Price is the most misunderstood part of a restaurant. People think there are huge markups and large profit margins that bring in tons of money. However, that is not the truth. Watch this video to gain a better understanding of the small margins restaurants deal with.

Food for Thought: Restaurants Trim Fat

Did you know that 2000 was the first year that all 50 states officially observed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day?

Hope you made it up to Snowbasin to see the Dew Tour.

The skies were blue and the air was clean.

The action was pretty amazing too.

For more information about the Dew Tour, click HERE.

Hors D’oeuvres by Sonora Grill.

January 14-17, there will be FREE bus service from the South Weber UTA Park N Ride at the base of the canyon to Snowbasin (just west of the primary lot) every 15-20 minutes. A second bus departure location is at the Dee Events Center, next to Weber State University.

My first job was as a dishwasher in a suburban chain restaurant called Coco’s…seriously, I won’t even mention how little I got paid…but I took out the garbage fast and also 5 mornings a week you could find me in the parking lot with a scrub brush, a hose, and some gloves cleaning the parking lot…what do ya want I was 15. Then I got a promotion in the same restaurant to prep cook, then fry cook, eggs in the morning cook, and then eventually landed a job as a cook in San Francisco and then another and another and next thing you know you’re deeply entrenched in the business of restaurants, line cooking, and within a few years of groveling to keep my job as a vegetable cook in a more upscale restaurant, peeling mushrooms and ‘turning’ rutabagas and carrots endlessly, into little accompaniment vegetables with 7 perfect little sides all with a razor sharp paring knife and keeping my mouth shut too…I was fortunate enough to have skilled and impatient European chefs kicking me around the kitchen, spitting invectives at me “Stupid American cooks! Only know how to make STEW!” I learned a lot from those old guys. Like how not to scream everyone’s face off in the heat of battle. I also learned a lot of expletives that don’t wash out of your vocabulary too easily.

It seems kind of fashionable now to freak out at your cooks,…all your TV chefs seem to do it. Running around the kitchen calling all the cooks “Donkeys!” and/or “Doughnuts!” I would imagine that you know the one TV chef I’m talking about. He’s very cool…a little over the top…Chef Ramsey…I’ve met quite a lot of celebrity chefs in my time, but never Mr. Ramsey. Hey if someone knows the guy, tell him where I am…O-town.

Back in the day I was so grateful to be an apprentice that I followed my chef around the city like a little slobbering puppy. I was skinny and starving too. More interested in running around the streets at nights looking for trouble and some cool little bites of food to eat too, because the chef was paying anyway. We’d go to taco trucks and have carnitas burritos and chicharron tacos, after spending the morning in Chinatown buying cases of chicken, pork, and Chinese greens…Me trying to literally run with a 40 lb. case of whole chickens on each shoulder chasing through Oakland, California after my Exec…taking everything back to the restaurant kitchen to serve on the specials menu of the night maybe duck confit with star anise glaze, coconut rice, and bok choy. And weekends we’d go to farmers markets in Berkeley and/or San Francisco.

I loved farmers markets too, Civic Center, SF…that was a good farmers market, all kinds of great local fruits and veggies, with “local” meaning that within a hundred mile radius of San Francisco, so you got all kinds of amazing produce. Downtown Portland, Oregon has a very cool farmers market too, check it out.

I worked for several months in Portland at one of the more exciting restaurants in town. Working for one of the more interesting characters, Cory Schreiber. Like a lot of Execs, he was a bit eccentric. Kind of obsessive about local ingredients, fruits and nuts and nettles and ramps and roots and animals and fish indigenous to the region…Cory even won the James Beard Award for Best Northwest Chef way back in 98…The restaurant is called Wildwood in NW Portland. If you find yourself on vacation visiting your uncle Ned the Botanist who works at the Nike campus in Beaverton…get downtown and eat some food. Recently, I recommended the place to one of my acquaintances here in Ogden whose palate I respect and he said the place is still really good. I had one of my favorite lunches ever there, seared halibut on smoked yellow pepper rouille with fresh local herbs salad.

I like the downtown Ogden Farmer’s Market when our spring comes. It’s another good reason to live here and hang out waiting for the snow to melt.

So I didn’t have a formal cooking school education…I learned on the job in San Francisco and had to adjust my attitude sometimes because I came from a place of being a little rough around the edges and but I have been fortunate enough to know when to listen and silently put your head down and sauté up a pan full of wild morel mushrooms with some epazote and hoja santa and garlic for the purposes of making a special mushroom enchilada with a chile arbol spiked red tomato sauce. And I just worked hard and fast. It’s a good career, for sure…I used to think I was lucky but these days I’ve come to see that you make your own path and if you like to cook, then cook. And you will be successful.

Lots of young cooks ask me about cooking school. There seem to be a lot more schools these days. I recommend them to California Culinary Academy in SF or to Western Culinary Institute… I have met a ton of CCA and/or WCI grads and students over the last decade. A lot of people in Ogden seem to have come back home. No telling how many stayed.

Saturday, January 16, 8:00 am

The course is simple. Run 13 flights of stairs 8 times = 104 flights of stairs.

(The Sears Tower has 110 flights of stairs.)

Ride the elevator down.

For more information and to register, click HERE.