Antonio Burrell

$14 dollars an hour if you've got zero real word experience and are just getting out of school you may get, maybe 9.50-10 an hour if your lucky. Most garde manger chefs start our in that range, which is usually the first station in the "real" kitchen, you would probably get about the same as a good prep cook. After about 6-12 months of that, depending on how fast you mastered the various stations, which is hard considering that menus can change as many times as the chef cares to (I average 6 changes a year) you may get a raise of up to a dollar unless you are exceptional. If you excell and it is obvious that you are a star in the making you may get more. After that it's a fairly slow progession, but line cooks who don't aspire to become sous chef often top out at 14-15 dollars an hour after 3-4 years of solid work at top flight restaurants. However, if you want to work in a more corporate enviornment you could possible make that much after 2-3 years in a high end hotel. That's just the sad reality of it all. I worked for about 6 years before I made a decent wage (the starting wage now is around 9, when I started my first real kitchen job paid me 6.50). In reality, if you work hard and rise in the kitchen to a mid manager level you still will only make on average 40k. You still only start to see really good money if you get to the exec chef level where you begin to get around 60-70k. In the end, if you average out the hourly, it's sad, and we never do it because often chefs make way less per hour than their line cooks, but as I said here it is all worth it to me. I've never done anything else. I could never sit at a desk, work at a computer or wear a tie all day. I like the visceral rush you get when you're in the middle of it all on saturday night and you get in to the "zone" and it just is quite possible the most fun I think I could ever have. As for screaming chefs, I used to work for a chef with a past of being one of the biggest assholes in DC. In his middle age he has mellowed a bit but he will still occasionally lose it. The newer generation are more gentel, having never had anything thrown at them or gotten dressed down in the middle of service while feeding 200 people. I think that that (the old steroetypical French Screaming Chef) was a self perpetuating cycle that seems to have been broken. I know I hardly ever yell anymore and I used to alot in my early 20's. Maybe it's like Eric Ziebold told me once that it's a function of feeling more in control as a chef, maybe it's a function of maturity, but I hardly ever yell anymore, maybe twice last year. As for the dreams I had this one reaccuring dream, both at Bis and Vidalia, where I was expoing and cooking on a station on a Weekend night and the kitchen printer just went ape shit. Like literaly crapped out tickets for the entire dream. At first we are cooking and staying caught up, tickets come in, food goes out, it's all good. Then the machine starts to speed up abit and we speed up abit, that goes on for awhile, we are only alittle behind now, tickets are starting to stack up abit, were about 3 tables behind, not panicking yet. Then it happens, I look up and the host has sat the entire dining room at once and there are people stacked up five deep in the bar and the printer begins expelling this never ending line of tickets. The ticket never takes a breath, there is just a long line of paper that stretches on for ever. At one point all I can do is stare at it. I never find out how it ends because I always wake up, sometimes in a sweat, but always panicky. Getting buried is every chefs worst nightmare.

Some of my favorite uses for miso don't involve soup but using it as a foundation for other flavors. I often use it as a marinade with ginger, lemon grass, garlic and chile for steak. When you add alittle brown sugar to this and grill the steak, you get a beautiful caramelization that is delish. I mix it with dijon mustard and white wine, lemon juice and zest and use it as a rub for roast chicken. I use it as a small addition to my peanut sauce, which I think adds that lil bit of salt that I like in it. As you've read it makes a great marinade for fish. I use it for a great addition for a tuna salad. I sear tuna rare and chill it, then I smear a thin layer of yellow miso on each side and dredge the tuna in ground shitake powder. This is awesome with a cold soba noodle salad. When I make a broth for my miso soup I do it a bit unorthodox. I use garlic, shallot, kumbu, dried shitakes, mirin and dashi. I make a nice broth from that, strain it and then kut the kumbu and put it back in if I'm making miso soup (I like the chewier texture). If I'm not going to add miso, this makes a great poaching liquid for fish, halibut particularly. Poach the fish in this broth and serve it with matsutake mushrooms, scallions and a bit of the broth (ala nage) and a bit of cilantro......ummmmmmmmmm. Hope that gives you some inspiration Jake. PS: That miso mustard also is good on hamburgers and miso oddly complements blue cheese in the right proportions.

maybe just your wife Dave I think you understood the intention of the statement at least i hope you did

Jonathan is right though, Ellen is a gracious host as is Todd but she does an amazing job of making sure that they are always in heavy rotation in the area pr outlets. It does't hurt either that Todd is a homegrown talent either.

