Chefs take on bad reviews

Listen up, young chefs. Today we interview a well-respected culinary pro who cautions newcomers about the dangers of skipping the basics, like balanced flavors, in favor of Instagrammable moments. 

And a growing number of chefs in the U.K. have had it with rude and entitled diners; so much so that one has turned the tables on his own guests by reviewing them. 

Plus, an industry professional is putting up the bat signal for the return of maître d’s, and an exec chef at a tony all-inclusive resort in Montana talks about how to bring luxury to the dining experience.

Pull up a chair.

Whose side are you on? If you’re operating a restaurant inside a hotel, do you cater to travelers or locals? Each group will have different reasons for dining there, so it’s wise to know both audiences when considering menus, specials and marketing tactics. 

Reservation blocking. Google Assistant has hijacked some restaurant reservation systems, such as OpenTable, locking guests out of being able to reserve seats altogether. 

(Fast) food for thought. The CEO of Wendy's is doling out advice on leadership, including those anxious to get ahead in their industry: "If you focus on the current job and do an amazing job, people will notice and your career will be like a vacuum, getting pulled along."

Maître d’, A.S.A.P.! This hospitality consultant has a lot of opinions about front-of-house service, specifically the lost art of the maître d’. “Reviving the role of the Maître d’...[is] about ensuring that restaurants remain places of warmth, connection, and true hospitality.”

Birkenstocks or Crocs? Twenty chefs share the shoes they wear for long shifts in busy kitchens.

‘Luxury is always about abundance’

Deep in the heart of Montana, about 90 minutes from Missoula, lies The Ranch at Rock Creek, a Western fantasy come to life in an all-inclusive getaway, sprawled across 6,600 acres of pristine wilderness (John Dutton, eat your heart out).

Equal parts luxury and adventure (guests are treated to a menu of more than 40 professionally guided activities), the Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star ranch and Relais & Châteaux property also offers world-class farm-to-table dining, not to mention a robust wine list, too. This shows up in everything from thoughtfully curated family-style dinners to cowboy breakfasts—all tailored to guests’ individual preferences, and always prepared with sustainability in mind.

Here, The Prep sat down with recently named executive chef Zachary Ladwig to discuss his vision for the Ranch's dining program, the challenges of working in a remote setting and how to bring luxury to the table. -Lesley McKenzie

How do you source fresh and local ingredients?

We currently have a program set up with the Western Montana Growers Coop and three other ranches to get proteins. We get everything from elk to bison and this insanely beautiful Kurobuta pork from within about 30 or 40 minutes of us.

I'm a big farmers’ market fan, and I will make sure that I can go to two or three farmers’ markets a week in the surrounding areas to buy some stuff and really support the local economy and the local farmers.

As a newcomer to the Ranch, what are your plans for adapting the dining experience throughout the year while maintaining the consistency and quality the Ranch is known for?

My background is vegetable-centric restaurants and hyper-local establishments. I think the best path that we can take is really building a program around a return to cottage-style cooking and ranch-style cooking. This summer, instead of ordering three cases of heirloom tomatoes for the next couple of days, we're gonna order 30, 40, 50, 60. We're going to pickle them, turn them into jam, dehydrate them—and that's just one ingredient. We are trying to cook as locally sustainably and responsibly as possible, and we are honoring the ingredients that we're fortunate enough to have throughout the year by some of the preservation techniques.

How do you recruit train and retain top talent in a remote location?  

Being part of Relais & Châteaux, we have a connection with tons of other incredible properties that are similar to us in a lot of ways. We can partner to get staff from them, and it's really neat to see how that works, because Relais & Châteaux employees become proud of working at Relais inns and restaurants. And we have some really great locals that have been here forever and they've kind of created a legacy on the Ranch.

How do you ensure that the dining experience aligns with the Ranch's overall commitment to luxury at every touchpoint?

Luxury is always about abundance. Luxury is always about sustainability. It is always about quality. We work with incredible products from incredible producers in our neighborhood and in our backyard, and I think that's a part of luxury. We're working with ingredients that have a flavor of the area that's unique—our beets are very different from the beets in Colorado or California or Texas. And last but not least, there is no shortage of food here. We will feed you and feed you and feed you until you split. From our standpoint, we never want you to feel like you have to go without.

Edited for brevity and clarity.

Above: The Ranch at Rock Creek's cowboy breakfast. (Courtesy)

Who are you cooking for: Instagram or in-person patrons?

We live in a society where a perfectly curated photo often takes precedence over an actual experience, especially when it comes to food. And for chefs in particular, that might be great for your social media clout, but not great for business. 

“Making food just for the camera is a dangerous trap for young chefs to fall into,” warns John Rivera, chef and culinary director for Askal in Melbourne, Australia. “Sure, it looks pretty, but does it taste good? Often there’s no cohesion, there’s no consideration for the diner’s palate.”

Rivera suggests that young chefs hone their knife skills, experiment with recipes and go out to eat a lot to train their palate. “Create a solid foundation so you can make pretty, Instagrammable food that helps your business—but also tastes fucking amazing so that the people you draw in via social media keep coming back.”

Why it matters: It’s easy to get sucked in by social media, but the reality is that those types of platforms should be inspirational, not necessarily aspirational. Says Rivera, “The smartest operators know that while platforms like Instagram and Tiktok can fill seats, it’s the quality of the food, the service, and the atmosphere that keeps people coming back.” (Broadsheet)

Dealing with restaurant labor shortage post-COVID

It’s been five years since the pandemic started, and restaurants are still having problems securing and retaining top talent.

Why? For one, there just aren’t as many aspiring cooks entering the industry, which makes the landscape more competitive.

“Using clout as payment for candidates is not sustainable anymore, and I think that the pandemic really exposed this tactic,” Brooke Burton, a senior recruiting partner for Madison Collective, tells Eater. “It’s a crutch that award-winning chefs and restaurateurs now can’t use in hiring because candidates know they can do better.”

Another issue: More experienced staff found other ways to utilize their skills. “The qualified layer of restaurant workers with experience found other work, whether it’s in the industry, adjacent to the industry, or outside of the industry,” says Alice Cheng, the founder of hiring platform Culinary Agents. “The industry lost a lot of experience in five years.”

Why it matters: Restaurants that were fortunate to survive the pandemic are now faced with a new playbook for staying in business, including offering higher wages and competitive benefits to attract workers from both inside and outside the industry. (Eater)

Are these U.K. chefs on to something? 

Demands for free meals, refunds and ridiculous requests have pushed some chefs to their limits. 

“Everyone is a restaurant critic now and online reviews have given them a mass audience to vent if their personal preferences haven’t been met, regardless of whether that’s fair,” says celebrated British chef Andrew Sheridan, who recently kicked out a group of diners for incessant complaining.

“You don’t hear that thing about the customer always being right anymore,” says Ben Murphy, a Michelin-starred chef in London. “There has definitely been a change in the dynamics.”

Chris D’Sylva, the owner of the renowned Notting Hill bistro Dorian, has taken it a step further: he now reviews his customers via an in-house logbook.  

Why it matters: Entitled customers are on the rise. Platforms like Yelp and Instagram make it too easy for users, especially influencers, to wield their power over business owners. Chefs are not giving into bad manners, and, in some cases, are turning the tables on their ungrateful guests. (The Guardian) 

3.7% 

How much menu prices have increased since February 2024. (National Restaurant Association)

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"Anytime that you were out with him and he was known, it would be too much, but it was an act of love and an act of respect from the kitchen."

– Laurie Woolever, former assistant to Anthony Bourdain, on the excessive amount of food that was sent to him whenever they dined out.

(🎧Sporkful)

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