The Decline Of Western Restaurants: What You Don’t Know CAN Kill You

By Nicholas R. Daniels III

Over the past 30 years western restaurants have seen a quick degradation in both quality and service. In this book I try to help the reader -- customer, chef, manager, or owner -- understand why from my personal experience working as a chef. There are some scary stories, observations, and good advice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas R. Daniels III
• Release date: Sep 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310221583

Book preview

In the Beginning

Looking back to when I started working in professional kitchens, things appeared so much different with kitchen workers and chefs. The passion was unsurpassed and quality meant making people satisfied, in both the food and the dining experience. Happy people were return customers and the best advertising is word of mouth, so satisfied customers equated to a profitable business. Well that was then—today you have bad attitudes, terrible management, and some of the worst quality.

Let’s start with the basics of where we were: Back when I started it was common for the Front of House (FOH), which is the wait staff, to be trained in the food on the menu. They were encouraged to ask questions, and would participate in the pre-open food show. This is where the chef creates the menu items and specials, presents them to everyone on shift, and tasting, questions, and comments are all welcome for improvement. This allows the chef time to adjust anything that may be off before it gets to a customer, and informs the wait staff, creating a better dining experience.

Today, however, for anyone to get an informed server is like hitting the lottery. From owner to chef, it seems like no one cares about having a knowledgeable staff. There is little worse than having a customer ask questions about the menu and having the server excuse him- or herself to go find out what’s in the dish, how it was prepared, allergies, vegetarian options, and so forth. This is common practice now and it wastes time and hurts business.

About Me

I’ve been in the food industry for over thirty years. I started out being what is called today a Utility Worker. Basically that’s the bottom-end of the kitchen: doing dishes, cleaning the fryer, taking out the trash, being a gopher for the chefs and cooks. I’ve cooked and ran the kitchen in the following types of restaurants: Italian, French, Chinese, vegetarian, cafes, chains, steak houses, BBQ smoke houses, pizza joints, fish houses, and more.

I’ve been in management for the last ten years, which includes, but not limited to: hiring, firing, training, menu development, recipe development, banquets, parties, ordering,