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Pardon if this seems a bit graphic, but I was working with beef tongue and beef heart tonight in preparation for this Saturday's Slow Meal, which is all about meat. A quick glance may make you think this is a roast of some kind, but you will see the tell tale signs of organ meat that I have yet to clean up.

My goal for the meal this weekend is for my guests to each be able to say they liked everything that was served. Serving offal can sometimes feel like attending a frat party, its wild and fun, but afterward you're not really sure if you had a good time or regret what just happened. After all, if it doesn't taste pleasing, then I am only flexing my culinary ego. Here's a link to our menu. We still have a few seat available.

The grass is always greener on the other side, and while I would not trade what I have created with very many people, there are the days like today that are full of tasks that don’t exactly fit into the perception of what an executive chef does with his time. This is precisely why I believe so many restaurants go under. Incompetence in the kitchen can kill a place quickly, but so can incompetence with the spreadsheet or with leading employees to work to their fullest potential.

My eyes are drawn to television commercials that talk about career and retirement planning, obviously since I have reinvented my life and am closer to the day when I will need to slow down. Last night, I saw a couple of ads with people saying, “I want to own a restaurant some day.” And while I can understand the pull of the dream, I want also to be able to offer some of my education from the School of Hard Knocks and tell them, “Here are some things to know…”

The dream of owning a restaurant, bakery, café or other food type establishment has a romantic charm to it. And I feel it is critical to maintain that mood, while at the same time having a realistic grasp on the nuts and bolts of what it takes to do business. Owning my restaurant is both sentiment and a grind. And I am willing to keep a firm hold on one and not let go of the other. This is my advice to anyone looking to start his or her own business, especially a restaurant.

My first textbook suggestion in your education is the E-Myth, by Michael Gerber. He identifies one glaring characteristic mistake people make when going into business. He says many ventures are started by a craftsman, that is, someone who has a capable skill. If the Craftsman thinks business is all about making widgets, he is destined for inevitable failure. Yes, someone has to make the widgets, but someone also has to manage the making of those widgets, and give thought to how those widgets are going to continue to be made and get into the hands of people who need them.

Thus he speaks of the three hats, the Craftsman, the Manager, and the Entrepreneur. Some have the skill to wear all three and know when to switch back and forth, but ultimately its best to wear only one, which is what I must eventually figure out how to do.

In the early days, I did it all. I cooked. I baked. I planned menus, events and catering. I paid bills, kept track of invoices, monitored payroll and food costs. But it didn’t take long for the business to grow as it was intended, which meant needing to bring on more people to shoulder the work that I once did. I started feeling less tired, and that’s when it dawned on me how many hours I was putting in during the week, and how unsustainable it would eventually be if I did not grow up as an executive chef and business owner should.

I have the privilege of crafting my job as I see fit. This is why many of us go into business. We like the autonomy of it all. The buck stops at our feet, and we are more than happy to own that responsibility. Hard work creates no allergic reaction in our skin. We know how to achieve and align ourselves with people who have the same kind of drive. Success breeds success, and we are more than willing to procreate it.

If you aspire to be a Future Chef, I applaud your dream. Just make sure you have a good idea of what lies ahead. Cooking is a rewarding task. It is full of creativity and immediate results, but being a Chef is more than just cooking. It requires a set of skills that aren’t taught at the stove or in front of the cutting board. It demands emotional intelligence, something of which I learned nothing in undergrad or even graduate level work. Daniel Goleman did not coin the term, but wrote an excellent book on the subject. Resources like these need to be on the same shelf as Ruhlman’s Ratio or McGee’s On Food and Cooking.

If you are considering owning your own place, I would be more than happy to open a dialogue with you, arrange a stage or compare notes. Life is too short to sit on what we know, especially if it helps lead others to success.