I think you hit it right on the head, culinary schools are selling that image, that dream to everyone that comes through the door. They bank on the fact that in some weird way everyone has the chance to be Emeril or Mario. Most culinary schools insist that you have practical experience of at least a year before you enroll but those rules are often relaxed. The sad thing is is that often they aren't aware of what the reality is. It isn't tv shows and press junkets and commercials, endoresments and multiple restaurants. It often is 15 hour days on your feet on a hundred degree line. It is burning yourself, cutting yourself. It is lower back pain, bad knees and feet. And for all that, your first restaurant has a 70-90% chance of failing within the first year you open. Nice And the thing is, if you are in it for the right reasons, to cook good food, make people happy and enjoy the camraderie of a kitchen enviornment, where your coworkers often see you more than your wife, then it is ALL WORTH IT. If not, then you won't last three years. As for second career vs youngsters....I find that more people that are going through a career change get into it because they are good amaetur cooks and dazzle friends with daring do during dinner parties and have heard "Oh, you should be a chef!!!" So they go to culinary school, fork out 40k to realize that they can't keep up with the seventeen year old on salads and that the Chef can't spend the one on one time with them explaining things like they did in school. Most of the second careers have great intentions, and for the most part they try hard. The problem is that they come in with one strike already. The kids, on the other hand, seem more mentally prepared for the reality, they have more resilence and they bounce back better from mistakes. If you yell at a 38 year old salad cook in the middle of service to pick up the pace, they'll remember it, they get embarassed about it, they take it personally. The kids.....they move their asses and don't blink an eye. And I'm not talking about a Gordan Ramsey-esque dress down, they get offended if you say things like "Hey, you guys are dragging ass, could you pick it up a bit?"

Yeah, that was a good read to. What do you think the Post could do to attract that sort of attention?

I think it does affect them. It feels them with unrealistic expectations of what kind of fame waits for them when they graduate from so and so school. In all of the many years that I have been working in kitchens I still remember when you had to work 4,5,6 years to get a sous chef position. The students that graduate these days often come into their first jobs out of school inundated with visions of fame and feel that it should be within their grasp rapidly. I hate to say it but today's young cooks are some of the most entitled people I've ever met, unwilling to put in the long hours of sweat and hard work that their heros had to endure. Most don't realize that Mario Batali worked for 16 years before he ever opened his own place. Daniel worked in kitchens in his youth to help build the foundation for the empire he now rules over. Even locally, Jeff Buben worked in some of the finest kitchens in NYC before he came to DC and then he made a name for himself with hard work and tireless dedication. Having said all of that, you occasionally find the ones that, while working along side them you can see that they have that desire, that passion that will propel them forward. More often than not you find it in people who never went to culinary school. Look at Keller, look at Patrick O'connell, self taught chefs who went out and learned what it took through hard work. But for every one diamond in the rough there are twenty that are all about instant gratification. I ask all externs before I take them on, "What do you expect to do within the next five years, ten years? What is you plan; the end that you hope to achieve?" Inverable the answers are that they expect to be Exec Chefs with in the 5-10 years, owning by 12 years. They never say that they expect to master the Salad Station, The Prep Station, The Meat, Fish, etc. They want to be sous right out of school, Chef de Cuisines within five years. To make this relavant to this topic I do think that the trend towards degustation only restaurants is a trend that top tier chefs all aspire to. I know that many want to share the creativity that they feel inside. For some restaurants I think it is the logical next step in their growth, for some, I don't think it makes any sense at all. Someplaces in the middle offer both choices, smarter option in my opinion. Having said that, if in a restaurant such as Per Se and the Laundry, Manresa, George Blancs and El Bulli, Arzak, all move to a tasting menu format because that is all that people seem to order anyway, is there really any good business sense in keeping a ala carte menu for >10% of customers. I think that if you go to a restaurant that has this format, you make a conscious decision to surrender yourself to the whims of the place that you are going. You trust that you are going to have an amazing experience and yes, you may eat things that you've never eaten before, but you shouldn't be stuffed. At Aquavit, we sized all the portions so that when you were done eating be it 5,7 or nine courses, you felt sated but not stuffed. I have seen the portions in some tasting menus around town and I think that, frankly, they are huge given their context. One place where I had an amazingly well paced and sized meal was at Citronelle. It was frankly the best meal I've eaten in along time, and when I left, 4 hours, 11 courses later in which almost every course was diffrent for my girlfriend and I, I was neither hungry nor stuffed, I was only....happy and I think that should be what all of those other restaurants should aspire to.

