HUNTER’S GATHERINGS
Brae, the new book about the famed Victorian restaurant from celebrated European publisher Phaidon, is packed with in-depth recipes, diary notes and an exploration of restaurant-craft and the region. But the most revealing part might be the unfiltered lis
The most revealing part of the new book Brae is the list of kitchen dos and don’ts: chef Dan Hunter at his no-nonsense best.
Please…
– do wash before you arrive at work in the morning, don’t arrive after a big weekend looking shipwrecked, do eat breakfast before you arrive and drink plenty of water throughout the day, do arrive before the start time, do greet others in the morning, do wear a mild deodorant if you are prone to body odour – especially on the big days, do arrive looking like you’re a professional, do wear clean/ironed whites, don’t turn up with a jacket with a big rip in it, don’t wear the same trousers all week – especially those ones with the hole in the knee, do clean your fingernails – especially after cleaning fish or meat or digging in the garden, do keep your kitchen shoes clean, do clean your knives – often, do sharpen your knives – often, don’t wipe your dirty hands on your apron or your arse, do wash your hands with soap and dry them regularly throughout the day, don’t walk around with two tea towels like you’re wearing a grass skirt, don’t use the same tea towel all day, don’t grab a tea towel with a massive hole in it and think that looks good I’ll use that today, do throw out that tea towel with a massive hole or burn in it, don’t taste things or eat your lunch off your spatula or tweezers, don’t taste things and then put that spoon straight back into the thing you just tasted without first rinsing or washing it or dipping it in the hot water your spoons are sitting in – even in service, don’t ask me to taste something and offer it to me on a dirty spoon, do change your spoon water regularly and keep it hot, don’t ask me to taste something that we serve hot but give it to me fridge-cold, don’t ask me to taste something you have not tasted yourself, don’t carry your own “tasting spoon” in your back pocket – there is only one type of spoon in the kitchen for tasting and plating and we all use the same ones, do taste things I’ve given back to you seasoned and lock in that flavour for next time, do smell things as well as taste them, do write recipes down the first time, do date the recipe and record who gave it to you, don’t change that recipe unless I or the sous-chef ask you to change it, do weigh things correctly, do use a calculator to work out any amount changes to recipes, don’t let timers ring without turning them off immediately, don’t turn someone’s timer off and not tell them, don’t walk through the kitchen and not notice things, don’t walk past something on the floor and not pick it up, don’t work like a maniac and chop stuff all onto the floor, do put all your appropriate green scraps into the chicken feed bucket, do put all your other green scraps into the compostables bin, don’t put some ridiculous item of half-prepped food onto the family meal shelf in a container like it’s a really big help and label it “staff”, do occasionally, when it’s your turn, cook a really fucking good meal for everyone that helps to get the spirits up in the middle of a really busy week, don’t stand at the stove working and not notice a pot come to the boil or something burning right next to you, don’t walk past a boiling stock and not turn it down or let its owner know, do feel free to skim something you notice needs to be skimmed, do write a detailed and easy-tounderstand and concise prep list for each day/service, don’t continually study that prep list without actually
“Don’t ask me to taste something we serve hot but give it to me fridge-cold, do taste things I’ve given back to you seasoned and lock in that flavour for next time.”
