Working for the weekend

The cold weather is finally starting to relent, giving way to warmer evenings and more opportunities to linger outdoors with good food and good conversation. Our patio seating is ready for you to take advantage. Why not this weekend? First Friday Art Walk, Farmer's Market opening Saturday, Husker Baseball across the bridge at Hawks Field all weekend. Make bread&cup your home base to start and end your activities.

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This weekend’s dinner entrée

Braised Beef Short Ribs
Dinner Special
$14

Beef short ribs braised in red wine, rosemary, and garlic. Served with a pilaf of malted wheat and root vegetables. Entrée includes bread and a dinner salad.

Let me tell you why we do it this way...

I spot two kinds of people in the kitchen. One type has the tendency to listen to your instructions in order to do, and get the job done. It’s the “Is This Going To Be On The Test” mentality. The way education as we know it is set up enables this bent. Just the facts, bottom line, and Git-R-Done are among the text of the mantra.

And then there are those who listen to instruction in order to learn. These are the easiest to teach, because they realize learning is as much their job as it belongs to the teacher. These are the extra credits kids that everyone hated. Teachers prayed to be blessed with a class full of these types. And God once again never answered the petition.

You’re short handed in the kitchen. You need someone to assemble the pesto, so you pull the first available person over and walk through the ingredient list with him. Step by step instructions are given, along with any timesaver trick you can think of, and you’re off to tie up the next loose end before the whole fabric gets unraveled.

Come back and the pesto is perfect. Looks right, tastes right, just as you explained. You have a new person who can be called on to make the pesto again, right?

Not so fast.

The next time you ask the same guy to make pesto again a few days later, and it turns out a mushy mess. What happened?

Consider this; could it be because he was listening to your instructions just to DO what you told him at that moment, and not to LEARN the process and how make it a part of his understanding of the overall contribution of his job?

As I lead in the kitchen, I must recognize this propensity toward doing instead of learning. Against the tide of urgency and the endless waves of tasks to accomplish in the day, I must row in a direction away from just getting the job done. Not only is it my role to teach the skills of HOW to make an excellent pesto, but also WHY we make it the way we do.

HOW is the first step, but WHY must always follow. Good teaching and good learning never let go of either.

Coming Soon...

The Market Meal
begins May 17

Beginning the third weekend in May, we will be offering a market fresh meal each Saturday evening. We will troll the Farmer’s Market early on Saturdays and choose the best, freshest items in season for the meal that night. We will post the menu that morning at our booth and store, and on the web. It should prove to be a pleasurable challenge to create simple, memorable food for you to enjoy.

This weekend’s dinner entrée

Jamaican Jerk Pork and Rice
Dinner Special
$12

Jerk Pork is traditionally roasted on a charcoal grill, but we take our low and slow approach to this dish by slowly cooking pork loin in a braise of green chilies, pineapple, green pepper and plenty of jerk spice. Served on a bed of rice. Dinner salad and bread and included.

No Weekend Entree

Karen and I celebrate our 18th anniversary this week and so we decided we’d better get out of town to remind ourselves that we are married to each other and not the restaurant.

Our regular menu will be available this Saturday for the Spring Game. Stop in before and/or after for a pint, bottle of wine or bite to eat. Hopefully we’ll have the weather to sit outside and enjoy the patio.

We’ll set the table; you bring the conversation.

Could you wipe that down?

The details involved in a running a restaurant are a never ending infinite loop, similar to feedback produced from pointing a microphone directly into an amplifier. They just keep getting louder and louder and LOUDER AND…There is always something to chop, mix, refine, season, wipe down, put away, sweep up, straighten, polish, dust, wash…and so on.

This is why I love and hate the kitchen.

I love it because there is always something to do. Unlike some jobs I’ve had where you have to stand around and look busy, the kitchen is never in want of a task to be completed. It doesn’t take long for the newbie to realize he should never tell me, “I don’t have anything to do.” My answer to that is, “go clean the grease trap.” It only takes once.