this has to be one of the best pieces of journalism I've read this year....

and the ship goes captainless again...off into the dark night she goes.....where she'll stop no one knows

Both of you have really got to give some thought to Gordan Ramsey in London. I know, I know, some people are turned off from seeing him be a raving asshole on tv, but I can honestly say he is a tough but fair in person and on top of that, he's a master technician and widely regarded as one of the finest chefs in the world. Besides, how ofter do you get the chance to eat something like that??? http://www.gordonramsay.com/royalhospitalroad/

Arzak in San Sebastian Gordan Ramsey London Guy Savoy Paris

I went to a Pho place the other day in Sterling. It's right on Rt.7 before Sterling Blvd. In the back part of the strip mall attached to the lot that has the IHOP. My wife and I love Pho especially when it's really cold out, so we thought we'd give it a try. We ordered Chicken Noodle for her and a combo of flank, fatty brisket, soft tendon and meatballs. It all came to the table as you'd expect and looked great but the broth wasn't nearly as rich as I am used to and was oddly sweet? I thought that was a little odd and added an exorbinant amount of siracha to correct this. It was a decent bowl of Pho, potentially good and I ate it all. I'll try it again this weekend and see if the sweetness is normal or someone deviated from the recipe or something....

I'll post this here and Don can feel free to move it....I monitor the threads because it gives me the opportunity to get feedback, both positive and negative from the consumers. Feedback I might not otherwise get. Let's be honest folks, diners are not very forthcoming with feedback when they are in the restaurants themselves. I don't know why, but you seem to feel put on the spot . However, the same person who had a 'fab' time may post about what a horrible meal it was and blah blah....The point is that this is a forum to discuss what you enjoyed or didn't about a certain restaurant and how your experience compared to someone elses. Sure, consistency is what we all strive for but it's hard to achieve. So I use your feedback, again good or bad, to help me see how the real world percieves our consitency level, our food, our service etc. I don't think that the chefs here like Micheal, Brendan,Jaime S, Jamie L or I (or others) have actively pursued to sway your opinions by our involvement. I think that we are like you guys and just love to talk about food and restaurants, ours in particular As for the comment on it seeming like advertisement....I use it as an opportunity to keep you guys involved in what is happening in the restaurant. I have had people say at the Farmer Markets that they saw I was doing a demo at the market and wanted to stop by and I like that interaction. Bottom line, be fair and be truthful in your reports, that's my opinion. Now I'll get off Jeff's toes.... editied to add, I still don't know how to use the quote button...sue me

ah...yes, the climb the wall, manuver around the fence, try not to fall, hope no one is looking shortcut? I know it well I got my pant leg caught once on the fence and had a nice lil tear in then in a place that could have been verrrrry inappropriate needless to say I ate with my coat on

and grubbie doesn't have very nice food related conotations, now does it. This begs the question...couldn't any word devolve into having an ie suffix or be manipulated to have that particular ending? Food-ie, Grubb- ie, ???? never mind.....I guess some words would just sound stupid that way, huh? Sorry, just woke up... Let this be a lesson to you all, never wake and post

this I love....

I was indeed, family in tow. Great time, first time out in years....

way behind schedule...things look bleak for our caped crusaders.....