doing the work that’s on that prep list, do not work all morning with a prep list on your bench – try and actually remember what jobs you will do next, do discuss the day’s plan with your section, do give more than one job to those in your section so they get the full picture of the day and don’t think one job is all they need to do, do work to agreed times, do set a timer for jobs to see how long they take, do try and beat that time next time, do be reasonable when giving others a time to complete tasks, don’t eat family meals in your section while you are working – that includes both meal times, do stop to eat family meals, do have meals with everyone else, don’t have a half-finished cold coffee in your section in your way and knock it but don’t then finish it and don’t clean up the spilled coffee, do keep drinking lots of water even when it’s cold, do have damp folded cloths on the edge of the bench in your section, do only have cloths that you need, don’t have a big stack of cloths for no reason, don’t stash a big stack of damp cloths in your fridge and let them go musty before using them, do use the cloths to wipe up continually, do rinse them out and wring them out before folding them every time and returning them to the same spot perfectly folded, do put a cloth in the>
washing basket when it needs it, don’t stash trays or other equipment in your fridge, not letting others use it because you will need it in five hours at service time, don’t use a tap or sink without wiping it dry when you are finished, don’t constantly use the sink in someone else’s section and always wet their mise en place, don’t rummage around in someone else’s fridge or section looking for something – ask them if you need something they have, do ask politely, do give things to others if they need them, do give someone a piece of equipment they may need even if you were planning on using it later after you finish what you are currently doing, do scrub your board down before dumping it in the wash-up, don’t put burnt pots in the wash-up – wash them yourself, don’t put hot things in stupid places, do let everyone know when something is hot in a stupid place, do stack things from largest to smallest in the wash-up, do not leave containers in the wash-up still labelled – you know you’re getting 10 push-ups for that! Do place trays gently to keep the noise down, do keep the noise down including voices, don’t smash stainless-steel objects into each other, do put things through the dishwasher to help out, do put things back on the shelves for the kitchen hands when they need them, do remember the dinnerware is handmade, do treat items and the work space with respect, do try not to break things, let me or the sous-chef know when you do break things, do close the walk-in door both on the way in and way out, do put things in the right places in the walk-in, don’t eat food in the walk-in, don’t break holes in film so you can eat something in the walk-in, don’t spill something in the walk-in and not wipe it up, don’t put something in the walk-in that is not covered and labelled, label containers and bags correctly in writing everyone can read and on tape that has been cut not torn, and don’t label in some code that no one else knows, do not put open vac bags in the walk-in, do not put hot stocks into the walk-in, do cool everything down quickly via the blast chiller, don’t open a fridge drawer in your section and leave it open while you look at something on your bench, do not open an oven door and walk away leaving it open, do try to listen to the commands from the pass in service, do show you’re paying attention and answer yes even when the command is not for you, do inform the chef de partie who controls the next dish on the menu when you have sent the dish before, do try to read the service and stay ahead of what may happen next, do try and have things ready when they are called away, not starting them when they are called away, do help out others who are going down in the service, do bring things up to the pass in an order that facilitates the smooth flow of the service, do clean up relentlessly in service, do keep your section in a manner that would suggest you are fucking crushing it, not going down, do give clear instructions to commis and stagiaires and anyone plating about what’s coming up to the pass and in what order, do speak in a controlled manner to each other in service, do speak in a formal manner in service so that nothing is left to chance or misinterpreted, do enjoy yourself in service and let it show – yes, chef, do push on chef, do clean down like a machine and leave your fridge looking like the best version of an upmarket deli or stall, do greet our guests when they enter the kitchen with a smile and a friendly hello – please also say goodbye and goodnight to the guests when they leave the kitchen, do keep working completely focused, even when a table of super-VIPs enter the kitchen and start asking you questions or watching you plate up a dish, do keep doing service but work around customers who are in the kitchen so they feel at home and not in the way, do cook really beautiful food, do have and continually develop skills, do improve, do try and be better all the time, do enjoy repetition, do enjoy detailed, difficult work, do try to understand the work that goes into the garden and don’t trash it while you are picking in the morning, looking for that VIP portion, do take time on a closed day to walk around the property with a different perspective and become familiar with where everything is in the different gardens, do eat food on your day off, do cook food on your day off for friends and really enjoy the act of cooking for another who’s important to you, do get drunk, do get high occasionally and let loose, do listen to music, do go to galleries or other creative spaces and enjoy other creative work, do go to other restaurants, don’t go to restaurants just to criticise, do try to not always critique other chefs but just enjoy the differences out there.