Back home now, trying to re-enter the Matrix after four days of eating well. Our plane landed in Omaha last night, and neither of us were ready for the hour drive back to Lincoln, so we took our friend Luke's suggestion and stopped at Pitch in Dundee for one last meal. Pitch is a coal fired pizza restaurant, with a simple menu and superb flavor combinations. The house was packed on a Wednesday night and makes use of the community table, one long common table that several parties can fit in around it. We saw this at use in Avec and wonder if it is a coming trend that will catch on here. My one critique of Pitch: extend the beer list.

Its amazing how fast four days can slip by, even when the main activity on the travelog was eating. The Bristol last night was my best overall experience. They have the whole package figured out, and Chicagoland is beating a path to their door.


The Violet Hour is proof that signage is optional, if indeed you have a reason for people to enter and re-enter your front door. I was warned about its obscurity, and even still, walked right by it twice. Excellent, hand crafted cocktails with an urban pricetag.

If you were to ask me to describe what a gastropub is, I would keep my mouth shut and just point you in the direction of Hopleaf and let it speak for itself. Memorable food, a list full of beers that are keepers in a warm, bustling publike building. I believe Lincoln needs one of these.

No brush with greatness today, for which I am glad. I came here to get away from the hubub. XOCO for lunch, Violet Hour and The Bristol later today.

Karen and I are taking a few days away to Chicago with the prime objective of eating good food and gaining inspiration. On Sunday we found our way to Bin 36, which specializes in very good affordable wines and small plates in accompaniment. A wide selection of cheese, charcuterie led to a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon despite the bracing chill in the Windy City.

Avec was our destination for the evening. It seems like everyone who found out we were going to Chicago mentioned this loud, buzzy, eatery as a necessary item on our agenda. Imagine dining in a sauna about the size of a train car, minus the steam and heat, of course. Small and large plates are the standard fare served family style among your companions.

As we were leaving, we saw Rick Bayless, the famous chef of Chicago’s Frontera Grill, dining with his posse. Since he didn’t recognize me, I saved him the embarrassment and didn’t remind him. I get that all the time, so I’m used to it.

I know, I know it Merlot!. But here's the thing. Merlot wasn't the problem with Merlot. The winemakers attempting to make a quick buck was the problem with Merlot. Charles Smith of Washington makes an excellent Merlot. Just enough fruit, excellent tannins and yes velvety (if that is even a word). Just an enjoyable experience. If you can find it, you should try it.

We had a houseful of people last night for our Evening with Woodsmoke. The title makes it sound more like a BBQ festival, but instead it was an event highlighting the work of Sean Coetzee, a young entrepreneur from South Africa, who is bringing the art and culture of African to an American audience.

About a month ago, when Sean proposed the idea of us hosting the gathering at bread&cup, I thought back to the memorable experience I had traveling in Africa years ago. Since I was familiar with some of the common foods in Eastern Africa, I decided to put a menu together based on my recollection. With a little help from the Internet, we had a set of five choices to create.

The idea behind the name of bread&cup is based on joining the simplest of food with the simplest of drink. Every culture has its bread in some shape or form, made from an available grain indigenous to its region, and is typically straightforward to create, enjoyable to eat, and easy to pass on the knowledge of its creation to the next generation.

The bread in this photo is chapatti, a homely flatbread made from corn and wheat flour, paired with a protein of seasoned slow cooked brown beans. This communal style of food is very savory and filling and intended to be eaten with the hands without utensils. Even though the flavors may be foreign to the Western palate, the concept of pairing starch and protein is not unlike our use of sourdough bread with our pesto, tapenade or hummus. The end result is pleasurable eating with fellow companions.

Its uncanny in so many of life’s circumstances how something so small can have such a big effect. You can’t watch the Olympics very long without seeing someone’s dream dashed because of a missed landing, a missed gate or a fraction of a second too slow. Al Pacino’s speech in Any Given Sunday rings clear…” You find out that life is just a game of inches.”