While I don't neccesarily agree with ranking systems, I know that this one has definately caused the response that TK had hoped it might. The Washingtonian ranked restaurants on a subjective basis that causes debate and conversations about the restaurants ranked various merits ie: why is my fav #32 and not #27? The point though, IMO, is that these are restaurants, 100 of them, that you can walk into and get a reliably great meal anytime. Not just sometimes, all the time. I think that even though they are ranked, depending on your viewpoint, there is very little room between the groupings. The top restaurants are just that, the best in the city; the middle-bottom tier are probably all very close in quality in their respective realms. It all comes down to subjectivity. TK did say in his chat that they did it, "well because they could" and to cause a little "mischief". Which it has in more circles than this In the restaurant biz, we always point to these various rankings, stars, sporks etc with pride (when they're good ) because they are tools that people use to decide where to go, especially when they are not experienced diners or don't have another avenue such as DR.com to help them decide where to spend their hard earned loot. In a sea of 300+ restaurants in the area, the restaurantuer looks furiously for ways to differentiate his produce from the next. One of the easiest and smartest ways is to cook good food and give good service, but trust me when I say this, even these two key things sometimes are not enough. You can slave away in relative anonimity for months giving both and unless the people come through the door in masse then a restaurant can go from a dream to a nightmare quickly. Most restaurants open with very little margin for error, to little acclaim. Usually you are forced to open before everything is perfect because you've sunk more money than planned into a project that took longer to finish than thought, and you don't have anything left; you either have to earn money now or lose everything you spent thus far. Then, once open, you need to WOW from the getgo, best foot forward and all that and if you stumble.....lot's of pressure there. While there isn't room for everyone in a top 100 or top 50 or whatever, there are always places like this and word of mouth to spur debate and increase recongniton for those restaurants "slighted". We in the business depend on the rankings and stars and press and all, but word of mouth from folks like yourselves is worth more than all that. Satisfied customers always mean more than these other subjective things. Why? Because, when I cook you a great meal and the server gives you great service and you say so, it's immediate. Also, you guys seem to realize that your favs are your favs no matter what TK or TS say

Strangely enough....I hate said thing with a passion...It only seems appropriate for this sole purpose....I swear

I use to do the same thing when I was a kid but with kraft. I'd sit and eat this and cold hot dogs as I watched tv as a snack after school. Then.....one day......the hot dog thing became disgusting to me for some reason and I went year before I ate another one. Now....I like pretzels dipped in that Cheesey Salsa stuff, (HOT, of course). When I'm in the kitchen at work and we roast beef or lamb scraps and bones......I season scraps with salt and eat till I fill full....oh....and I spread the marrow on toasted bread..... does that make me bad? Of course, in the realm of things....we get you guys to pay for what we eat for free It's one of the few perks of the job. Oh, and one of my favorite sandwiches when I was younger was a banana and miracle whip sandwich on wheat. My mommy made it for me, I still crave these occasionally but now I fight the compulsion...sometimes I win......

I have only eaten at the Arlington and Falls Church branches and I'd have to agree, Arlington is the better of the two, but either is above any other.

The crabs I had at Bo Brooks in Baltimore. For me, this was a crab epiphany. Hot, well seasoned and juicy......A defining crab moment for me, before this, I didn't get what all the fuss was about. I'm sure there are better places but this is were we ended up and they were awesome.

What about those of us in Georgetown / Pallisades? I know that there are more than a few watering holes in this area that don't require you to be hip (sun-thurs of course ) And I'd be interested in meeting those of you who live of thisa way.

I too, can't fathom Marty's admonition of Cafe Deluxe. I understand that CC isn't the best food in the world but what can really be wrong with hot, fresh tortillas? As for CD, I use to live just down the block across from St.Albans Condos and used to lunch, brunch and dinner at CD quite often. Once even got drunk enought to catch a cab home (2 blocks) While it isn' the most innovative, highly rated food in the world, it is solidly executed comfort food. I love the meatloaf and have had good brunch food there also. And once, I saw Barbara Bush eating lunch with some cronies.....