Chapter 1
The Food-Service Industry
Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Food-Service Industry
Career
It is an exciting time to be starting a career in food
service!
• Interest in food and cuisine is soaring.
• The industry has many openings for talented creative
people.
• New restaurants opening, new interest in dining, and a
vast availability of foods are making for a challenging
and rewarding future.
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The Food-Service Industry
Career
• The Chef of today is respected as an artist and
craftsperson
• Thousands of skilled food-service people are needed
every year
• The truth behind all the celebrity chefs and the
glamorous side of the industry is that it takes many
years of hard work and being able to handle pressure to
be successful
• High levels of job satisfaction, financial gain, and
immediate feedback on your work are part of the
fascination with the industry.
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The 18th Century
Boulanger’s Restaurant
• The first known modern restaurant was opened in 1765
by a Parisian tavern keeper, Monsieur Boulanger.
• Boulanger sold soups, which he called restaurants or
restoratives; derived from the French word restaurer
(to restore or fortify).
• The Guilds charged that Boulanger had violated their
rules.
• Boulanger challenged the rules of the Guilds and won,
unwittingly changing the course of modern food service.
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The 18th Century
The French Revolution
• Before the French Revolution(1789): Great chefs
worked for nobility, and food service was controlled by
guilds.
• The revolutionary government abolished the guilds,
which left many chefs without work.
• Many of these chefs opened restaurants, which allowed
the public access to skills and creativity of sophisticated
chefs.
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The 19th Century
Chef Marie-Antoine Carême
(1784 – 1833)
• A great chef of the time whose career spanned 30
years and was the chefs to kings, heads of state and
wealthy persons.
• He developed grand cuisine, characterized by meals
with dozens of courses of elaborately and intricately
prepared, presented, garnished, and sauced foods.
• His books contain the first real systematic account of
cooking principles, recipes, and menu making.
• He was one of the primary reasons cooking of the
Middle Ages was brought into the modern era.
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The 20th Century
Chef Georges-Auguste Escoffier
(1847 – 1935)
• Escoffier brought French Cuisine into the twentieth century
and is considered to be the father of twentieth-century
cooking.
• Escoffier rejected the “general confusion” of the old menus in
which quantity seemed to be the main emphasis.
• He called for order and diversity and a careful selection of
one or two items per course.
• The basic cooking methods and preparations we study today
are based on Escoffier’s work. His book Le Guide Culinaire,
which is still widely used, arranges recipes in a simple
system based on main ingredient and cooking method.
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The 20th Century
Chef Georges-Auguste Escoffier (1847 – 1935)
• Called for order and diversity in dish preparation.
• Emphasized the importance of selecting one or two dishes per
course that would follow each other harmoniously and delight the
taste with their delicacy and simplicity.
• Escoffier’s recipes and books are still quality references for chefs
of today.
• Escoffier’s second major accomplishment was reorganizing the
kitchen, creating a streamlined workplace. He called this system
the brigade system and it is still used today around the world.
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The Classical Brigade
• The Chef is the person in charge of the kitchen. In large
establishments he/she might be called the Executive
Chef.
• If a food service operation is large and has several
individual departments or several units in different
locations, each kitchen may have a chef de cuisine,
whoreports to the Executive Chef.
.
• The sous chef is normally second in command and
controls production and staff supervision.
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The Classical Brigade
The station chefs are in charge of specific areas of production:
• The Saucier
: responsible for sauces, stews, stocks, hot hors
d’oeuvres, and sautéed items
• The Poissonier
• The Rôtisseur
broiled meats
: prepares fish dishes
: roasted and braised meats and their gravies and
• The Grillardin
: in larger kitchens–broiled items, and maybe deepfried meats and fish
• The Garde Manger
: cold foods, including salads, dressings, pâté,
cold hors d’oeuvres, and buffet items
• The Pâtissier
• The Tournant
: pastries and desserts
: relief cook or swing cook
• The Expediter or Aboyeur
them on to cooks
: takes orders from waiters and passes
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Modern Technology
Development of New Equipment
• Today, we often take for granted electric ranges and ovens and
electric refrigerators, which did not exist until fairly recently.
• The easily controlled heat of modern cooking equipment and the
use of motorized cutters and mixers have greatly simplified work.
• With sophisticated cooling, freezing, and heating equipment, it is
possible to prepare some foods further in advance and in larger
quantities.
• Some large multiunit chains prepare foods in central commissaries
for distribution to their individual stores. They cook, cool, or freeze
the foods at the peak of their quality and flavor.
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Modern Technology
Development and Availability of New Food Products
• Modern refrigeration and rapid transportation caused
revolutionary changes in eating habits.
• Exotic delicacies can now be shipped from anywhere in
the world and arrive fresh and in peak condition.
• Freezing, canning, freeze-drying, vacuum-packing, and
irradiation—increased the availability of most foods and
made affordable some that were once rare and
expensive.
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Modern Technology
Development and Availability of New Food Products
• Techniques of food production are changing rapidly. It is
now possible to do some preparation and processing
away from the food service operation rather than in it.
• Convenience foods will continue to be a increasing
share of the market.
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Modern Technology
Food Safety & Nutritional Awareness
• The development of the sciences of microbiology and nutrition
have had a considerable impact on food service. A hundred years
ago, little was known about sanitation and nutrition.
