If you have any type of career training in the last 20 years or so, you have probably heard about the 'elevator pitch', a short synopsis that gives the listener a clean, precise, understanding of who you are and what you desire to achieve. Two years ago, I turned a short bus ride into a shift in my career path.
The story goes, I had a free convention pass to the National Restaurant Association show at McCormick place. Parking is always hard to find and frequently expensive, I took public transportation. I entered the bus, and sitting a couple of rows back from the driver, was a guy in his chef coat that looked familiar. It took me a few to put it all together but I realized that this chef and I had been connected via social media for a couple of years. Chef Blackmon is a very talented person who is in charge of culinary arts training for Chicago Public Schools. I am limiting his role to just this aspect of what he does for teenagers all over the city of Chicago, Illinois.
As we spoke about our industry, I expressed my desire to begin teaching and had found the school applications online were almost completely geared to academic educators, making it difficult for someone like myself to successfully apply. The story goes, there are often openings for skilled instructors, and I put myself up for nomination and swift as I could emailed my resume. Almost two months later, I got a call about my resume, Chef Blackmon had forwarded my information on to another program in need of instructors. Even without having an opening with CPS, I was afforded the opportunity to interview for another position.
Sometimes you wait in a hallway wondering which door will open for you, other times you wait in waiting rooms seeking the door to get out into a hallway, a path towards new goals. You never know what connection you will make that can propel you into new spheres. Always be closing because when you are not, there is a risk of missing your change to jump in the deep end. No more kiddie pool for me.
Some people are put off by this ideal as they may not be comfortable talking about themselves. I am not quick to do so either, I don't have much of an ego, but I have learned to give out pieces of my career as validation of my skills and ability. Sometimes that's all you really need to do prior to sending off your resume, or even at the interview. For the food business, a portfolio can do tons of bragging for you, not having to speak a word, it is always helpful to have pictures of your work, easily available online for customers and potential employers to review. This invaluable tool can speak for you, even when there isn't a new opportunity readily available, and having this presence can really come to arms for you.
Our industry runs on sensory perceptions, sights, sounds, smells, and taste all come together to judge your work. While I know you can't duplicate, or represent, all the aspects of food we love without being there in the moment, but pics can be a valuable representation of what is possible. Once you have peeked someone's interest then you can duplicate the experiences.
Always be prepared because not all opportunities come neatly packaged with a bow on top, or are scheduled on a calendar. Be ready, be a pinch polished, learn to speak to your skills instead of heaping on details about yourself to fed your ego.
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Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Finding Your Roots
If any of you actually know me in person, you may already know that I have somewhat of an obsession about genealogy. Tracing my origins back through time, generation after generation, isn't an easy task, and often the discoveries made lead to more questions than answers.
When I entered culinary training, a good amount of the work would follow along either a technique, building skills, or it would be a grouping of dishes from one country and then another. I was surprised to learn that several of the dishes I grew up eating were cultural invites into other worlds that my family were not apart of to my knowledge. I remember learning that the oxtails my Grandmother cooked were not like the ones other blacks cooked that had come to Chicago from the Southern states, but much more in the style of Italian migrants, for example. We ate smoked sausages with sauerkraut, and I haven't found much in the way of German ancestry. As neighbors tend to do, Grandmother shared recipes with neighbors and friends.
Sharing food culture with others and the history of foods, their origins, and development, became a fascination for me. I once took a class at Roosevelt University all about the history of food. In that exploration, we ventured back in time to the cavemen days, and viewed history and archaeology of food, how food procurement is at the very beginnings of civilization itself. Farming changed us from strictly hunter-gatherers of nomadic origins to settlers and villagers. Yogurt changed trade routes and therefore economy. I will share more of this in later posts.
Even before Henry Louis Gates Jr. began televising episodes of his award winning show, I had a curiosity for this type of exploration. My companion podcast is a type of this kind of exploration as they are conversations with people about their relationships with food and by extension culture.
Chefs, foodies, critics, writers, culinarians, educators, artist, and any sort of people who eat have some type of connection with food. I am loving talking with my guests about the subject. Just in the first few broadcast, we have seen how the conversations have taken us into conversations about social unrest, cultural and religious rebirths, and dietary changes for religious and health reasons. These are all just breadcrumbs along the pathways of creation and generational growth.