We had a nice evening of service tonight, with the exception of an error that left a customer without her food. It was clearly my mistake, an oversight on my part. I had nothing else to do but to go to the table myself and apologize, own up to the error like a man and leave it at that.

So what’s the big deal, right? Everyone makes mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Don’t be so hard on myself. It's just that I’ve never been OK with that line of thinking.

It’s hard to not take mistakes like that personally.

I find it interesting the difference in how the snowboarders take their failure against how the figure skater responds when missing the quad jump. One seems to take it in stride, while the other seems devastated. You can probably guess which is which.

Does it have to do with the amount of significance we put into our work? Does it come from our need that we extract from it? For some it’s a hobby and a thrill, for others its life and death.

I kinda want to land somewhere in the middle.

I was honored to appear in the Omaha World Herald this week as a featured guest of their Chef Chat. Thanks to the many of you who sent congratulations. We did not get to this point without caring. That’s why seeing an unhappy customer bugs me so much, and becomes the topic of tonight’s post-shift catharsis.

Earlier today, I overheard a conversation in which a young woman was talking about the approach she took to selling wine. “When it comes down to it, the key is bullshit, cause that’s what its all about, just a bunch of bullshit…”

I’m glad she was not applying for a job with me.

We did not get to this point by bullshitting. We’ve made it this far in this dreary economy by caring about what we do, by loving the life, and believing in our food and drink and the way in which it is served. That’s why it’s hard to blow off a mistake. Yes, maybe I’ll live longer by not being so hard on myself. But will I have really lived?

What do you care about so much that it takes several hours or even days to get over? Therein might lay your passion. And if you’ve grown cynical and stop letting it bother you, I would say you are in a worse position than before.

The obvious presumption to this statement is because I own a restaurant a mere stone’s throw away from the proposed arena location, and that I am simply looking to cash in on the potential increase in business from the vortices that will trail behind such an economic engine. Yes, I do believe I personally stand to gain from its construction. I also believe a new arena is in the best interest of the future of Lincoln for many years to come.

Two and a half years ago, my wife and I pushed everything we had to our name into the center of the table and went all in on opening our Haymarket restaurant, bread&cup. As with any business venture, we knew there would be risk involved. Even with the economy starting to sour, it was a risk we were willing to take. The dream had been alive in our minds for at least ten years and we were not getting any younger. Now was the time to act.

But a delay in construction and a long cold first winter made us wonder if our little dream was ultimately going to be our demise. Sales were not what we had planned, and the dreary circumstances staring us in the face threatened to blind us from seeing the future potential of what we believed could be.

Here we were faced with a serious choice. Should we incur further debt with the belief that our business just needed more time to attract a sustainable customer base, or would we let the circumstances convince us that we didn’t have a viable business model? We chose the former, and are very glad we did.

Comparing that first January to last month, there’s been an 81% increase.

The risk paid off.

Successful business is the key to generating future income. More sales mean more sales tax. Increased sales taxes yield more money for local government to do its work of serving the people. Fiscal responsibility doesn’t just mean staying and spending within your means. It includes a vision for maintaining and increasing income to ensure future needs are met.

Concentrating on the current lack of city funds for removing snow and filling potholes without a plan to increase those resources is myopic and short sighted. I believe the proposed arena is just the first step in creating an environment for our city to generate new sources of income.

Solutions don’t materialize without the impetus of leadership, and I am impressed at the number of leaders who are standing behind this arena project as a key to the economic growth of Lincoln.

I will stand with them, casting a yes vote on May 11.

{boilerroom restaurant}

I took a day this week to spend in the kitchen at The Boiler Room in Omaha. Chef Paul Kulik and his staff are putting together some outstanding food with a bent toward local sourcing. I would recommend a visit soon.

{boilerroom staff}

For me, the importance of a day of observation like this is simply to watch and learn. Our restaurants are not the same in style or execution; however we do share the same values for care of preparation, local sourcing and creativity. I enjoy seeing people committed to their craft and listening to their explanations of how they approach the work of creating.

