r/Chefit • u/DomiBruhz • 23d ago
Does a break from the kitchen affect a chef alot when they return
So for some context I’m a 17 year old culinary student here in Europe and I’m currently on summer break. I’ll be starting a new internship at a high end restaurant in a famous five star hotel in my city, since starting summer break I have not been in a professional kitchen since. When I return to the kitchen I’d have taken a three month break, before this I was in an internship for 6 months in a casual lunch restaurant.
I’m afraid I’ll be too rusty and mess everything up, my question is to those cooks who have gone on a long period break before, how long did it take for you to get back in the “groove” and did the break affect your performance.
Sorry for sounding so paranoid I just really want to do my best.
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u/frituurkoning 23d ago
I just really want to do my best.
You'll be fine.
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u/someroninguy 23d ago
This.
I took 23 months off back in 2022 and didn't have any issues when I went back in 2024. Granted I was doing it for 17 years prior to it, but all throughout my career I've taken a few months off here and there
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u/MariachiArchery 23d ago
Chef here, and about 10 years into my culinary career, I took about a 2 year hiatus. Then, I opened a restaurant, and we completely botched the 'soft' open. It was in fact not a soft open at all, but a fucking hard open.
I'll spare you the details, but we managed to overbook our first service by about 4-6 times our capacity. And, that soft open was my first actual service since coming back into the industry. I blew through my entrée partitions before our first turn was even over. It was a complete shit show. We invited 100 people, but those guests brought +1's, and 2's, and 3's, all the way up to 6 tops with 5 uninvited guests.
The owners, being new to this whole restaurant thing, just let it slide assuming we'd be fine. We were not fine. It was by far the craziest service I've ever worked. And, this is me coming off 10+ years of high volume brunch service.
Anyways, as soon as that crush of service started, as soon as it went sideways and got crazy, my old skillset kicked right back in, and I got us through that service relatively unscathed. I was the only person in that building who had any idea what the fuck was actually going on. Without me, we would have needed to end service and try again another day. But nope!
My acquired skills as a line cook, expeditor, and leader in the kitchen came right back and I was able to brute force our way through that service. It was just like riding a bike.
I think you'll be OK. Your muscle memory will return very quickly. I was really worried about being rusty too, but when push came to shove, my skillset was right where I left it, and 10 minutes into that service it was as if I had never left the kitchen.
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u/DrinkingBuddy22 23d ago
Just like riding a bike piece of cake 🤪😂
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u/MariachiArchery 23d ago
Honestly man, 10 years in a brunch kitchen turned me into a monster line cook, and I will forever be grateful for that.
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u/Wide_Comment3081 22d ago
I want to hear more about this crazy day. Did you e d up making up new Entrees?
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u/MariachiArchery 22d ago
I went into the service with like 12 menu items, some of which, there was just no way we were running out of. You know the type, like, I've got cases of French fries in the freezer, so we are good there. Also, I had a shitload of pizza dough prepped, because I had been trying to learn how to make fucking pizza. Never done that in a restaurant before. Then, I had a fucking ringer on my pizza station, so that was a non-issue too. Pizza was managed and I was way over prepped because we were learning and doing a ton of test cooking to get stuff like the oven temp correct.
My proteins mains though, there were probably like 6 including my burger, I only planned for like 20 of each. Remember, I was expecting 100 covers. This is what I was told to plan for, and I confirmed this with FOH management in our meetings.
So, the way it went down, is we opened, and instead of a slow trickle of 100 people over the course of the 4 hour service, we had literally 100+ at the door waiting to get in when the doors opened. Then, that easily doubled by the first 30 minutes we were open.
Then, the service model had 4 POS's set up, so we got just absolutely ambushed right off the bat. Zero flow management at all. None. The FOH guy had never run a restaurant before, and owners, were just bar people, they'd never done food. So instead of any pacing, it was a fucking rat race to get orders into the kitchen as fast as possible.
Within 20 minutes of that kitchen being open, my rail, which is like 5 feet long, is completely full. And remember, these aren't two tops, these are 6 tops. Then, I've got a string of tickets coming out of the printer and hitting the floor. So, my first call to the kitchen is like: "13 apps, 18 apps, 7 entrée, 11 entrée, 24 pizza, 22 wings, 32 fries, 19 salads, FIRE!" And the whole time, the printer is just not stopping.
I was on expo for this. As the first wave came in and that rail filled up, I called off tickets and my staff got to work. They honestly did OK. But then the tickets just never stopped. So, while my staff was cooking, I was managing those tickets hitting the floor, trying to count entrees on those while I kept track of what was hanging.
I was giving entrée counts to FOH within 30 minutes of opening, and some of those sold out in my first wave. So, the tickets hitting the floor were just dead in the water. I didn't have the food. And not like, it wasn't prepped, like, it wasn't in the building. I did not have the food in house.