Who of us haven’t used the line, “If you got time to lean, you got time to clean!” As a bakery, I could probably hire someone just to dust flour off of everything in the place. But over time, as you build the culture, it becomes second nature to everyone and the values are passed across the staff rather than just coming from the top down.

But it’s the same never ending list of tasks to get done that can drive you to insanity in the professional kitchen. The average office worker gets to shut down the computer at 5pm, but for the kitchen crew, that tick of the clock is just a signal to get ready for more to do.

It is relentless. It is exhausting. The work can drain you dry. When I finally finished my work yesterday, as I arrived home I plopped down in the chair, jittery from the fatigue, and woke up 30 min later. I still had my coat on.

And I’m not complaining.

The work is exhausting, but it is also energizing. It’s both wearisome and worthwhile. It’s why the kitchen holds the mystic that it does. It is beautiful, seductive work. It is a sacred trust between kitchen and customer. It’s not just cooking. It’s the intimate act of preparing something for a person to absorb into his or her body, trusting you that it will be made well, seasoned well and worth the trip to sit at your table. Forget this central truth and it will only be a matter of time before your place becomes a statistic.

The Soul of a Chef

There is a quote on the wall facing our employees in the small, open kitchen in our restaurant. I point it out to us regularly as a reminder of the motive behind what we do.

Food is a demanding business. The early hours, the long days, the late nights, the aching feet and knees, the burns from fiery hot pans, the anxiety over everything being hot enough, clean enough, seasoned enough; all this can drive a person crazy and run him or her directly into another career. Unless of course you are one of those who recognize what the heart of the kitchen is all about.

Professional cooking is not about the chaos and pressure that some cooks and chefs seem to thrive in, nor is it about the chance of being recognized and gain fame (as cable TV is trying to seduce us by). It’s not to feed the ego, nor is it the best way to make a lot of money. It really comes back to one thing for me, and that one thing is embodied in those few words adhered on the wall.

The quote comes from a book that helped me put words to why I was willing to roll the dice and take the risk to open a restaurant. The book is The Soul of a Chef, by Michael Ruhlman. In it he observes and tells the stories of three American chefs and the paths they took toward creating their own distinct approach to food and cooking. Near the end of the book, he reflects on his observations with this summary:

I’d come to know three outstanding American chefs, each one of whom had been cooking his entire adult life and had made people happy doing it. In fact all three of these chefs had stated that a main reason, if not the reason, they cooked was that simple; to make people happy. If they failed in this, the work was for nothing. Didn’t matter how good the technique was, how artful the food, or the personal standards they’d brought to bear on it.

Reward for our work is indispensable. Without it, we live a hollow existence. And it’s why I don’t believe fame is enough. Popularity is fleeting. It’s something I don’t have much jurisdiction over. But I do have authority over whether or not I care about the customer’s pleasure.

To see someone walk into our space with the revealing non-verbal cues that this is the first visit, to watch the expression turn to delight in knowing that a new place like ours has finally come to their town, then hearing the words upon leaving, “We love it! We can’t wait to come back and bring our friends, and….”

This never gets old.

First Friday in April

We’re getting ready for a busy night in the Haymarket. With the First Friday Artwalk, a new exhibit at the WorkSpace Gallery next door, a Husker baseball game at 6:35pm at Hawks Field and a glimpse of nicer weather, we expect a fun crowd. Tonight would be a great time to visit bread&cup for our weekend entrée.

Friday and Saturday we will be serving Apple Curry Chicken, a slow made creation starting with a split breast of chicken, marinated in apple puree and braised with chicken stock, apples, sweet onion and parsnips. It is served over rice with a creamy curry sauce and sells for $13. Ours is a mild curry and pairs well with one of our whites, such as the 2005 Champalou Vouvray.

Dinner is available first come, first served between 6pm and 9pm. We suggest coming early, as we sold out both nights last week. If parking is an issue, remember that after 5pm, you can park on the east side of our building.

We’ll set the table, you bring the conversation.