Fishtales Magazine: A Sailfish Point Publication - Magazine - Page 20
I can’t even pronounce his name, but he’s a flipping genius. He’s talking about food like I’ve never heard anybody
talk about food before. It was Jean-Georges.
I went in, got interviewed, got hired. That was 1987, at Restaurant Lafayette inside the Drake Swissôtel. JeanGeorges had been brought to the U.S. by the chef Louis Outhier, who ran what people called the Flying
Squadron of Chefs, a team of chefs he mentored and placed in different locations. Outhier opened a restaurant
in Boston, and Jean-Georges helped open it. The next stop was New York City in 1986. Jean-Georges fell in love
with the city, asked Outhier if he could stay, and the rest is history.
HT: What did working alongside Jean-Georges teach you about creativity and discipline in the kitchen?
RG: So much. So much. Thirty-eight years is a long time.
The key lessons aren’t really about food—they’re about attitude and how you present yourself. The pillars of life and
career are passion, pride, commitment, organization, and
cleanliness. We tend to measure a cook by how good the
food tastes, but there’s so much more to it than that. You
need a clean apron. Clean shoes. If you spill something on
your chef coat, you change your chef coat.
(Fun fact—I was actually in a Tide commercial back in 1991, so clean clothes have been
part of my résumé for a while. SCAN QR
CODE to view video)
You need to be calm. The old dinosaur chef who screams
and throws pots doesn’t exist anymore—and if he does,
he’s not going to last much longer. People today don’t respond to that. It’s about mutual respect. And it transcends
food.
Whatever industry you’re in, you carry yourself a certain
way. If you’re in an office and spill something on your
shirt at lunch, you go change your shirt. That’s just how
you present yourself.
Jean-Georges wrote a memoir in 2018, and those lessons
are all in there. I mentioned it to Marco, and he immediately bought forty copies to hand out to all our cooks.
We shipped them to New York for Jean-Georges to sign.
They’re not back yet, but when they are, every cook here is
getting one.
HT: What qualities do you value most in young chefs entering the industry today?
RG: The first thing I look at is how someone presents themselves. How they show up for an interview—whether
they combed their hair. It sounds absurd, but in any industry today, you have to carry yourself in a certain way.
How you speak to others. How you treat the people around you. Respect is a two-way street—if you want to be
respected, you have to be respectful. That, to me, is just as important as cooking skills.
I’ve interviewed over a thousand cooks in my career, maybe more. I’ve passed on very skilled line cooks because
their attitude didn’t match what the industry looks for long-term. If you’re arrogant or you don’t respect people,
ingredients, and equipment, it says a lot.
A sharp knife is one of those things. If I come over to your station to show you something and I pick up your
knife and it’s dull, it tells me all I need to know about that cook. How does a cook handle a blender? That blender
costs money. Somebody paid for it. If it breaks, how are you going to make the recipe I just gave you? Respect the
blender. Clean it—not just the cup, but the base. Clean your area. Clean your cutting board.
All of that goes into being a well-rounded cook, and you’ll notice I haven’t even mentioned food yet. These are
the things I care about most. I can teach you how to cook, but I can’t teach someone how to take pride in their
profession.
Passion, pride, and commitment—those are the three things you can’t teach. I used to have a big poster on the
wall that said exactly that. I can teach you how to cook. I can’t install passion, pride, and commitment. You either
have it or you don’t.
