New Grad to fill Executive Chef position?

What does the forum think about a food service concern seeking to fill an "Executive Chef" position with a culinary school recent graduate or soon-to-be graduate. What is the definition of "Executive Chef", and would most students have the requisite skills for the position upon graduation from culinary school?

I'd think they were trying to operate on the cheap, and that attitude likely spills over into other areas as well.

Bad News.

Every chef remembers the hard lessons of the early years. That's why we don't give such credence to this concept.

It's all in the details, so to speak- you will break down a PISMO and use every last bit of it. You have to be cost-conscious.

If your dishwasher has to go back to Cozumel for his Mother's funeral- guess who get's to close his station? Respectufully so, mind you.

(You don't get to get tired)

The pretty mir poix still has to happen. The marinades, on point. The veggie-o-day, relevant.

The question of a recent grad is not in anything other than leadership. Steadiness steers this ship.

Above all else- a chef keeps this ship steady. Do you have that, youngin?

[Robin Garr]

Thanks for starting this discussion over here, Jay.

I wouldn't suggest it at all. Especially for a brand new venture as the original post suggests. I would love to hear why the people responsible for for opening this establishment have chosen to go this route and why they think this would be the best way to proceed. Even a experienced chef will have his or her's hands full opening a new restaurant.

I personally didn't take on my first executive chef role until I was in my 30's after working in the business for 12 or so years and after several stages as a sous chef. And trust me, I still had several bumps in the road and hard lessons to learn along the way. I'm not knocking the value of a culinary education by any means, even though I'm not formally trained. You simply just cannot teach someone a real kitchen sense of urgency, good hiring and purchasing practices in a classroom environment.

I have been on the opening team of several brand new ventures during my time in food service and I do know from experience that opening a new restaurant is one of the hardest things I've ever done.
I also can count on one finger the only person I've ever known that has successfully taken on an executive chef role straight out of culinary school. I can also count on all my fingers and toes the number of seemingly, well qualified chefs who didn't cut the mustard when they were hired to open a new place, myself included.

Also, from experience, I've witnessed that there is a tendency of the young cook, fresh out of school that will think that since they are now a "Chef" that they aren't required to work the line or help clean up at the end of shifts. But they are very eager to tell you about their idea for a special that has 40 expensive ingredients and requires 20 steps and 4 sauté pans to plate up one serving.
Almost all of all them think they are going to end up on TV or on the cover of a magazine. Having dealt with my share of interns from one of the local culinary programs, I can tell you that like everything else in life, the really talented good ones are few and far between. I wouldn't have suggested that even the best ones try to take on a head position right after graduation. I could tell you some interesting stories about the not so good interns, that's for sure. And then there are the older, approaching middle age people enrolled in culinary school who for some unknown reason have chosen to pursue a career in food service which are most of the time probably even worse.
A lot of them used to their former jobs selling insurance or the like have no idea of the toll this occupation has on your personal life and social skills. A lot of them are convinced that there are lots of jobs in restaurants where you finish at 5 PM so you can spend time with your family.

Personally, If they are insistent on some fresh faced and eager young gun straight out of school, I would also hire a consulting chef for the first 3-4 months or so, with some real world experience to work side by side with their newly hired culinary grad. That way there is some one to help guide them with things like hiring the staff, building good relationships with purveyors (these guys can smell blood in the water if they think they can take advantage of someone that isn't sure about what they are doing. They work on commission after all), those frighteningly expensive first initial orders and costing out and designing a menu that can be properly executed with the equipment and space that this new establishment will have. That way you also have sort of hedged your bet with a back-up plan having another person around if-and-or when, the new culinary grad hangs his or herself with the very lengthy rope that goes along with opening up a new food service establishment.

I should add that real-world experience teaches one the answers to common problems that arise in any restaurant- especially a new one:

Q) What happens when you run out of towels on a Friday night?

A) Bleach the cleanest, run them through dish twice, order more and get on the staff about usage. (You didn't have a towel-stash? Rookie.)

Q) The low-boy isn't running cold.

A) Clean the condenser. It's always the condenser.

Q) Your fry cook is looking pale and lethargic, like he's about to fall into the fryer.

A) That's a potential hazaard. Give him a hug and tell him to get his butt to the doctor- surprise! He's diabetic and didn't know it.

I could keep on and on about this stuff. They can't teach you this in school.

Don't get me wrong- I'll hire culinary grads any day of the week. You have to start somewhere and plopping down $40k tells me you are sincere and ready to work at it. Besides, that education patches up all the knoweledge holes inherent in the self-taught chef. 'You don't know how to make Hollondaise because you've never worked in a restaurant that has made one.'

It would take a special person to make me want to hire one as an Exec straight out of school.

Everything Dan and Stephen said (towel stash! I love you S!)

The best thing I ever did was take on a new venture at age 23 as the "head chef" of a new restaurant with a menu designed entirely by me and with a kitchen run entirely by me. I crashed and burned in under 6 months, and left the industry for 5 years. I learned more in those 4 months than I learned in 6 years prior working in the industry. I was the worst head chef/kitchen manager that ever put on the whites. But I learned from it and I hope I am better and wiser today as a result.

That is why, as a restaurant owner, I would never seek out a fresh graduate to lead my brigade.

Live and learn.

Stephen.....the "towel stash" is a trade secret....you just made it public...ARGGH!!!!

....my favorite one.

Bad News.

Every chef remembers the hard lessons of the early years. That's why we don't give such credence to this concept.

It's all in the details, so to speak- you will break down a PISMO and use every last bit of it. You have to be cost-conscious.

