At Alcatraz Brewing Company, an American-style brasserie in Orange, CA, the atmosphere evokes the cool, foggy San Francisco Bay. But in the kitchen, where Executive Chef Michael Miller keeps it cooking, things get much hotter. Located just miles from Disneyland, Angel Stadium and Honda Center, the restaurant and brewery sees ample traffic. “Some days, we can do 250 covers at lunch,” Miller says. “On Friday and Saturday nights, it varies, but it’s usually about 600 covers.
“I’ve definitely built the menu around what we can do and can’t do,” Miller continues, and one dish his crew can do quite well is a small plate of dark-ale smoked ribs with house-made hoisin barbecue sauce. It’s a tricky item, he says, “because people know ribs.” They know when they’re not getting the real deal.
“We have a 24-hour marinade time, plus a four-hour cook time, plus a cool time,” Miller says. “We also have to have enough product on hand not to run out.” Even with a staff member dedicated to its two-day prep, he adds, “it is one of those menu items that we talk about every single day together in the kitchen. ‘Do we need to get two cases marinating for tomorrow? One case? Do we need to get one in the smoker now?’ That’s definitely one of the challenges I have here.”
Yet in keeping with his motto, “Keep it simple and make it from scratch,” Miller meets the challenge. “It’s hard, but that’s my job.”
Sometimes chefs could use a helping hand with certain menu items—as long as any cost- and time-cutting measures don’t compromise quality.
Chefs at the helm of major foodservice operations are a unique breed, tempering artistic passion with hardheaded business acumen. “Everybody’s pressured on costs,” says William (Bill) Schoenleb, corporate executive chef, CF Chefs, Inc., Dallas. “People are forced to make decisions on how critical a particular ingredient and its functionality are to the finished product: ‘Can I get by with something cheaper?’ But at the same time, once you start to move these things around, then you have variability. Now the product starts to change.”
A big factor, says Schoenleb, “is the variability in raw ingredients coming in, and the ability to adapt to those. You need to standardize things or you’re going to get different dining experiences from one location to another.” Of course, consistency isn’t without its drawbacks; while “everybody wants the best product that they can get,” he concedes, “you give up certain things to have consistency.”
Easy does it
Understanding a restaurant’s kitchen operation lets a manufacturer gauge how much execution to build into a product. Take the case of shell vs. liquid eggs. “When your kitchen is a shell-egg kitchen, there is a fair amount of labor dollars spent on cracking eggs,” says Thomas Fleming, corporate executive chef, Preferred Restaurant Services, Addison, TX, and a chef ambassador of the American Egg Board (AEB), Park Ridge, IL. “It does become a little costly in banquet operations, especially in hotels. Sure, it might not take much to crack 3 eggs to make an omelet, but now crack 1,000.” That’s why he always used pasteurized eggs for large volumes.