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I've been writing code for 4 years now but have 17 years cooking experience, 11 in Michelin star restaurants and 6 as a private mega yacht chef. I have all prof
by zappo2938 11y ago
I've been writing code for 4 years now but have 17 years cooking experience, 11 in Michelin star restaurants and 6 as a private mega yacht chef. I have all professional small equipment in my home kitchen and the kitchen and dinning room are the same.[1] I am set up.
People tell me to do a food sharing experience for the public and I quickly say no. First, I don't want strangers in my house especially if they are drinking. It's illegal to sell alcohol. It's illegal to sell food without health inspection and license. I've never in my entire career have had someone come back to me suffering from food poisoning from something I've served, however, there is serious personal liability concerns over health risks and if someone gets into an accident after drinking at my party. A restaurant can prepare a stock that can be used over a couple days in several different dishes. At home, I have to prepare a stock for only one dish. It is very inefficient. I can't buy only the amount of parsley I need, I have to buy the whole bunch and it's like $3 now. The worst is the prohibitively expensive price of purchasing food at retail prices especially gourmet products. If I purchase a whole filet, lamb from Costco, or cod and tuna from the local fish monger, I'm still paying $25 - $30 per person for food. Economically scaling is a huge problem. I can make a risotto for 8 people with almost the same effort I can make the same dish for 35 people. Running a 8 seat restaurant in my house economically and legally doesn't work.
[1] http://imgur.com/a/P8FrP http://imgur.com/a/P8FrP
- jonesb6 11y agoFWIW your kitchen is beautiful and your HTML is formatted nicely.
- Laforet 11y agoNice kitchen. Do you mind sharing what prompted you to switch career entirely?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- toothbrush 11y agoWow, that looks really good. I have rockstar-level (probably more, TBH) respect and admiration for serious professional chefs. Maybe i should do the inverse career switch, but i'm not sure i'd know where to begin. You must be popular for dinner parties with friends though. Something i've wondered about though, if and when you're invited to other peoples' dinner parties, is that weird? I have a friend who is a relatively good (not Michelin star or anything, but does it as her day job, and quite well IMHO) chef, which always makes me a bit jumpy / stage-frighty when cooking in front of her...
- danieltillett 11y agoCertain food can't be made at scale or to order. Could you comment on how this type of food could be produced in a professional environment or is it just not saleable?
- zappo2938 11y agoWhat type of food can't be made at scale? What do you do at Nucleics? My first job cooking in high school was doing micro preps for my dad, isolating DNA, PCR, agar gels, in David Baltimore's lab at Rockefeller University. My dad was in Walter Gilbert's lab at Harvard before that. Needless to say he was not amused I didn't go into the family business.
- danieltillett 11y agoMy limited experience is certain types of home cooking can't be replicated in restaurants - I am not sure why. Nucleics is easier for me to answer. Nucleics has done a lot of things over the years (like me), but these days it sells software for improving Sanger DNA sequencing. A bit of of a niche market, but one that is surprisingly resilient. I love science and in a perfect world I would still be a full time scientist, but I would never be disappointed if my children chose another field - science these days is just too cut-throat to encourage anyone to enter.