I have a small collection of older cookbooks because I like to compare what was popular 20,40,60 years ago to what is consumed now. The techniques used, the flavor pallet, the available food stuffs, and the changes in the social norms of dinning etiquette and social graces, all change and as they change so does the preferred foods. The modern mothers of today, often can't imagine hosting a dinner party that consist of 9 or 10 courses of foods, let alone design, produce, and prepare such an culinary experience but it isn't so unusual for the cultured society women of the turn of the century.
No matter the era of your birth, your place in society, your ethic makeup, for country of origin, your immigrated home, your racial background, your chosen profession, your political background, or any other thing in which we classify ourselves, we all eat and we all have a love/hate/health relationship with food.
If you are interested in taking part in our weekly discussions, please leave me a comment with your contact information, and I will love to schedule a broadcast to explore your food history.
Listen in to our discussions both live and archived: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
If you like us, please Follow! I will be soon making this available on iTunes and other search engines such as IHeart Radio in short order.
When I entered culinary training, a good amount of the work would follow along either a technique, building skills, or it would be a grouping of dishes from one country and then another. I was surprised to learn that several of the dishes I grew up eating were cultural invites into other worlds that my family were not apart of to my knowledge. I remember learning that the oxtails my Grandmother cooked were not like the ones other blacks cooked that had come to Chicago from the Southern states, but much more in the style of Italian migrants, for example. We ate smoked sausages with sauerkraut, and I haven't found much in the way of German ancestry. As neighbors tend to do, Grandmother shared recipes with neighbors and friends.
Sharing food culture with others and the history of foods, their origins, and development, became a fascination for me. I once took a class at Roosevelt University all about the history of food. In that exploration, we ventured back in time to the cavemen days, and viewed history and archaeology of food, how food procurement is at the very beginnings of civilization itself. Farming changed us from strictly hunter-gatherers of nomadic origins to settlers and villagers. Yogurt changed trade routes and therefore economy. I will share more of this in later posts.
Even before Henry Louis Gates Jr. began televising episodes of his award winning show, I had a curiosity for this type of exploration. My companion podcast is a type of this kind of exploration as they are conversations with people about their relationships with food and by extension culture.
Chefs, foodies, critics, writers, culinarians, educators, artist, and any sort of people who eat have some type of connection with food. I am loving talking with my guests about the subject. Just in the first few broadcast, we have seen how the conversations have taken us into conversations about social unrest, cultural and religious rebirths, and dietary changes for religious and health reasons. These are all just breadcrumbs along the pathways of creation and generational growth.
I have a small collection of older cookbooks because I like to compare what was popular 20,40,60 years ago to what is consumed now. The techniques used, the flavor pallet, the available food stuffs, and the changes in the social norms of dinning etiquette and social graces, all change and as they change so does the preferred foods. The modern mothers of today, often can't imagine hosting a dinner party that consist of 9 or 10 courses of foods, let alone design, produce, and prepare such an culinary experience but it isn't so unusual for the cultured society women of the turn of the century.
No matter the era of your birth, your place in society, your ethic makeup, for country of origin, your immigrated home, your racial background, your chosen profession, your political background, or any other thing in which we classify ourselves, we all eat and we all have a love/hate/health relationship with food.
If you are interested in taking part in our weekly discussions, please leave me a comment with your contact information, and I will love to schedule a broadcast to explore your food history.
Listen in to our discussions both live and archived: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
If you like us, please Follow! I will be soon making this available on iTunes and other search engines such as IHeart Radio in short order.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Conversations About Food - Podcasts
As a companion piece to this blog, I have launched a podcast of the same name. There I will explore the roots of, the relationship of, and the changes of people's relationship with food. Everyone has a history of eating, cooking, loving, and hating some foods. There are all sorts of traditions, religious restrictions, feasts days, fasting days, dieting, likes and dislikes surrounding folks intimate connections with eating and cooking. It's aim will be to talk to professional chefs, homemakers, athletes, musicians, the whole gambit of professions and phases of life.
I will update this list as I post the broadcasts. Please subscribe and tune-in regularly: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
Ep#1: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/01/18/conversation-with-chef-yehoshuah-yehudah
I will update this list as I post the broadcasts. Please subscribe and tune-in regularly: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
Ep#1: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/01/18/conversation-with-chef-yehoshuah-yehudah
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Welcome
This blog, and its companion podcast, is dedicated to the explorations of many things revolving around the food service industry. I have been a professional pastry chef in Chicago for over 24 years and I intend to have discussions about many related topics from the changing face of the industry, the pitfalls of business ownership, food trends, what it is like being a minority in this line of work, culinary schools, competition, and just about anything else.
