The Sous Chef

In the Culinary world the Sous Chef knows all.

Everybody wants to be the top dog in the kitchen, but there’s something to be said about being second in command.

Young line cooks and kids straight out of culinary school usually have one goal in mind, and that’s to be the one in command.

I’ve never met a culinary student who said, “I just want to be a dishwasher or a prep cook”, nope, they all have a similar dream. They want to be in charge of the kitchen someday, they want to be the Chef.

I had the same dream when I first stepped into a professional kitchen, I wanted to run the show.

Running the show in the culinary world means you wear many different hats, figuratively.

Aside from the standard chef duties that are required of the position, there are a host of other responsibilities that a chef has, and a good percentage of them often fall on the shoulders of the Sous Chef.

These responsibilities differ from kitchen to kitchen.

In my experience as a Sous Chef, I was in charge of training the line and prep cooks, writing/testing recipes, early morning inventory, late night inventory, dessert production, running the box and expediting orders as well as breaking down all proteins. Line cooks can’t be trusted with the protein.

In smaller kitchens, the Sous Chef is part management and part labor, they’ve got one foot in the office and one foot in the shit with the rest of the kitchen staff. And if one of those line cooks goes down or is too hungover to come in, guess who fills in at their station? The Sous Chef, that’s who.

The Sous Chef has their finger on the pulse of the kitchen in a way that the Executive Chef often, for many reasons, cannot.

Being part management and part labor has its downsides for sure, but having that other foot in the shit with the line cooks has its advantages.

Sure, the Executive Chef possesses the same culinary knowledge as the Sous Chef, but he or she isn’t the first person that the kitchen staff comes to with their problems, and nothing is off limits as to what kinds of problems a Sous Chef will hear.

A good Sous Chef knows the deep interpersonal workings of the entire restaurant but ideally doesn’t get involved in that kind of bullshit. The Sous Chef is also often the liaison of sorts between the back and the front of the house.

For example, the general manager will bother the Executive Chef with their FOH problems but nobody else will, so they go to the Sous Chef.

The ego of the Executive Chef tells him that as the boss, he must know absolutely everything that goes on, and that’s true on the surface, but the Sous Chef knows the seedy underbelly of the kitchen better than anyone else.

He knows who has a drug problem, who needs a couple of drinks before they can start their shift, who’s sleeping with who, usually this one involves both the front and back of house, and may include a bartender or two.

Cooks and servers alike come to the Sous Chef with issues that they wouldn’t bring to the Executive Chef because he’s seen as more a part of the team than the Chef is, and he’s got the ear of the Chef, so if you need to get a message up the chain, tell the Sous Chef.

The Sous Chef is usually one step down from the Executive Chef unless you get into a huge corporate or institutional dining situation like a large hotel or cruise ship kitchen.

In those settings, there are multiple Sous Chefs for each department or an Executive Sous Chef which seems redundant but when you're serving thousands of meals per day, it can be necessary.

Ultimately the Sous Chef acts as the Executive Chef in his or her absence. Executive Chefs get called into meetings with owners or vendors so the time the Exec, spends in the kitchen can be limited, giving the Sous Chef more time to steer the ship.

When I was a Sous Chef, I was the first one that any restaurant staff would call if anything went wrong at any time of the day. They called me because the Exec. usually wouldn’t answer his phone and for some reason I did.

I also lived only a five-minute walk away so it was pretty convenient for me to walk over and assess a problem.

It was about 11 p.m. on a Sunday and I had been off for about 3 hours. I had a few drinks and half a joint which was standard for me.

Sunday’s were my Fridays so I may have been a little more inebriated than normal. I was just hanging out listening to Creedence, wearing flip-flops and shorts, you get the picture.

It was then I received the call that the remaining restaurant staff, which consisted of one cook and one bartender, sat a 30 top and had just rung in all of their orders at the same time.

My first question when my grill cook called me was, why didn’t you call me before the bartender rang in all of their orders?

It turned out the bartender didn’t think they needed help and wasn’t going to call anybody because he thought he ran the show, but they did indeed require assistance.

I walked over there in my shorts and flip-flops and when I walked through the door my grill cook took one look at me and said, you’re wearing flip-flops…and you’re high!

That’s right, I replied. Did they think that I was just sitting around at home wearing a Chef’’s coat, waiting to be called into action like some kind of culinary superhero? I guess they did.

The group of 30 people ordered just about everything under the sun. I’m talking appetizers, drinks, burgers, steaks, pizza, everything. We had an extensive menu that they took full advantage of, it’s like they ordered the entire menu as a sampler platter.

I sent out a couple of free baskets of fries and garlic bread to keep them occupied while I and the one cook sorted out the mess of tickets that were piled up on the box.

Once I broke up their tickets into categories and assigned myself to half of the line while the other guy took care of the rest, we were able to knock it out in under an hour, which wasn’t bad for that small kitchen considering the amount of orders that we had to put out.

The work of a Sous Chef can seem frustratingly endless, but it’s all part of the tempering that goes into testing your culinary metal, on the road to becoming the one who runs the show.