Village Squire, 1979-02, Page 9found out that he had to start over again as a trainee cook, doing
dishes and working his way up through the kitchens of
Beaver -controlled institutions all over the city of London from
various high schools to the University of Western Ontario as well
as London city hall.
It wasn't the same kind of catering he had learned at the
B.B.C. but he did learn from it. Since he came to Canada, he
says. he's been Canadianized. Most of the things he does now
are a mixture of what he's learned here and what he learned in
Europe. With the economic situation today the old-world way of
doing things just can't go on, he says. He talks about making
chicken soup the old way with hours of preparing a chicken soup
stock compared to using a chicken stock concentrate blended
with fresh chicken to turn out an exceptable product. The facts of
life, he says, are that the people are in the kitchen to make a
profit and high labour costs for small things cut profits. You can
be serving the best food in the world, he says, but if you don't
make the profit. you're out of business.
Not that Mr. Nisbet is so concerned about profit that he cuts
corners too much in his meals. The mill has a policy of serving
only fresh vegetables and the large cooler in the kitchen is filled
with enough supplies to keep the place going until the next
delivery which comes twice a week. There's a large trout tank in
the river where the trout are kept until they are transferred a few
at a time to an indoor tank to await until an order is placed and
the fish is taken directly to the kitchen, killed, cleaned and
cooked. Local growers provide freshly -killed rabbit and
pheasant. Eggs come from a local grower and in summer, two or
three local farmers are contracted to grow fresh vegetables for
the diningroom.
His experience in Canada has given him a wide knowledge of
the Ontario geography. From Beaver Foods he moved on the
downtown Holiday Inn in London as a second chef, then moved
on with the same chef to the Bristol Place hotel in Toronto. Next
he moved to Sault Sainte Marie where he was the chef at the
Watertower Inn. He worked in Port Hope then helped open the
Pinestone Inn in Haliburton, a country club owned by hockey
personalities Wren Blair and Jim Gregory. He also helped open
another new complex near Smith Falls before moving on to
Benmiller just before New Year's.
One of the benefits of being a chef is the opportunity to travel
it provides. Before coming to Canada he plied his trade in Spain
for a while. learning a little of the language and about preparing
Spanish foods.
Being a chef is as much an executive position as an artistic
one. The chef has to look after the planning of the food making
operation. It includes careful consultation with the manager of
the establishment and careful attention to detail in planning.
The style of a hotel is set by the manager. Mr. Nisbet says.
The manager tries to build a team around him that will reflect the
kind of image he wants for his establishment. In the case of
Benmiller. this is the atmosphere of an old English country inn.
The style is reflected in the diningroom which has an English
style to go with an international cuisine.
The co-ordination doesn't stop with simply setting a style,
however. Every week there is a food and beverage meeting held
involving the chef. the maitre de, the manager and the assistant
manager. They discuss business. projected business for the
future. deal with complaints and generally keep everyone in
touch with everyone else. Once every two weeks at the inn all
department heads meet to deal with problems and discuss the
future.
Care in keeping records is important for the chef in knowing
how much food to prepare. There are a limited number of menu
items each night but it is important to have enough of everything
without having too much. The reservation list is the first thing
checked. It will give an idea of how many dinners to expect to
have to prepare. Past experience shows that if there are so many
reservations at noon for dinner in the evening, that can be
expected to translate into a fairly constant percentage more by
dinner time. Records are kept each day so that checks can be
made to see how many of this or that dish was ordered meaning
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February 1979, Village Squire 7