Authentic? Stuff you liked, stuff you didn’t? I’m interested in your assessment.
I haven’t seen it, but I plan to.
Here’s a link to Burnt on IMDB.
Haven’t seen it, now I’m interested.
Only saw it because we got free tickets.
So - not surprisingly, it’s ludicrous. But also not surprisingly, it’s clearly designed with non-restaurant pros in mind - the kind of people who think Gordon Ramsay shows have a foot in reality, let’s say.
My biggest concern was for the serviceware budget in those restaurants. Stop breaking plates, bad chef! No one EVER has enough of the flat main plates, you’ll be regretting that one come second service.
Also, the only reason to shout at your brigade is if you can’t control them. The only reason you can’t control them is if you’re a bad head chef.
Finally, everyone other than Omar Sy was sleepwalking through their lines.
Thanks for the reply. Interesting… it’s not getting great reviews.
I’m fascinated by the spontaneous choreography of the big restaurant kitchen. Can you- or someone- recommend a movie that portrays that accurately?
It would be very difficult to - as much as it can be adrenaline-fueled, it’s not particularly exciting. Just like every profession, what’s on screen doesn’t really resemble the day-to-day life.
Working on a line isn’t really spontaneous - you know what section you’re working on, so once prep is done and service has started, you’re just getting the components of the same dishes ready over and over again in various combinations.
To vastly simplify - you’re working, let’s say, the veg section in a big kitchen brigade in a French restaurant. You’re responsible for all the other stuff on the plates outside of meats and sauces. Lamb comes with carrots and mash, steak comes with roast veg and spinach, salmon comes with roasted artichokes and a cold salsa. So three tables of four have placed their orders, the chef will call out which dishes they are, you’ll heat up, for example, 5 portions of the lamb sides, 4 of the steak sides, 3 of the fish sides. You’ll get them to the pass, making sure they’re hot and ready when the protein is. The dishes will be plated and go out. The next bills will be called - 6 steaks, 4 lamb, 2 fish, and so on, until the end of the night. Sometimes you time things wrong - the meat’s ready before the veg is. The meat will either get cold, overcook, or both. The head chef tells you to sort your shit out, you apologise. He doesn’t have time to politely suggest you pay more attention. No one cries. You get your ass back in gear and soldier on.
No one throws any plates at the walls.
You can see how that would make a rather dull film. These aren’t quite what you’re asking, but the two cooking films most enjoyed by chefs I know are Jiro Dreams of Sushi and (secretly, and usually only tell you if no one else is around) Ratatouille.
I didn’t mean completely spontaneous, as in “out of nowhere,” but improv within clear protocols. Not a Henry-Ford-type assembly line, but a routine with flexibility.
I figured
I’ve seen the former, and I’ve heard that about the latter.
Thanks.
Yeah, the kitchen isn’t as exciting as it seems in fiction and ‘reality TV’. People are at their stations with their backs to each other most of the time. There’s some fun and drama occasionally, kitchen managers and head chefs making noise from time to time, a lot of banter, often very profane, and occasional hijinks, but it’s not that much different than any job where people are busy.
Just remembered something that does show this a little - have you seen any episodes of Netflix’s Chef’s Table? There’s usually a lot more focus on the back story, but they do show real chefs in service. I enjoyed the series quite a bit.
I would recommend the episode of No Reservations where Bourdain goes back on the line at Brasserie Les Halles after a decade off the line writing and doing his tv shows. It really shows what tough work it is, and how the team has to work together to pull a service off. Into the Fire
It’s also fun to see Erik Ripert kick ass at the grill station and hear the giant ego that is Bourdain admit he can’t hack that kind of work anymore.
I’m not a food professional, but I thought that Ratatouille had a nice bit in which they explained the brigade system. And I also liked this article, “22 Hours in Balthazar”, which describes the process involved in running a big, busy restaurant (one that serves perhaps 1,500 people in a day). It describes, for instance, the cooks who prepare 600 pounds of potatoes for steak frites, peeling each potato in less than ten seconds.
