About

The Chef is on The Table is about how restaurant food is actually made: the method, the rooms it is made in, the people who organise those rooms, and the money that decides whether any of it continues.

What is here

Five desks. Method & Fire carries the cooking — braises, doughs, ferments and butchery, written as quantities and timings rather than description. Kitchens covers named rooms with a current record. The Brigade is about the people who changed how kitchens are organised. Food Cost works through the economics. Ingredients takes one ingredient at a time and follows it back to where it came from.

How the pieces are written

Every method carries its numbers: the salt rate as a percentage of the weight, the oven temperature, the hold time, the point at which the thing is done. Nothing is written as a mood. Where a technique needs a piece of equipment or a temperature you cannot reach at home, the piece says so.

Corrections

If a quantity, a temperature or a fact about a named kitchen is wrong, we would rather know. Write to us.