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CLUB CULINARY NEWSFLASH 12/04/2003
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Club Culinary Newest Developments! Complete Restaurant Guide
**This Newsflash is sponsored by Santa Monica Seafood!**
Please click on the fish (upper left) for more information.
It’s been awhile, and I have been very busy. It took some long days and help from many talented and dedicated people but I created the first ever “Iron Chef” style cooking competition for LA chefs and held the competition this past August! As Vice President of The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Culinary Federation, I convinced our chapter board to align our values with the national office and change our Chef of the Year Award from a popular vote to a cooking competition. We negotiated the contract with the exhibition company, Reed, to run the competitions at the Western Food Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center August 2, 3, 4. If you would like to see more about the competition go to our new Los Angeles Chapter web site at www.acfla.org
I have some great news! Because of the overwhelming requests for information and recipes, I am creating two exciting new programs for you, the "Contemporary Restuarant Guide for Clubs" and my "Chef Whitney's Picture Recipe Ezine." The first is a compilation of the systems I put in place that helped me compete with the real restaurant world and build a sleepy hollow club dinosaur into a five day a week, lunch and dinner service, no food minimum, 150-300 daily cover, a la carte restaurant operation (excluding functions that go on simultaneously throughout the week). I achieved this keeping the food and labor costs on target, increased member satisfaction and dining room usage, and won the trust of The Beach Club’s Board of Directors using the techniques outlined in this CD. I will have this “Contemporary Restaurant Guide for Clubs” out by late December, just in time to start the new year with a fresh restaurant operation!
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Click here to order now and receive a 15% discount off the costs of creating the program for you.
When finished it will include all the tools your food and beverage team needs to succeed. It is not a textbook to read, just forms and side-work check lists that I created upon my arrival at The Beach Club five years ago. Now I just update them periodically to align them with my current needs. Now you can take advantage of these valuable tools too! Just add items to lists that are special to your establishment and print.
I have included position competency lists for all food and beverage positions, checklists for dining room personnel training and even a crash course in basic cooking techniques that acts as the kitchen position competencies. If you’re hiring a cook that says he is a saucier, you can give him his competency list and see where he stands. It also includes kitchen quizzes for each section of the kitchen so you could give a section test as a hiring tool for a specific job (sauté cook position applicant would receive a different quiz than the saucier or pantry cook applicant). This CD makes it unnecessary to re-invent the wheel. When a new employee starts, you simply print out that position’s competency/duty list, give them a brief description of your house rules (most clubs have an unspoken list of major do’s and don’ts) and have the new employee follow your hot shot in that position for three days. Whether kitchen or dining room employee, this system worked for me and I guarantee this will work for you. As I mentioned, this is not a textbook! This is simply a copy of the tools and lecture outlines that I used to teach the crew how to get the job done! It is up to your people to make it happen!
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Chef Whitney's Picture Recipe Ezine
This smoke roasted Lobster-Herb Crusted Salmon dish is an example of the exciting new dishes that I will be sharing to help jump-start your club/restaurant! Click on the picture to the left to download this picture recipe now!
Just remember, where there is a will there is a way - when you see two to three hundred reservations don't try smoke roasting to order. Smoke the item slowly at low temperature ahead of time and roast it to order.
Would you like, more of my club-proven, kitchen-tested, membership-pleasing recipes? You can have my hot new recipes emailed directly to you with full color pictures and simple directions on how to execute these West Coast specialties. Just click on the picture on the left for sign up information.
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Valentino Chef Takes the Gold and is Named “Chef of the Year” in Los Angeles
As the Competition Chair I am proud to announce that Chef Steve Samson of Valentino in Santa Monica not only won the Chef of the Year Award but took home an ACF Gold. He put on an amazing show including more technique in one hour than most cooks display in a lifetime. This marks the first ever Chef of the Year, of an ACF chapter, that won the award by competing in an ACF sanctioned cooking competition rather than being selected by a popular vote.
Not only did Steve compete in a cooking contest for the award, he took the only gold in the entire competition including the chef’s tables and all the cold and dessert display categories! However, the single most outrageous and controversial point of Steve winning the award is that he was not a member of the ACF. For all those who are skeptical of the new criteria for the Chef of the Year Award nomination being open to non-members - Steve and five other non-member competitors were inducted the night of the President’s Ball before the results were announced!
We in Los Angeles have taken the next step and, for the good of the ACF and President Leonard’s mission, I urge all chapters to do the same.
Running this competition was four of the best days of my life and I wish you all the best when your chapter takes the plunge!
To nominate your club’s chef if you’re in LA, a CMAA friend's chef or just nominate your favorite LA area restaurant chef to compete at next year’s competition, click on the “nominate a chef for 2004” link below!
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Nominate a Chef for 2004 - Click Here
Then check back through the year at www.acfla.org and click on the "CYA Nominee" link to see who has been nominated to date. If you go to the “calendar of events” link you will see when each nominee is scheduled to cook a course at an educational dinner/meeting as well as whom the guest demonstrator will be. All event tickets will be available with a click of a mouse and I hope to see a big turnout this year given the new format. If you are not a member and want to attend please join us and we will keep you on our list of friends!
The most important thing to remember is, as my boss at The Beach Club, Gregg Patterson, would say, ”have some fun with it."
**ALSO, DON’T FORGET ALL OF GREGG’S WHITE PAPERS ON CLUB ISSUES MAKE GREAT SENIOR STAFF MEETING TOPICS AND THEY ARE AVAILABLE TO YOU, AT NO COST, ON THE PATTERSON LINK AT CLUBCULINARY.COM**
**Be a sponsor! More information, fast, easy online sign up at www.clubculinary.com click on Ad/Sponsor Link**
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