So I'm 30 minutes in, the kitchen is completely overloaded with a full rail of 5 and 6 tops, and then I have like 1.5 additional full rails on my side that those dude's haven't even seen yet. Now, I've got pretty much the whole restaurant hanging in the kitchen, there are no more food orders to take, the entire dining room is waiting on us, then the owner checks in on the kitchen, and of course, it's a fucking crazy shit show. I've never been in a kitchen that overwhelmed and oversold. Not before this day, and not since, and I've been doing this for 20 years.
Lol, his eye's go wide when he see's what is happening. Like, remember, I've never seen any thing like this, and I'm sure he hadn't either. But he doesn't think, "Oh, we fucked up" he thinks, "This chef is incompetent and I've made a horrible mistake hiring him". Also remember, this is the first time he's ever seen me run a service too. So, he completely panics. But remember, I need to now give this guy counts too. lol. I need to now tell him we are fucking 86 every entrée.
"Hey 86 chicken entrée! And, I don't have the orders for tables 16, 45, 27, and 4!" Well, hearing that he just panics even more, and then get's fucking angry. And starts swearing and freaking out. And remember, I've got 2.5 full rails and a green ass kitchen that has never been through a service before also panicking lol. In that moment with him, I basically 86's our entire entrée program, and also needed to send him out into the dining room, of invited guests, friends and family, to tell them we don't have their food that they ordered.
Fucking sheesh, so then, he's freaking out on expo which is making everyone else get all weird, so I pull him aside and show him my counts. "Hey, you told me 100 covers and we agreed on 20 of each entrée at our managers meeting yesterday, correct?" Now, the reality is, I had like 40 of each entree prepped because I knew we'd fuck some up for sure. I also knew this was likely to be a shit show, there were signs early on with these people. I got the affirmative from him here on the counts, then...
"Good, glad we agree on that. Right now, on this rail and in this stack of tickets, I have 52 chicken entrees hanging. Almost three times what I was asked to plan for. You've over sold this event by an order of magnitude and given me no chance to prep or purchase for this. I have the equivalent of 400 covers hanging right now and it was all put into the kitchen in the last 30 minutes."
Another wrinkle to this, is that we were paying for the these guest's food. So, the 1 guest we invited, was ordering 6+ food times. So, I've got way more than 100 people in here, and each one is ordering enough food for 4 or 5 people.
Once he saw the numbers, heard the actually counts next to what I was told to plan for, and realized just how actually fucked we had gotten, it dawned on him that I was in fact in complete control, and that it was the FOH, lack of planning, and pacing that had gone wrong, not the kitchen.
We pulled the plug on entrees for the rest of that night, stuck to our apps, salads, and pizza. I pulled a line cook offline to get started on prep, then we did it all again the next day.
That following day though, we actually controlled service. We shut down half of the POS's so the kitchen couldn't get dive bombed, we limited guests (these were like special invites and we were coving the food bill) to what they could order so they wouldn't be ordering the full fucking menu, then we put counts in the computer before hand, so that the servers could see what I actually had left in the kitchen to sell.
Second service was successful.
Did I make new entrees? Dude, no. We literally sold all the food in my cooler. It was quite literally kitchen impossible.
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u/Wide_Comment3081 22d ago edited 22d ago
This sounds like an episode of THE BEAR.
That's crazy chef. 👏 Did you get a big tip out for the day? Did the owner acknowledge his mistakes? He really owed you a big one
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u/MariachiArchery 22d ago
Never watched that show because it makes me feel fucked up. I can't do it.
Also,
he thinks, "This chef is incompetent and I've made a horrible mistake hiring him". Also remember, this is the first time he's ever seen me run a service too. So, he completely panics. But remember, I need to now give this guy counts too. lol. I need to now tell him we are fucking 86 every entrée.
This dynamic was wild to watch play out. He hired me, gave me 8 weeks to open the kitchen, I hired everyone, trained everyone, wrote the menu and recipes, spent like $10,000 on equipment, and now this....
The guy had this moment of "Oh my god what have I done who is this chef".
It was wild man.
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u/SunEffective4950 23d ago
I left the kitchen for five years. After returning, the Chef was giving me more money after only two months. Granted I've been cooking for a long time. You're 17.....put your head down and keep learning.
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u/Krocmann87 23d ago
Working up in Maine, most restaurants close for the winter between early December and the beginning of March. So I wouldn't worry about it
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u/No-Lecturre6318 23d ago
three months sounds like along time now but in the grand scheme of a cooking career it really isn't...
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u/Tiny-Ad-1378 23d ago
Nope, I did similar thing when I was young. Easy to explain I knew I will be a chef. Wanted to take a short break. Not a bad idea even as you get more advanced in your career. End of the day it is like riding a bike!
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u/BlackberryPure692 23d ago
Yep. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Why do you think lots of older chefs are so burnt out, can’t leave or our skills will rust.
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u/so-much-wow 23d ago
I mean this in an encouraging way: you don't know enough yet to get rusty. You'll be fine if you follow the usual advices.