To do creative work requires the constant need for inspiration. The word Inspire means to breathe in, to be filled with breath. This air is all around us, usually free for the taking. Look for it and receive it.

Without inspiration, there is no life.

Our fourth objective for 2010:

• To create a place our employees love to work

Restaurants are notorious for short-term, short-time, transient staff that turn over as often as flapjacks on the griddle of a Pancake Man fundraiser. Part has to do with the nature of the work, appealing to a young person who needs a job to fund other more stimulating interest, but I would be willing to bet that more often than not, staff leave a job because it’s just not a fun place to be.

There is a dermis of self interest in this objective, especially in the early days when I spent more waking hours in the kitchen than in my own home. If I am going to devote that much time to my labors, it better be a destination I look forward to showing up. If I dread getting out of bed in the morning to go to work at a place I created, I have become The Man for myself. I have written my own death sentence.

There should be more to any job than a two week paycheck. There needs to be camaraderie. There needs to be motivation to learn and grow in skill and knowledge. There should always be a chance to hear feedback, and always more positive than negative. Every good place of employment will seek to provide these elements and more. Productivity will be less of an issue to scrutinize when employees like what they do, and the people with whom they are doing the work.

It’s an honor to see my staff come back in on their days off, meeting with another coworker, to have a bite to eat. This says two things to me. One: “I still like eating the food I make and serve other people.” Two: “I don’t hate this place.” It does help that they can eat at a discount, but a markdown alone doesn’t go very far in changing an unenthusiastic attitude or opinion very effectively.

Ken Blanchard wrote an important thought years ago that has stuck with me from his little book on management titled, The One Minute Manager. He says “catch somebody doing something right.” Most employees only hear from the boss when they screw up, not when they’ve done a good job. I like to call it “seeing people.” I saw how you scrubbed cleaned the floor in the dishroom…I saw how you handled that customer with grace and kindness…I saw how you stayed late and got the rest of that prep done…Thank you. I appreciate it.

I have a great staff. They are the reason I can take today off without fret. They are the reason you had great bread and great soup at lunch. My staff facilitated the experience you had with your friends last Friday night. They are the reason you want to sit at the bar so you can chat with them and see the action up close.

I know I don’t say it enough, but thank you, Staff. We have a great place to work.

In defense of scratch made components, here is a visual explanation of why we are committed to making as much of what we serve from raw ingredients. It is a lesson in craftsmanship, which I believe is often times confused with artisanal. Pardon my beef with semantics, but here's how I keep the two clear in my mind.

Art is the act of creating something new, whereas Craft is the act of creating something the same. Art has its focus on pushing boundaries and limits. Craft, on the other hand, knows the importance of restriction for the sake of a desirable end game. Art and Craft both have their place in the kitchen, and one must know their post times in order to bring them into the right race on schedule

Yet both have their strengths that can easily morph into a liability. The Name of Art can be used as an excuse for hiding a lazy streak. When a chef keeps saying he’s trying to do something out of the box, examine the outcome carefully. He could easily just be flying by the seat of his pants and not know what the hell he is doing. Art deserves better that spontaneous regurgitation and calling it good.

{pasta dough}

On the other hand, the Achilles Heel for the Craftsman can be the fear of trying anything new. Sticking to the same tried and true method is what makes the Craftsman who he is, but in the end, the food might get boring without an occasional shot of creativity.

{pasta rack}

This being said, making pasta is a craft. It is not an art. You want to reproduce the exact same quality, texture and taste from the manipulation of four otherwise basic ingredients every single time. Not much wiggle room at the bench here. You apply the same techniques over and over again, and therein lay a level of comfort in its reliability.

