The restaurant staff used to make a living on coffee and cigarettes. There are now more chefs cooking for each other to make the food good enough to eventually appear on the menu

Of course, you will assume that the chef eats well at work. These are food lovers, surrounded by quality products that work long hours at strange times. Is rustling a delicious employee meal surely an established benefit of this job? You are wrong in that assumption.

When the chef Sam Grainger of Belzan in Liverpool started cooking 15 years ago, the staff meal “non-existent”. You've heard of it in the hotel and the Michelin kitchen that doesn't open until 6pm. But in the comprehensive, downtown, 11-11 places, you usually don't have time. If you say, "I'm going to take a break," you may be avoided for making others mess up. The chefs make a living on coffee, energy drinks and cigarettes. "

Punishing oneself was part of the "rock star attitude" of the chefs at the time. "Many managers and bosses will say,'Go to eat,' and assume that everyone has done this. It is definitely not the rule not to eat. You will be hungry. The prep chef may put something, stew or meat sauce, simple and clumsy Single pot, you will eventually box it at the end of the night."

There has never been an industry standard for employee food, whether it is availability or quality, and the supply has been and is very diverse. In large, busy or chain restaurants, with many employees on different shifts, employees are usually entitled to dine from the menu for free or at a discount of 50-75% (sometimes with limited low-cost dishes). Some provide staff rooms or let staff dine in restaurants. Others drove them to the secret room.

In smaller restaurants, visionary owners may set the tone. Selin Kiazim is the head chef of Oklava in London. He worked at Peter Gordon's and now closed The Providores and Kopapa. "Undoubtedly, we enjoyed a hearty and delicious breakfast and lunch. We accepted a variety of dishes. Hainanese chicken rice is one of our favorites. The restaurant is open all day, and the only tricky thing is to let all the employees sit down."

Senior chef Tom (a pseudonym) said that restaurants that "completely reject" employee food are rare. But complaining managers are common. "There are always employers who want it to be the cheapest." Many years later, Grainger shuddered at the thought of employees' sausages grilled with 5 kilograms of cheese. "There are two inches of fat on it. This is the worst thing I have ever seen."

This will be counterproductive at best. "If people are not full," Tom said, "They can't bear it physically, and you start to lose people mentally. The quality of what they produce will not be very good."

A new generation of chefs is on the rise, and they see the obvious benefits of convening employees in the late afternoon between services (usually at the undressed table) to eat what is often referred to as a "family meal." They want their employees to feel energetic, valued, and united as a team.

At Stockport's Where The Light Gets (WTLGI), everyone meets in a dedicated staff room at 11 am, holds team meetings and eats breakfast, whether it's porridge or grilled mackerel toast. The chef takes turns preparing breakfast and 4 pm meals, such as jerk chicken, bibimbap or homemade pizza. "I remember sitting on the refrigerator to eat in a pan, and eating around the table is very important," said Sam Buckley, the chef and owner who usually oversees breakfast on Saturdays. "This is a courtesy to those who work hard for you."

Modern, state-of-the-art kitchens will of course use cut meat or extra vegetables in employee food to minimize waste. But most (rather than buying cheap jars and sachets for employee tea as is common) allow employees to purchase additional ingredients, usually from restaurant suppliers. Some budgets are around £3 per person, while others remain open. "No one has ordered a kilo of truffles," Barkley said.

Stuart Ralston, owner of Edinburgh’s Aizle and Noto restaurant, said that as a young chef, “I weighed 9 stones. I have never eaten it.” This is usually because the staff’s food is poor. . "In one place, when we were making chicken soup, we had to pick carcasses to make tea for employees. Now, buying employee fish and protein has been included in our costs."

In Oklawa, Kiazim admits that getting everyone to sit together can be difficult. "You've been solving obstacles, staff shortages, supplier issues, busy lunches that no one sees. In this case, everyone eats 4pm meals at different times." But employees eat "healthy, nutritious food" "food. "I insist on eating vegetables or salad next to the main course and limit the amount of pasta. It makes the staff drowsy and it should not always be a quick choice."

When he opened Belzan in 2017, Grainger and his co-owners were determined to incorporate the benefits of employee meals into the business in a self-sustaining manner. His novel solution is that a group of employees, including the front desk staff (and the owner, on a regular basis) make a staff meal a day, charge it for this, and then sell it on small plates for £6 on the evening menu.

This is to ensure that staff meals remain creative and high-quality, and can recover costs. This also means that junior chefs who usually don't have any opinions on the menu can see that their ideas are realized in lamb kofta, beef rendang, or broccoli stalk curry after preparing endless florets.

"If necessary, the chef will test and fiddle with this dish," Granger said before serving it to the diners. But it is taken "very seriously". Isn’t the pressure on the wait staff unfair? "No," Granger insisted. Initially, they will relax and get help. "They really worked hard. On the day off, I received a text message like this, "Can we make this dish together?" "This is competitive."

The staff meal that night-not too heavy or too heavy-was eaten during the pre-service briefing. Grainger said that food is "an amazing morale booster." When they started to serve, there was a smile on their faces, talking about the dinner we had just eaten. This is difficult to instill in people. "

On the one hand, this contemporary reverence for family dinners is a fashion. In the 2010s, a group of influential books extolled the virtues of restaurant employees eating each other: el Bulli's The Family Meal; come in and we are closed; photographer Per-Anders Jörgensen has dinner with the chef. As David Waltuck, author of Chanterelle's "Staff Meal", told "Food and Wine": "In some ways, it makes more sense than cooking for customers."

