen in the months to come but I will not fail...

Ill update with some pictures and details on my first week of working next time.