Great suggestions, y’all! Thanks.
For what it’s worth, the movie “Chef” staring Jon Favreau was pretty entertaining. But I always wondered how realistic it was.
Can anyone comment?
MtM
judging by the trailer, its garbage
Regarding that gobshite Ramsey: i suspect that the least fake part is the incompetence and filth in the before-supagord-saves-the-day bit. Am i right?
I didn’t see it but I did see the 20 minute trailer. It’s called Burnt in the Kitchen.
At one point Bradley Cooper stares into the camera to explain how he thought his part was so challenging and his eyes seemed to be glazed over and spinning around.
I can’t be certain, but I got the feeling he was on drugs of some kind. If so, it’s no wonder the movie wasn’t too good.
From what I saw in this trailer, I wouldn’t pay anything to go see it in a theater. But to each their own, I suppose.
Just finished watching this. Exactly what I was looking for. It took a look of humility for Tony to go back in that kitchen with all the young Mexican guys. He knew his presence was disruptive and after a while he was begging for help, “because I’m stupid!” And he should have brought some reading glasses!
Great episode and excellent recommendation. Available on Amazon streaming.
I’m glad you liked it, never having worked in a restaurant it really brought home to me how non-stop a kitchen is during service.
I got to spend a day in Charlie Trotter’s kitchen a couple of months before he closed. It was an item at a charity auction, and I expected to just stand around and watch things happen. As it turns out, over the course of the day I riced potatoes for gnocchi, plucked little tiny flowers for some dish I can’t remember, peeled garlic, and torched meringues on their way out of the kitchen.
Anyway, despite running (as I understand it) on the classic French model, there was no sturm and drang, no dramatic moments, and no screaming or abuse (well, I did see Chef Trotter giving some server a very thorough dressing down, but it was off in one corner of the kitchen space, and he wasn’t drawing attention to it). What there was, was a lot of prep work, both in terms of the mise en place, but also in discussion of the menu for the evening and what adjustments/changes/alterations would be made for various diners.
Now, in some ways it’s not the typical restaurant experience, because it’s a set menu with seatings at fixed times, so maybe it’s easier to plan the evening out. On the other hand, it’s something like 12 or 15 courses and two seatings, so the volume of work is enormous. And the kitchen was so well-organized, and the staff so good at their jobs, that I never saw Trotter direct anything all evening (the chef de cuisine did all that), and I could try my hand at any number of (albeit mundane) tasks and not disrupt the kitchen.
So, as far as I could tell, it was hard work, and long hours, but not a lot of “drama.” It was akin to watching an orchestra, where everyone is a pro and knows their part by heart, and just has to not screw up too badly.
OTOH, I have witnessed high drama in a kitchen. I worked catering fancy wedding receptions and other high-end parties in a small, picturesque mansion/hotel during college. The first head chef I worked with was more than happy to turn the drama up to 11 on a dime. She would scream and insult anyone that she thought was getting in her way. She was also petite, fit, very pretty and she had a habit of losing her clothes through the course of an event. By the end, she was usually just dressed in a sports bra and a barely there pair of shorts.
To be fair, this was in New Orleans sometimes during the summer and the kitchen was not air conditioned because the owners were too cheap to put it in. I am not exaggerating when I say it regularly got into the 130F range in there. It was quite the scene to go in to pick up a tray of food and only to get confronted by a barely dressed woman who had pissed off and insulted everyone within earshot.
It probably didn’t help matters that the one benefit for kitchen staff was that the owners turned a blind eye towards drinking on the job so the service staff including me helped them by bringing really strong drinks back to them when we picked up the food. By the end of the night, most of them were drunk, approaching heat exhaustion and were screaming at each other and anyone else that walked in. The environment added up to a perfect recipe for kitchen drama.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad place to work at all and paid much more than any other job I could have hoped for at the time. It is just that all of the full-time staff had some type of serious quirk that would make it a great setting for a novel or sitcom.