Suddenly, the staff's food is exciting. The world has learned about Noma’s staff canteen and how the Roca brothers walked to their parents’ village tavern for dinner with their team in El Celler de Can Roca, Spain. In "Come in, we are closed", Ferran Adrià insists on reasonable planning of staff food (grilled miso eggplant dishes, noodles mussels, Catalan cream) at a cost of 3 euros per person, "eliminating most of the problems ": "The chef eats well, you will eat better."

The spell is now online on the ManresaFamilyMeal Instagram account, and Manresa, a three-Michelin-star California restaurant, has published an incredible staff menu. In Birmingham, Carters of Moseley attracts as many as 6,000 people to Instagram every day, where staff meal tutorials, such as ramen noodles or Kiev chicken balls (recipes are collected in the "Employee" book), have gathered their own enthusiastic followers.

This movement is also a change between generations and multiple generations. Most of the chefs who now push employees to eat have emerged in the shadow of the ever-changing restaurant culture. Kiazim, Buckley, and Ralston are all in their 30s, and so is Grainger. For the first time, he experienced employee meals at Jamie's Italian. They also manage much younger chefs, who-all kombucha, gym members, and keen personal well-being-want to be satisfied at work.

Grainger also co-owns Madre in Liverpool, a huge bar and restaurant with 342 restaurants and free meals for its 74 employees. "If those chefs don't have time to sit down and eat, they will leave—at noon." Given the recruitment issues in the industry, no restaurant can take this risk.

On the Darjeeling Express in Covent Garden, employees can enjoy delicious food. "You can't serve on an empty stomach," Chef Asma Khan said. "You can't go home empty-handed. This is wrong."

The restaurant started as a dinner club, and among its 30 employees, the value of dining together is deeply entrenched. For example, its Ghanaian kitchen porters regularly cook plantain for everyone ("we like it"), while Italian or Georgian employees bring cakes or cheeses home to share. Every day at 5pm, 12 to 14 waiters-some are off work, some have already started-eat a selection of dishes that they can also take home to their families.

“Sharing food is a good balancer. From the comments about food, it derives conversations about culture, identity, and travel. This encourages them to discuss who they are,” Khan said. It’s not that she ate with this closely-knit team: “I’m not stuck with their style. I’m the boss. Languages ​​will become interesting-they are young children-if my son is working, he will feel I was embarrassed there."

Instead, Khan ate with her all-female kitchen team. Unlike the slow'n' low dishes served by the Darjeeling Express, its chefs-as if they are still cooking in Khan's home, they can only leave a circle on the stove-to prepare themselves hot dishes, such as dry Red fried chicken liver, chili, and a lot of small fish. "You can't serve them because with knives and forks, customers can't find fine bones, but all of us eat with our hands. This is a unique and fast thing."

The wait staff rested again at around 9pm to eat the food they packed earlier or leftovers from the kitchen, lentil fritters and palata. "Even if we are busy, we pull one person at a time. The shift will not end until midnight and it may take 90 minutes to get home. They are not my children, but I hope their mothers know that they will not go hungry during the trip. "

Sam Ward, the managing director of Umbel Restaurant Group, which runs chef Simon Rogan's restaurant, wants hospitality to stop serving food advertisements to employees. "This is a fundamental right. Our business spans the time people usually eat. Feeding them is part of the transaction." Rogan's four Cumbria businesses provide food to approximately 120 employees every day, many of which are twice. .

Narrowing down the scope, it is possible to treat this conversation around employee food as an element in the broader calculation of hospitality, working hours, and benefits. "It may be a little shameless," Ward said, while also denying his idea, "but most British restaurants are successfully operated by the personal sacrifice of their employees. We are in the middle of a structural transformation. All these things are happening. Variety."

Sam Grainger: "This dish was created by our current chef Mark Dickey-this is a Christmas dish you never knew you wanted so much."

Serving 4-5 pieces of pork belly 2-2.5 kg, boneless, salt with skin 500 g pork broth 250 ml Fino Sherry 250 ml star anise 2 honey 120 g butter 200 g, cold sage ½ bunch, chopped citrus 8. Peel and cut sea salt into sections

Preheat the oven for at least 15 minutes to 160C. Fan/gas mark 4. Place the pork belly on the wire tray in the grill pan. Add a layer of ½ cm of salt to the skin of the pork belly. Put it in the preheated oven for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, cool and dry for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 220C fan/gas mark 9. Carefully remove all salt from the pork belly-try not to brush it on the meat. Put the pork belly in the oven and bake for 30 minutes until the skin is puffy and crispy.

While the pork belly is cooking, put a large thick-bottomed pot on high heat. Add pork broth, fino sherry and star anise. Bring to a boil and reduce by half. Add honey and continue heating. When the sauce begins to thicken, turn to medium heat, add the butter cubes in the refrigerator piece by piece, and stir to emulsify. Add sage and citrus to the thick sauce.

Let the roasted belly sit for 20 minutes. Finally, use a serrated knife to cut it into strips (one per person), and then use a spoon to scoop the sauce and citrus. Seasoning and serving.