Welcome to the Ritz-Carlton

Well, sort of welcome…..

Even though my time at the Mayfair-Regent Hotel was short, I learned so much. I had very good teachers and co-workers. It was a great place to start my career in pastry. But at the end of the summer, I had to find a new place to work. I looked at hotels around the area. I set my sights on the Ritz-Carlton. Looking back this seems like an overly ambitious choice. I could have worked in some small restaurants or other hotels. But the Ritz was the top hotel/restaurant in the area. It had a wonderful reputation as one of the best hotels in the world. It would soon officially get that title in 1994. And it would hold that title for 3 years, the same three years I worked there. I’m not saying I had anything to do with achieving that status but it is an interesting coincidence. 

I did get on with the Ritz and started in late August. It just so happens that our wedding date was quickly approaching in October. When I started at the Ritz, the chef asked me if I could change my wedding date! I stood my ground and told him no. I thought for sure I would lose the job. But looking back, I think it was more of an intimidation technique. I would quickly find out how much intimidation one young cook could endure. 

I started around the same time as another young cook named John. He had graduated from  Kendall College in Evanston. His school was a bit more highly regarded than mine. He seemed a bit more adept in the kitchen than I was. I knew what to do mostly. He had facility with chocolate, mousses, custards and so much more. I felt like I could learn from him. We became fast friends. We started coming in to work our shift earlier and earlier. The shift officially started at 7:00am. But we came in at 6:30am for a while. Then it was 6:00am and we finally settled on 5:30am. Why did we come in so early? Clearly it was not for the pay. (We didn’t get paid for the extra time.) We did it for the experience we could gain and just to stay afloat. Each day brought with it so many parties and events that needed some sort of pastry. We had to bake off a couple hundred cookies, make pastry cream, creme anglaise and several doughs to be used by the rest of the pastry cooks. We could barely get all this work done during our regular hours. So we did a lot of the work before the 7:00am start. It was sort of satisfying when the assistant pastry chef went through the list for the day. John and I could say, we had at least 15-20% of it done already. They pushed us pretty hard at first, well all the time I was there. I remember coming home so tired each day. It was emotionally tiring as well. 

Even though John and I got along and so did most of the rest of the staff, some staff were not happy to see culinary school graduates coming through their kitchen. They saw us as hacks, shoemakers. Shoemaker is a term given to a new or inexperienced cook. Shoemakers supposedly do not belong in the kitchen. I will give them the fact that we were pretty slow and still learning the ways of a pro kitchen. But that’s no reason to treat new employees badly.  John fared a bit better than me because he had more experience and was actually fairly fast. I, on the other hand, was a sort of jovial, fun-loving sort of cook. I worked hard but I always wanted to have a good time. I did want to get down to work. But I guess some of them perceived that laid-back attitude as laziness. I assure I was not lazy.

There was one cook I worked with in the extra pastry kitchen; we had two pastry kitchens. She did not like me from the start. I won’t use her name; it’s not important. But she made me feel very bad most days we had to work together. We worked across a very large wooden butcher block table. She stared at me and said, “You don’t belong here.” “You should quit because you are so slow!”

I mean those are some pretty hurtful things to say. She would not let up. To this day, I can’t remember how long we worked with this woman. It seemed like a very long time. But I do remember the day I came in and asked where “blank” was. I was informed that she had quit to go to another hotel in the East. I was so happy. Things were a bit brighter that day. There would be some trying days ahead but at least the bullying by coworkers was over. The management, pastry chef and assistant pastry chef, were still bearing down on me. I felt a lot of pressure from them to go faster and do better work. 

Every year I was there, I was called into the pastry chef’s office for an annual review. It would cover the regular stuff like my attendance record but it would usually focus on the fact that I was just not that fast. I kept trying to go faster than I ever had. I could not conceive how I could produce pastry any faster than I was. But it was possible. During the review the pastry chef would give me a stern look and chastise my inability to increase my speed year after year. But then he would relent by saying that I had a good attitude and always kept the kitchen laughing. They kept me around because I was funny and friendly. I thank my parents for the ability to make people laugh and keep them happy. I am very lucky. 

I did get faster though. I worked harder and harder to increase my speed. I was given some responsibilities with the doughs in the pastry shop. I think this is where I really hit my stride. I love making dough. I get the feel and the texture of doughs of all kinds. I was making the focaccia, pate sucre (tart dough) and above all, the scone dough. We went through so many scones each day. Many went out for tea service which I was also responsible for. I made sure the scones were excellent and were made quickly. Once I got to make all the doughs, I was in my element. I got faster and faster. I could make several hundred scones in less than an hour. The other cooks in the kitchen started to take notice. I felt more confident in every part of the kitchen. John was still a better pastry chef than me. He had moved to nights and would be putting out the spectacular plated desserts for the dining room. I was happy making the doughs for the day however. 

Eventually I got pretty burnt out at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago. You can’t work there forever. I found a job where I could run my own shop but on a very small scale. It was a little Italian restaurant on the North side. On my last day at the Ritz, the cooks and the pastry chefs had a little send off for me. They presented me with a gift. It was a book called Bread Alone by Daniel Leader. They had all signed it and someone, I can’t remember who, signed it, “to the fast guy”. That made my day. I had finally gotten to the point where I could consider my speed at least passable in the kitchen. I just needed to find my place. 

I feel pretty good about my time at the Ritz. It was hard but anything worth doing is going to be a little hard. It prepared me for the rest of my career. I learned things in that kitchen that would propel me further into learning about how food works. It was like school with a little bit of money. The monetary wage was not great but the experience was invaluable. I’ll have more stories in the coming weeks about some of the interesting weird things that happened at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago.