Pressure cooker

It was a tough debut for executive chef Karen Martini. In August she opened her 75-seat St Kilda restaurant Mr Wolf, with Michael Sapountsis, her partner who runs the front of house. At the time of writing it’s been full every night – even before the critics hit the presses – on the first Sunday 400 customers walked through the door and Martini worked a 17-hour day.

With the restaurant business being notoriously fickle, Martini, 32, is in the ranks of the few who know how to do it right. She made her reputation at the Melbourne Wine Room at The George in St Kilda. She then took on the tough Sydney restaurant scene where she put the refurbished Icebergs at Bondi Beach on the map.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason in her staff’s bustle as they criss-cross the restaurant, kitchen and next door bar. But the key is that these people are more than her staff, they are her team. Each has a well defined role in the smooth running of this establishment in terms of providing customers with excellent service and wonderful food and drink.

In fact, the kitchen staff and waiters in any successful restaurant are part of a complex and enormously hierarchical management system. It was the famous 19th century chef Auguste Escoffier who devised the ‘Brigade de Cuisine’ or kitchen brigade. Kitchens had for centuries been separated into sections, but it was Escoffier who devised an organised system, to ensure there was no doubling up on work and that dishes were properly organised. Escoffier’s kitchens were said to be especially well run and organised perhaps, well partially, because he banned drinking alcohol in the kitchen.

Today many kitchens may not have as many levels of hierarchy as a classical French kitchen but hierarchy and position are important – not for status reasons as is the case in some businesses – but because they are integral to the smooth running of the brigade and its communication with the waiters and ultimately, the customers.

Martini can’t understate the importance of the management team. It’s taken her nearly seven years to bring the right mix of talent together. Yet, despite all the hard work, not long after she opened she took unwanted, but decisive action. 'We had to let someone go because their attitude was wrong. And I had to come in and work the evening shift. Any of my key management would do the same thing.'

There’s no doubt the kitchen environment is a tough one. Apprentices have to learn quickly and not to take offence to extremely frank criticism. Martini remembers chefs’ tantrums and objects being flung across kitchens, but says gone are the days that kids get thrown up against walls and plates are smashed. Matt Moran, who with his business partner Pete Sullivan runs one of Sydney’s most successful restaurants, Aria, agrees: 'It’s just not like that [now]. I’ve never had that in my kitchens and never would. It gets heated.

I say to everyone who works for me in the kitchen we’re trying to produce something that we are all proud of and if you get bollocked in the middle of service don’t take it personally. Just turn around and push on. At the end of the day I’ll still have a drink with you.'

Part of this 'bollocking' is direct communication – feedback for a job done badly in a high pressure environment with the tightest of deadlines. Moran, who also judged Channel Seven’s reality show My Restaurant Rules, where aspiring restaurateurs competed for the chance to own their own restaurant, says: 'The rule that we have [at Aria] is this is the dish, this is the recipe, this is how it’s plated, this is how it looks at the end of it. Don’t move away from that.'

Both Moran and Martini say that when others start fiddling with the dishes its not their food anymore. Moran recounts how one chef at his restaurant Aria left some baby coriander out of a dish. 'And I said: ‘well look if you guys want to go and [expletive] cook your own food, go and buy your own restaurant,’ in the middle of service. And he looked at me and went ‘yes chef’ and started putting coriander back on it.'

Martini says that there is minimal talking in the kitchen. 'The ‘yes chef’ thing is about being sure you are understood. Because there is no time to delay or back chat. Four minutes can be late and a misunderstood command can mean the whole table goes in the bin.'

Top UK Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsay, infamous for his constant cussing and bollocking of staff, is one of the last people one could imagine as a management guru. His staff have always been loyal to him and moved en masse with him from his first venue. In his recent series Kitchen Nightmares, aired on Channel Seven, he took a step up in his critics’ estimations, demonstrating his abilities as a management guru.

Employment lawyers debated what side of the law he was on for his swearing and reducing people to tears and he’s recently been rapped on the knuckles by the UK broadcasting watchdog for blaspheming. Despite all this, three management professors writing in the UK Daily Telegraph noted his effective management style. One professor, Adrian Furham, an expert on psychometrics and organisational psychology at University College London, noted that he communicates directly, admits mistakes and gives immediate praise and feedback.

In Kitchen Nightmares he has some potent advice about team management. He says: '[You’ve got to] trust the brigade that you are paying. Secondly, bring them on, keep hold of them, motivate them, evolving them [and] increasing their responsibilities.' After all, he says 'we spend more time together in the kitchen than with our bloody families.'

Ramsay, who runs three central London restaurants (one with three Michelin stars and rated one of the top five eateries in the world) emphasises that inspired teamwork is all about passion. 'Restaurant owners’ best investment will always be the head chef … [who’s] got to be a motivator, a leader, [someone] who’s going to bring customers back.' He maintains that 'good head chefs get the best out of their team no matter what.'

Matt Moran explains: 'It’s all about passion. If [the team is] passionate about what they do, they tend to work harder and strive more at it. If you’ve got a head chef that doesn’t really care about what he’s doing or what product he’s putting on the plate, well it’s all going to flow through to the people under him. And if it doesn’t, then the people who don’t want to do that will leave.'

As in any other type of business one of the things many restaurants get wrong are the service levels, according to Martini. 'Both the kitchen and the floor have to be in synergy,' she says. As Ramsay found when he visited the four restaurants in Kitchen Nightmares, customer service is paramount. As he noted, the waiters are any restaurant’s shop-front, salespeople and customer service reps.

'They need to be slick, organised, presentable and knowledgeable. In short, they need to sell.'

Gordon Ramsay's recipes for business success (From Kitchen Nightmares)

When you are in charge, leadership skills come first, technical skills come second:

• Stop being a cook and start being a chef.
• Selfish individuals don’t make great head chefs.

Believe in yourself and trust your staff:

• To control and inspire his team, the head chef has got to believe in himself otherwise, forget it.

Have a good Number two manager with a good skill mix:

• The number two chef combines teamwork and cooking ability.

Praise your staff:

• You’re a very good cook, has anyone told you that before?

Always try out your own product:

• You have to learn how to taste properly [and know] what a balance of flavours is all about.

Have a clean and healthy workplace:

• This place is about as clean as a puppy’s litter tray.
  (Comment on one kitchen he visited)

Love your product and others will too:

• Treat it with a bit of love and care.
• Clean plates are a sign of happiness.

About the author: Ed Charles

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