I have three “resumes”. One is beautifully typed and set. It has been proofread sixteen times over the course of eight changes. I contains an addendum with references, a portfolio map with over twenty beautifully photographed dishes, a binder with former menus, and more. It comes on heavy stock and in a black manila envelope that has my name on it in white. There’s a mailing address, a phone number, an email address, all that stuff.
Then I have my posts and answers on Quora. They’re opinionated, not always work-centric, not always PG-13, and full of typos and other stylistic abuses. I write about animal husbandry, why paleo diets are so stupid only a caveman would follow them, cooking, and restaurant life in a non-glorified way.
And I have this website. ‘Nuff said.
To just contact me from ny of the second and third choice you’ll have to jump through some pretty serious hoops.
From 2010 (March) when I joined Quora (since this is the latest of the three), here’s the tally:
- Printed resume: job offers: 1, consulting gigs: 3, media inquiries: 2
- Quora: job offers: 11, consulting gigs: 9, media inquiries: 36
- Website: job offers: 0, consulting gigs: 4, media inquiries: 24
Formal resumes are on their way out, people. As a hiring manager I do not require them (but I will push names through websites such as SocialMention), as an employee they haven’t helped me much. And I, for one, am glad that’s the case.
Over at City of Ate Scott Reitz talks about doneness and the (very Texan and San Franciscan) custom to ask diners to cut open their steak and check if it’s done to their demands:
But here’s the rub. While beef certainly displays visual cues that indicate doneness, you can’t see medium rare, because it’s not a color. It’s a temperature (130 to 135 degrees, if you care.) Doneness should be tested when a steak is back in the kitchen with a thermometer, not table-side with a spotlight. I want my steak to rest easily on plate before I cut into it, end to end.
Scott has a point. Why should quality control be left to the diner? After all, isn’t that what makes us cooks and chefs? The ability to cook things to order?
Most chefs hate Valentine’s Day. The staff is grumpy because it’s (next to Mother’s Day) the least tipped holiday, cooks are grumpy because we cram more people into the space than we can possibly feed, chefs are grumpy because we’re relegated to smaller menus with idiotic little gimmick dishes that somehow are supposed to convey love, and diners are not only grumpy, they’re outright crazy.
Working on Valentine’s Day means to see the kind of people one doesn’t see the rest of the year. It means that the smell of flowers wafts into the kitchens and makes even the most hardened cooks want to kill someone. It means saccharine sweet proclamations in front and the weeds in back, owing both to unfamiliar menus and stupid Valentine’s Day dinner requests.
The year is 2009. Teresa Puente. a blogger for ChicagoNow (to call her a journalist would be about as stretching it as calling me one) asks “Why is Rick Bayless the expert on Mexican cuisine when he’s not even Mexican“. A year later, Cammie McDaniel, this time for the Chicago Tribune, writes “Bayless insulting to Mexican-Americans” and means it.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But it shows a trend – X is offended if non-X sells X’s food and, somehow, is made the “expert” on whatever X they’re serving. Or is it?
The numbers for 2011 dining operations are in. Fast food and “fast casual” (Applebees, Which Which, etc.) added another 10% to their numbers, cannibalizing mostly off Midscale and Fine Dining. Presented without commentary. Since the numbers represent “operations” this might mean that two McDonalds operated by the same franchisee are counted as one point.
Source: Unnamed fast food joint’s internal data. Obtained thanks to a friend.
With temperatures below freezing in the morning, Texas is once again home to some of the more hilarious hijinks of nature. Atypically warm weather over the past few weeks led to farmers opening their greenhouses and banking on cold, maybe even freezing, mornings but warm afternoons. The result is a slew of great tasting, a-seasonal, fare that can now be enjoyed locally. Time to bring a squash dish back onto the menu.
… for the discerning chewer between Petrus Wine Gummy Pastilles and Havanna eVape drags.
Tour De Food