{pasta on plate}{ring mold}

{click for photo}If you are thinking of ownng your own business, don't do anything until you have read and understand the E-Myth. Nothing prepared me better for realizing that being a chef is more than just cooking. Some guys are able to hire the tedious, yet crucial tasks out, but until you can get to that point, be prepared to bust it at the spreadsheet as well as the cutting board.

A third objective for 2010:

• To attract and maintain a loyal customer base via WOM

The busier you get, the more selective you need to be when it comes to anything that demands your time. This objective gives me reason to just say no to countless sales calls for marketing gimmicks. I tell the caller that we are committed to marketing our business through word of mouth and would not be interested in their product. When they push back with their scripted, conditioned response, I ask them what it's like to have a job trying to sell me something I don’t need. The awkward conversation usually ends right after that.

I will admit that am skeptical about the effectiveness of most media advertising. I can’t tell you the last item I purchased because of a commercial on TV. If anything, I tend to be cynical about how products are presented and find ads more of a means of humor and mockery than useful information. We all look forward to the spots shown during the Super Bowl, but do they translate into anything more than watercooler talk on Monday?

We have stuck to a plan to market our business through people with whom we have some connection rather than through a massively anonymous approach. We manage three primary means of dispensing information to people who request it, and believe if they are inquiring, we’ve already established interest. A person can easily unsubscribe at their will, so if they want to stop getting information from us, it can cease immediately, unlike the mountains of junk paper mail I send right through the shredder and into the recycle bin as soon as I retrieve it from the mailbox at home.

Call it self-serving or just a good business, but we like partnering with groups for events that have a mutual benefit. We’ve hosted new beer release parties for the Modern Monks Brewing Consortium. Since they sell us beer and we sell it to you, we tap both networks to create a win/win scenario. In two weeks we are having a Wine & Food Tasting for Woodsmoke, an African themed business started by local entrepreneur Sean Coetzee. As we take opportunity to serve his fans, they may in turn become our fans, as well.

In our technologically fueled Information Age, we suffer from a glut of data that is absolutely useless. As a business man, I want my marketing to be concise, useful and to the point. I don’t want to waste your time, because I don’t want to waste mine, either.

A second objective we are setting for ourselves this year:

• To be a prominent reference point for Lincoln’s culinary opinion.

If experts were to do a story about role of sports in Lincoln, to whom are they going to speak? Obviously the Husker football program is going to play a major part in telling that story. So if a food writer, researcher or other seeker of information wants to know what is developing in our town in the area of food and its enjoyment, I would like to find myself on the top of the list of choices.

I love to write and talk about my business, but if I can get you to speak about it for me, I’ve multiplied my efforts. The more people I can have telling others to come eat at my restaurant, the more energy I can spend on making certain the experience is congruent with the story that is being told.

We have set a goal of achieving some kind of media recognition beyond Nebraska and outside the Midwest. If we can continue to build a broad reputation for what we are doing, it only helps reinforce in our team the importance of our work.

With the Internet, any customer is a potential international food critic. Anyone can go online to any number of travel or food related web sites and leave a review of their experience at bread&cup, either favorable or not. I do a Google search of these sites regularly to find out what is being said and share my findings with my staff. I remind them regularly, that the guest at table 51 could be from Food and Wine or from Beatrice; that guest still has access to a world wide pen.

My chef blog is another point of reference for outsiders to learn more about what we are doing, and the why’s behind our means and methods. I enjoy writing as much as I do cooking, and so I have committed to keep regular posts here.

But the seduction of getting noticed can never supersede the pleasures of doing what we do on a day to day basis that is drawing the attention in the first place. Our work of creating an outstanding environment for conversation and reflection with the service of simple food and drink, with as much sourced locally as possible, is foremost. A positive review is the icing, not the cake.

For every business leader, there comes a time when a sober assessment of one’s business is crucial in determining the next step to take. For many eating establishments in Lincoln in the last two years, that step has been to get out of the game. Gratefully for us, considering that direction is not necessary. We need to make sure we are taking steps forward, and thus, how far?