Why did I pick this name for my page? Well, when I was a kid, it was trendy to have, hanging on your wall, the giant fork and spoon. These decorations were wooden or metal and often found in the dinning room or kitchens, as a kid I tried to imagine how big you must be to be able to use them at the dinner table. As I grew up, these wall hangings began to fall out of favor, considered passe, but my love of food, and creating food art, began in the shadow of these relics.
The chef life is never dull and hardly ever simple. Everyone in the industry needs to balance the business with artistry to meet the ever changing demands of the clientele, and that isn't easy. When I began my journey in this industry there was no such thing as a "celebrity chef", no television channels dedicated to our work, and very little that accurately depicted what the day-to-day was like in a professional kitchen. Julia Child lit the torch that peered behind the curtain the separated the front of the house from the back of the house. She was the pioneer that demystified fine dinning and culinary excellence both at food outlets and at home. Anthony Bourdain wrote a best selling book "Kitchen Confidential" that peeled back the facade and took a hard look at the life of the chef will all that it can be, both accelerating and dangerous.
I have come to the conclusion that even with all the media exposure and the developed thirst for all things "celebrity", the Rachel Raye's, the Mario Batalli's, and Guy Fieri's, there is still a lack of respect for what it is we do, and a lack of understanding about what it takes to get into this line of work, stay in the industry, open a profitable business, and have any measure of success. I often find, that when talking to other professionals in other industries, I feel the need to illustrate what it is we do and why we chefs are not to have a nose turned skyward from anyone. Chefs all over the world run businesses, just like any other business, with it's demands of profitability, while using applied chemistry techniques to food stuffs, and mixing in artistry to please a wide audience.Trends change rapidly, similar to the fashion industry, and keeping up with the dietary and taste request of customers keeps chefs consistently training and retraining their skills.
Hopefully, my experiences, and those of my colleagues, will widen your perspective and understanding of this chef life we live. My goal has always been to open my own outlet in Chicago, as for now, I am delving deeper into teaching the next generation of people with great cooking skills, and perhaps some will take their skills on to high heights within the industry. Everything has its pluses and minuses and here's where I intend to share them with you.
Why did I pick this name for my page? Well, when I was a kid, it was trendy to have, hanging on your wall, the giant fork and spoon. These decorations were wooden or metal and often found in the dinning room or kitchens, as a kid I tried to imagine how big you must be to be able to use them at the dinner table. As I grew up, these wall hangings began to fall out of favor, considered passe, but my love of food, and creating food art, began in the shadow of these relics.
The chef life is never dull and hardly ever simple. Everyone in the industry needs to balance the business with artistry to meet the ever changing demands of the clientele, and that isn't easy. When I began my journey in this industry there was no such thing as a "celebrity chef", no television channels dedicated to our work, and very little that accurately depicted what the day-to-day was like in a professional kitchen. Julia Child lit the torch that peered behind the curtain the separated the front of the house from the back of the house. She was the pioneer that demystified fine dinning and culinary excellence both at food outlets and at home. Anthony Bourdain wrote a best selling book "Kitchen Confidential" that peeled back the facade and took a hard look at the life of the chef will all that it can be, both accelerating and dangerous.
I have come to the conclusion that even with all the media exposure and the developed thirst for all things "celebrity", the Rachel Raye's, the Mario Batalli's, and Guy Fieri's, there is still a lack of respect for what it is we do, and a lack of understanding about what it takes to get into this line of work, stay in the industry, open a profitable business, and have any measure of success. I often find, that when talking to other professionals in other industries, I feel the need to illustrate what it is we do and why we chefs are not to have a nose turned skyward from anyone. Chefs all over the world run businesses, just like any other business, with it's demands of profitability, while using applied chemistry techniques to food stuffs, and mixing in artistry to please a wide audience.Trends change rapidly, similar to the fashion industry, and keeping up with the dietary and taste request of customers keeps chefs consistently training and retraining their skills.
Hopefully, my experiences, and those of my colleagues, will widen your perspective and understanding of this chef life we live. My goal has always been to open my own outlet in Chicago, as for now, I am delving deeper into teaching the next generation of people with great cooking skills, and perhaps some will take their skills on to high heights within the industry. Everything has its pluses and minuses and here's where I intend to share them with you.
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