Greetings Anon,
So pleased to have you along for the journey!
WAGMI to the island 🏝 for 2035, and whether BTC is up or down, we should be eating and drinking well, enjoying life… while the 🤡 🏦 eat their chocolate covered 🦗 and print endless US Token!
I’m very grateful to be in The Jungle and am excited to share with you some of my knowledge. From cooking in some of the best restaurant kitchens, as well as owning and operating, my previous life in Food & Bev was filled with highs and lows, but knowledge and techniques that will stay with me forever.
That means no matter your income or lifestyle, there is no reason to be eating bland, flavorless, boring, toxic and aesthetically horrendous food. In fact, some of my best eating experiences came by using humble and simple ingredients.
Octopod is here 👨🍳
Economics:
So why did I leave the restaurant industry?
As the Bull & Felix say: Passion is useless without pay (paraphrased)
In an industry where:
-Costs are high
-Margins are razor thin
-80 hour+ work weeks are the norm
-The skilled labor you need, generally comes from the unskilled and unreliable pool (don’t even get me started on “Culinary School” grads)
The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
I applaud my chef friends and operators who are fighting the good fight of continuing the pursuit of passion. However, Efficiency in a Post-Covid era, has a horrendous R/R moving forward. Pivoting out was one the hardest decisions I’ve ever made… and optimistically the most satisfying!
As we embark, it’s only fair to give a brief Preamble of what will be upcoming in the future Stack drops.
Note: there will be no possible way to cover every topic in every Stack, so expect a continued mix of relevant content.
Food:
Goes without saying but a firm understanding of proteins, vegetables, fruits, dairy, grains, food science, nutrition, ingredient selection, quality control, etc is foundational to cooking better food.
Plating: This actually came up in The Jungle on Twitter yesterday. You absolutely eat with your eyes first! Taking an extra minute to arrange food aesthetically on a plate shows love and respect for the person who will be eating what you have prepared. This includes yourself!
There’s a reason we don’t have “Fecal Art” museums… no one wants to look at crap. (Well, most… there’s always exceptions). And yet, your first interaction with food, is visual! There are multiple plating philosophies and strategies to discuss further.
Recipes: A popular culinary maxim is “Recipes are just Guidelines”. This is true but if you start with a crappy recipe, unless you’ve spent hours and hours behind a stove with hundreds of reps, it’s gonna be really hard to figure out what to troubleshoot and improve upon.
To avoid any “akshually” responses, yes this does not apply to baking and pastry where weights, measures and precision tend to have a greater importance.
Techniques: Knife skills, Butchery, Sauteing, Baking, Grilling, Frying, Poaching, Steaming, Fermenting, etc etc are all techniques that once learned, in even a basic manner, will improve your confidence and ability to improvise with ingredients. This is where cooking can get really fun and interactive.
Cookware: Over the years, I’ve become more of a minimalist. The retail “gadget” market is cringe and overrun with needless products. Yet people still buy them until they have no counter space or drawers left to store even a spatula.
Having said that, there are tools and cookware that will put you miles ahead of the game in regards to Efficiency and flexibility. Also depends on the type(s) of food and ingredients you tend to work a lot with. Sifting out all the needless chaff, you can have a tight, tidy, organized kitchen with all the necessary hardware.
Beverages: This grew into a passion as my time in fine dining kitchens allowed me immense exposure to fine wines. Fine wine does not mean “expensive”. There are fine wines in practically any price range to be found.
One of my first chefs actually closed his restaurant for a few weeks per year and took the staff to [redacted] for tastings and deep dives where the wine was being crafted. Meeting winemakers, learning on the ground… no substitute for that education. We just had to cover a plane ticket. It was a rabbit hole I’ve never tired of exploring and learning.
Spirits and Craft Beer have also been a fair and enjoyable part of my beverage education. They have an important place. The amount of history in beer, wine and spirit production continues to fascinate.
Beverages also include, matches, teas and coffees. (The 2-part matcha thread already dropped on Twitter).
Lifestyle:
Other topics to mention from time to time
Cigars: Over the years Cuban-Maxi’s have become just as cringe as BTC-Maxi’s. Truth is, there are a lot of quality cigars coming out from small boutique blenders and will share with you along the way.
Art Appreciation: At a young age I lucked out by having a teacher that was passionate about the importance of art.
Over the years I’ve remained appreciative of great art as a means of inspiration, well being and also decision making (S/O to BTB epic post on the former WSP blog; visiting museums before making big decisions).
Primarily my interests lay in Pre-Raphaelite, Fauvism, Post-Impressionism, and to a lesser extent some Cubism and Modern Art.
Opera: This art form remains, in my estimation, one of the most underrated in present day. I did not grow up with opera, I became an enthusiast later on. From the Twitter poll, I will drop 1-2 Opera segments and see the response from the community.
Food & Beverage is a vast world… constantly evolving. That means we have a lot to cover and learn along the way… luckily it will be tasty AF.
Life is Good 🥂
Been waiting for this substack!
A man of many talents. Nice to see you kicking this off!