Chef's PSA

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera concludes his three-part series on food cost with the practical systems that keep a kitchen financially healthy over time. The first two parts covered the fundamentals and the formula. This episode is about the ongoing discipline: the habits, routines, and decision-making processes that prevent food cost from […]

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera digs into the actual mechanics of food cost: the formula, how to calculate it, and how to use it as a working management tool rather than just a number you track after the fact. Understanding food cost as a concept is one thing. Being able to calculate

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera kicks off a three-part series on food cost by starting at the foundation: the relationship between money and cooking, and why most chefs who struggle with food cost do so because they never developed a working understanding of what money actually means inside a restaurant operation. The

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera breaks down the three technical skills he considers most essential for any serious cook or chef to master. Not the obvious fundamentals everyone lists. The ones that actually separate cooks who can execute a recipe from chefs who can do anything with any ingredient that comes across

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera looks back at the hardest kitchen job he ever had and what made it that way. The answer is banqueting and catering, a side of the culinary industry that most cooking school graduates are not prepared for and that tests a different set of skills than any

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera reflects on what he would tell his younger self if he could go back to the beginning of his culinary career. Not the polished version of that advice that sounds good in an interview. The real version, the things he learned the hard way, the decisions he

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera breaks down how serious chefs think about ingredients and flavor, the intellectual and sensory framework that separates cooks who execute recipes from chefs who create dishes. Most cooking education focuses on technique. But the foundation of genuine culinary excellence is understanding what ingredients actually are, how they

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera addresses one of the most significant transitions in any culinary career: the leap from sous chef to executive chef. This is not a promotion in the conventional sense. It is a fundamental change in what the job actually requires. As a sous chef, you execute. As an

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera talks about what it actually takes to build a great kitchen team, and makes a direct argument for why surrounding yourself with people from diverse backgrounds produces better results than hiring in your own image. The instinct to hire people who look, cook, and think like you

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera runs through his top ten kitchen pet peeves, the behaviors, habits, and recurring failures in professional kitchens that experienced chefs find inexcusable precisely because they are completely avoidable. These are not complaints for their own sake. Every pet peeve on this list points to something real about