It is not a stretch for me to say that the approach we are taking to food and drink is unique not only to Lincoln but to many of our out of town guests who tell me they wished they had a place like ours in their city. And while I would like to take credit for some new and original idea, the concept of bread&cup is merely based on the outcome of this simple inquiry; what do people really want? We had a prediction, rolled the dice and are now happy that our number keeps coming up.

Which is more satisfying, to eat your dinner out of a bag that was handed to you through your driver’s side window? Or to sit down to a scratch made meal made by a face that will tell you what you are eating and that tastes far superior? And if your objection says, “But I’m in a hurry, man!” again, it reinforces my point, you want convenience over substance and you are willing to organize your lifestyle around that desire. Other companies may not, but my business plan takes the latter into consideration first.

Occasionally, when a customer likes what they see in our restaurant, I explain it this way, I tell them we are trying to shorten the distance between the kitchen and the table. This is what happens at home, and why the kitchen always becomes the most crowded room during a party. It’s why my kitchen is open, and why I try my best to come out and visit with you at the table. In shrinking that distance, it reconnects you to something that makes you human.

The metaphor of reducing the distance between the kitchen and the table is another way of saying that we believe what people really want is to reconnect the stomach with the soul. Ours has been severed by the Knife of Speed and Convenience, and we hope to sew it back together with the timeless thread of Conversation and Reflection. When I write, “We’ll set the table; you bring the conversation.” our implied meaning is that verbal human exchange over the practice of consuming simple food and drink will nourish far more than an empty stomach.

I’ve set four objectives for our restaurant in 2010. I am a firm believer in the “aim at nothing; hit it every time” school of thought. I am not educated or experienced in the finer points of business management, but I am convinced of the fact that a simple plan can be as effective, if not more so, than a long, detailed one. I post these as an exercise in clarity for my sake, but I hope you will enjoy seeing behind the scenes of what it takes to make a restaurant successful.

1. To maintain an outstanding environment for conversation and reflection

An online poll by a local marketing firm posted last year showed that we have achieved this mark. Over 80% of the respondents said they like coming to our place for conversation. Food and interaction go hand in hand. The majority of people who eat at our place do so with someone else. But eating alone is nothing to be ashamed of. We have many regulars who come in with their book, journal, or just a full mind needing a place to untangle the thoughts, and a little food and a glass of wine assists in the process.

Decisions we’ve made recently were run through this filter. We added a small, hot breakfast menu to provide another reason for people to utilize our spot in the mornings for a meeting, mentoring session or a quiet place to start the day. We are trying to boost awareness of Wine After 9, an evening wine and dessert feature available after our dinner service. Where do you go after the movie, the play or when you’re just not ready for the date to end, and you don’t want caffeine and you don’t want the noise of the college bars? We want to be top on your list of choices.

This year we are also contemplating adding a Happy Hour with food that reflects our value for simplicity. Our biggest question now is finding out if there is a market for it? Do people in Lincoln want more out of their Happy Hour than cheap bar food and penny pitchers of beer? Some have said to build it and they will come, but I need a little more info first.

The reason we put conversation before food is because people still go out to eat and meet to chat at places that serve food of marginal quality. Ours is not to try and change the culture first, but to flow with our culture and provide a superior product, one that may garner attention and lead to an epiphany that there is a better way to eat.

Keep us in mind. We feed your need for conversation, all day long.

Occasionally I am asked about bread&cup, “What kind of place is this?” Behind the query are such options as, “A bakery?” “A café?” “A bistro” “A sandwich place?” “A little spot for lunch?”

In developing any kind of definition, it helps us both to first know what we are setting out to accomplish. The objective is as simple as our food. We are creating an outstanding environment for conversation and reflection.