• Nutrition and sanitation are a very important aspect of a cook’s
training.
• Today customers are very knowledgeable about nutrition and are
more likely to demand healthful and well-balanced menus.
• Food allergies and intolerances:
• Not only are chefs called upon to provide nutritious, low-fat, lowcalorie meals, they must also adapt to the needs of customers
who must eliminate certain foods from their diets, such as gluten,
soy, dairy, or eggs.
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Cooking in the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Centuries
Two opposing forces can be seen at work
throughout the history of cooking:
• One is the urge to simplify, to eliminate complexity and
ornamentation, and instead to emphasize the plain,
natural tastes of basic, fresh ingredients.
• The other is the urge to invent, to highlight the creativity
of the chef, with an accent on fancier, more complicated
presentations and procedures.
• Both these forces are valid and healthy; they continually
refresh and renew the art of cooking.
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Cooking in the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Centuries
The most influential chef in the middle of the 20th
was Fernand Point
(1897–1955).
• Many of his apprentices, including Paul Bocuse, Jean
and Pierre Troisgros, and Alain Chapel, later became
some of the greatest stars of modern cooking.
• They, along with other chefs in their generation,
became best known in the 1960s and early 1970s for a
style of cooking called nouvelle
cuisine.
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Cooking in the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Centuries
Nouvelle Cuisine
Rejecting many traditional principles, nouvelle cuisine
urged more simpler, natural flavors and preparations to
be utilized in cooking.
• Emphasis was placed on artful plating presentations done in the
kitchen by the chef rather than by waiters in the dining room.
• The best achievements of nouvelle cuisine have taken a
permanent place in the classical tradition; many of its excesses
have been forgotten.
• Most of the best new ideas and the longest-lasting
accomplishments are those of classically trained chefs with a solid
grounding in the basics.
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Cooking in the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Centuries
New Emphasis on Ingredients
• Slow Food: A prominent movement dedicated to improving food
quality.
• Alice Waters: philosophy is that good food depends on good
ingredients.
• Larry Forgione: made a name for himself and his New York City
restaurant in part by emphasizing good-quality local ingredients.
• The public has benefited greatly from these efforts.
• Supermarkets as well as restaurants offer a much greater variety of
high-quality foods than there was available 40 or 50 years ago.
• Many chefs have modified their cooking styles to highlight the
natural flavors and textures of their ingredients, and their menus
are often simpler now for this reason.
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Cooking in the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Centuries
International Influences
• Travel became easier.
• New waves of immigrants arrived in Europe and North America
from around the world.
• Awareness of and taste for regional dishes grew.
• Chefs became more knowledgeable not only about the traditional
cuisines of other parts of Europe but about those of Asia, Latin
America, and elsewhere.
• The use of ingredients and techniques from more than one
regional, or international, cuisine in a single dish is known as
fusion cuisine.
• Today, chefs make good use of all the ingredients and techniques
available to them.
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Cooking in the Twentieth and
Twenty-first Centuries
New Technologies
• The practice of cooking sous vide
(French for “under
vacuum”).
• Sous vide began simply as a method for packaging and
storing foods in vacuum sealed plastic bags.
• Modern chefs are exploring ways to use this technology
to control cooking temperatures and times with extreme
precision.
• As a result, familiar foods have emerged with new
textures and flavors.
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Organization of the Modern Kitchen
The Basis of Kitchen Organization
The way a kitchen is organized depends on several
factors:
• The menu
• Type of establishment
• Hotel
• Institutional kitchens
• Catering and banquet services
• Quick service, carry-out, and full-service restaurants.
• The size of the operation
• The physical facilities, including equipment
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Organization of the Modern Kitchen
• A large establishment needs a staff like the classical brigade.
• Most modern operations are smaller.
• The size of the classical brigade may be reduced simply by
combining two or more positions where the workload allows it.
• A typical medium-size operation may employ a chef, a second
cook, a broiler cook, a pantry cook, and a few cooks’ helpers.
• A working chef is in charge of operations not large enough to have
an Executive Chef.
• Cooks who prepare or finish hot à la carte items during service in a
restaurant may be known as line cooks.
• The short-order cook’s responsibility is the preparation of foods
that are quickly prepared to order.
• A breakfast cook is skilled at quickly and efficiently turning out egg
dishes and other breakfast items to order.
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Organization of the Modern Kitchen
Skill Levels
Skills can be grouped into three categories:
• Supervisory
• Skilled and technical
• Entry level
• Starting at the entry level has been the traditional method of
advancing ones food service career.
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Organization of the Modern Kitchen
Skill Levels
Today, many cooks are graduates of culinary schools and
programs.
• Even with such an education, many new graduates
begin at entry-level positions.
• This is as it should be and certainly should not be seen
as discouragement.
• Schools teach general cooking knowledge.
• Every food-service establishment requires specific skills
according to its own menu and its own procedures.
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Organization of the Modern Kitchen
Standards of Professionalism
These are the qualities that a professional must have:
1. A positive attitude on the job
2. Staying power: requires physical and mental stamina
3. Ability to work with people
4. Eagerness to learn
5. A full range of skills
6. Experience
7. Dedication to quality
8. Understanding of the basics
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