James is a Sous Chef at Wit and Wisdom Tavern, one of the highest-rated restaurants in Baltimore, MD. James walks us through a typical service, from the preparation hours before to the problem-solving and teaching during the rush. His advice to today’s young cooks is to to read as many books as possible, follow chefs on Instagram, and to cook every day.
Transcript
>> My name is James Mangus [assumed spelling], I'm a sous chef here at With and Wisdom Tavern in Baltimore, Maryland. On a daily basis, I will come into work, I will immediately, because I work at night, I will talk to whatever chef is on duty, or my executive chef to get a feel for what's going on for the day. I will check the orders to make sure everything came in properly, check the schedule to make sure the cooks are coming in when they need to be coming in. And then from there, it's basically like a sprint until the end of service. It's running around, making sure that everybody's food is on point, everybody has everything that they need to be successful to go into a busy dinner service. At the beginning of service, when orders start coming in, basically the first thing is I try to make sure that everybody's in the mindset to go into a service. Not only am I making sure that they're good, mentally, but making sure that everything that they're doing is correct, they have the tools that they need. If anybody needs anything, I will do it. Basically, I feel like my position, right now, is to make sure that they're as successful and set up as possible. But also, trying to make sure that if anybody runs out of something, I'm there to get it for them, or to make sure that I'm mentoring somebody properly. There's a lot of different things that kind of all happen at once, you know? I would say, on average I probably work about 12 hours a day. I'll come in maybe 10 30, 11 in the morning, or 12 or 1, depending on whenever my shift starts, and then I'll leave around 1, 2 in the morning. It's a long, long day. And it's long because you're constantly on your feet. I, maybe I spend 10 minutes a day sitting down, and that's when I'm like doing my emails or something. But you get used to it. You don't really feel it, you know? It's almost euphoric. Like you had such a good experience at work, that you don't, you don't feel the physical pain anymore, you know what I mean? I go home at night, and I've taken a shower, and then I'm like, ow, and I look down, and there's like a huge burn on my hand. You don't, sometimes you're just so busy, and your mind is so preoccupied with service and what's going on, you don't really think about, like, the physicality of what's actually happening.
Download transcript