If your dishwasher has to go back to Cozumel for his Mother's funeral- guess who get's to close his station? Respectufully so, mind you.

(You don't get to get tired)

The pretty mir poix still has to happen. The marinades, on point. The veggie-o-day, relevant.

The question of a recent grad is not in anything other than leadership. Steadiness steers this ship.

Above all else- a chef keeps this ship steady. Do you have that, youngin?

See, and I thought everyone had a towel stash.....which brings up one of the best quotes that I heard many years ago and still rings very true today. Question-"How many towels will a bartender use in a given night"? Answer-"as many as you give him"! As for the original post, having opened/ re-tooled/ re-made many venues, I would have to agree with Dan and Stephen in that hiring a rookie would be a HUGE mistake. You should begin this venture as you mean to continue and if you have even the smallest hicupp from the start, you should fold up your tent and go home before you lose everything. Even the most seasoned veterans have a hard time controlling the beast that is opening a new place and unless the rookie is Escoffier incarnate, your rookie is a recipe for disaster. At the very least, get a rookie AND a pro to open it and when the dust settles, then make that leap of faith. Just my .02

Stephen.....the "towel stash" is a trade secret....you just made it public...ARGGH!!!!

....my favorite one.

They're above the ceiling tiles in the office.

There was a hole in the wall (literally) next to the grill station, I used to stash a bundle or two up there.

I've actually been back to a kitchen I used to work in and found my stash still intact after like 5 years. When you hide it good, it stays hidden.

Hmmm, I didn't know there was an age limit to go to culinary school. I also didn't know that one had to be a complete novice to be accepted in a culinary school. That is what the above responses would leave one to believe. But perhaps there are people who are in their 30-40s who have worked many years in the business, know about towel stashes, have dealt with every nuance of the business, but decided to enroll as a non-traditional student to gain an educational experience. Would the profile of such a "new grad" perhaps meet the needs of the position? That is what I had in mind when I first saw this post, not some 22 yr old who never ran a restaurant.

So perhaps one needs to define the term "new grad."

The older student at Sullivan would be the exception - I know a few who did - most grads are 20 somethings that think they are going to be a star on Food Network. I actually actively tried to talk a few of the young people I worked with out of it, told them they needed to work in a restaurant before signing the loan papers. I have spoken to several grads that are working for under $10/hour, living at home so they can make their school loan payments, severely disillusioned. The recruiters make it sound so cool, so glamorous, give inflated job and pay expectations.

If the restaurant in question hires a new grad, I hope the owners have experience of their own to fall back on.

Well you do have a good point there James, but once again that would be a very rare occurrence. The majority of the students enrolled in the culinary programs at Sullivan and JCTC (and the rest of the country for that matter) are college aged kids with no practical experience sprinkled in with a few middle aged career changers with little or no experience either.

Not to say what you suggested doesn't happen, it's just very,very rare.
I do know a couple of people who have entered culinary school after working in the "Bizz" for a while, Fernando Martinez being one of them. And my other friend went to CIA after graduating from Johnson & Wales 15 years earlier just for the fact he wanted to get on their job placement list. He now works the summer at a fishing "camp" in upstate New York and another in Idaho for filthy rich people and makes enough from those two gigs to bum around the rest of the year, working the occasional thing that might pop up around here. But both of them had their own successful business PROIR to enrolling or re-enrolling in culinary school.

And once again, I'm not discounting the value of a culinary education, it's just not the road I chose to travel down when I began my career. Way back when myself and my afore mentioned friend worked on the opening team of the BBC in St. Matthews in 1991 or 92, (why does 20 years ago not seem that long ago to me? ) I was exposed to a lot of Sullivan students and graduates for the first time as I was just really staring to get interested in food and cooking for a profession. I distinctly remember a conversation after work over a couple of beers with the opening chef whom was hired in from the original Gordon Biersch in San Francisco. I asked him "Should I go to culinary school" and he told me "No, for someone like you that works hard and has a little talent and a lot of passion, just read a lot of cookbooks and travel and work in different parts of the country and you'll learn more doing that than they can ever teach you in school.

And so three months later I packed up and headed to New England and worked in a succession of places until I landed a sous chef gig at the Inn at Thorn Hill in Jackson, NH. A quintessential New England Inn where we changed the menu every day! Working with what was seasonal and the proximity to the coast and fresh seafood, exposed me early on to a lot of things. I'm certain I learned more there in the first 6 months than I ever would have in any formal program, as we would get interns from J & W and CIA to help out in the summer and fall. This was pre Food TV, so the students were much more dedicated to the craft of cooking and not as way to try to propel themselves to fame as a lot of them are now. But they obviously still didn't have the same skill set that I had obtained working my way up in kitchens.
So for someone like myself, I would have never, ever considered the expense of a formal culinary degree working my way up making basically 10 bucks an hour for around 10 years or so. 10 bucks an hour is pretty much the starting rate for an experienced line cook around here.
I had a hard enough time just making ends meet to have somewhat of a life without trying to make student loan payments on the $40,000 a culinary degree would have cost.
I hope that sheds some more light on some of the grey areas you brought up James.

Well you do have a good point there James, but once again that would be a very rare occurrence. The majority of the students enrolled in the culinary programs at Sullivan and JCTC (and the rest of the country for that matter) are college aged kids with no practical experience sprinkled in with a few middle aged career changers with little or no experience either.

<snip> ...

Fair enough, Dan. I just wanted to flush out the subject a bit more. If nothing else, it adds more insight into the student profile for us folk who are not in the industry.