To unpack this idea, I have to explain to you the quote above my kitchen, facing the front door for everyone to see as they enter. It reads:

We live in a fascinating age of progress and scientific discovery. Technology offers us better and faster ways to communicate and share information with one another all across the planet. Yet with all its advancement, we believe nothing will provide a better channel for meeting our deepest needs of communication like the timeless practice of sharing simple food and drink.

We’ll set the table. You bring the conversation.

In this statement, I am trying to adopt a position of standing on two foundations, one built upon the best of the days before me, and the other, upon the strength and promise of the future. This is very hard to do, since when we yearn for the past, many ears hear people like me saying we should all become Amish, revoke women’s voting rights and reestablish Prohibition.

As a citizen of a new millennium, I am acutely aware of a tension that exists between the past and the future, especially as it pertains to food. I affirm the need and the benefit of returning to an understanding of the source of our food, and a connection to the land from which it was grown. There is not only nutritional value of enjoying fresh, whole foods grown naturally in unadulterated dirt, there is an intangible benefit from the understanding of its source as well.

At the same time, I am realistic in acknowledging the practicality of initiating this kind of quantum cultural shift. McDonald’s and Burger King are not going away anytime soon. Much of what is passed off as edible food is going to be contained in a cardboard box, aluminum can or plastic bag. Convenience is the operative word that drives the decisions for what and how we eat in this 21st century. Mine is just a tiny voice amid the cacophonous noise of a culture whose stomach has become disconnected from its soul.

Personally, I am glad to be alive in 2010. It is a fascinating age. I would be amazed, but not surprised, to witness a cure for cancer in my lifetime. Computers are getting smaller, more powerful, giving scientists and engineers the ability to solve more complex problems. I like this outlook. Armed with this muscle, I believe new, economical energy sources are within our reach. Given the choice of being alive now or in 1910, I’ll take today every time.

But at the same time I still want to be able to reach back and grasp what was good about life a hundred years ago, when our world was simpler, when electronic media did not rule our attention like an insecure dictator, and when the pace of life allowed for more meaningful human contact. Let me keep my computer, but remind me to close it down at some point each day and take up activity that will renew my understanding of what it means to be simply alive, wonderfully grateful and distinctly human.

Talk to any small business person for any length of time about their venture and I guarantee the topic of employees will come up sooner than later. Eventually the use of the line, “you just can’t get good help these days” will make it into the conversation.

I, however, am very grateful for my staff and feel privileged to hear most of the comments from customers about them. One woman in particular, told me yesterday that one of the things she likes about coming in to our restaurant is how enjoyable and interactive everyone seems to be. Another gentleman, who works in HR, asked me where I got my training in interviewing and hiring good help. I blushed at the compliment, but had to admit to him that my style is more visceral than textbook. I go with the gut most every time.

I have two questions; I call them my “cut to the chase” questions, which I use at the start of every interview. They are:

1. Why do you want to work here?
2. Why should I hire you?

I can usually tell after this initial query what you think about the both of us, whether or not you are informed about the kind of business we run, and if you possess any kind of self-awareness or not.

I’m looking for people who don’t just want a job; I’m looking for people for whom our place is first on their list. This was impossible at the onset, since nobody knew a thing about us, but now that our reputation has preceded us, more and more people are finding their way to my doorstep asking for an application.

Even though I may get snookered on the second question, it will only take a few days at work for your true colors to bleed through. In the interview, you may give me all the right answers about how you are such a hard worker, clean, and get along well with others, but one day in the dishroom will tell me if the default setting on your control panel is set to action or just plain talk. People are hired for what they know, and fired for who they are.

Most ads for help wanted put a strong emphasis on previous work experience, noting that 2yrs is a bare minimum in many cases, but not so much for me. Having worked in a commercial kitchen is not highest on my list of qualities in a new hire, else I wouldn’t have been able to give myself a job. Give me someone with a strong work ethic versus a culinary degree. I can teach you to cook; I can’t teach you to work. You’ve got it or you don’t.