THE CHEFS ROUNDTABLE: A meeting of minds

The modern day executive chef has a lot on their plate before they even consider putting food on someone else’s. Hotelier Middle East discovers the challenges facing hotel chefs and learns how these industry stalwarts overcome them.

The world of chefs and restaurants is considered by many to be a glamorous place, full of TV stars, gourmet food, a jet set lifestyle and lucrative book and advertising deals.

And while one or two chefs are fortunate to fulfil some of the above, the real hotel chef is in his property dealing with a multitude of issues.

Never before have executive chefs been so in demand at their hotels and it has led to the role taking on far more responsibility.

As our expert panel debated at the Toshi restaurant, with its stunning views at the Grand Millennium Dubai, it became clear that the modern chef is more than anything a leader and also the person most able to put the region at the centre of the culinary map. So what is needed to achieve this and how can executive chefs push this progression forward?

Do you think the role of the executive chef has changed since you began?

Salvatore Silvestrino: The property and your role within that property defines the executive chef.

Some chefs have huge properties in front of them, so obviously they are more in the back of house and they guide and direct from there. For me, a small operation, you are always in the front of house and that’s why it’s hard to define the executive chef and chef de cuisine role.

John Cordeaux: Our mission is still exactly the same, to produce great quality food, consistently, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and to have an inspired and motivated team — that’s what it is all about.

The product that you have is something that you can be proud of, is creative, avant-garde, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a big or small hotel, or where you work — that is the same mission for everybody.

You are only as good as the last meal you serve, so whatever you do today, make damn sure it’s as good if not better tomorrow.

Andrew Whiffen: Regardless of whether you are in a large or small hotel, the food on the plate is what counts to the customers and they don’t really care if there are five restaurants, two restaurants or 30 restaurants.

Has the role changed much? No I don’t think so and I don’t think it will. It’s the nature of what the position is and why we do it.

It’s a very creative role and if you are not a creative person it isn’t the right job in any way for you. You do have to give up some of your stove time to take care of the other parts of the job and with rather large properties it is even worse, but it’s a case of balancing your time. It changes from company to company and continent to continent based on the location.

What are staff skill levels like?

Mark Patten: I think it’s a little bit more of a challenge these days. You have to look at the countries where the majority of the staff are being pulled from and what level of skill, and what the philosophy of the company has in hiring staff; whether it’s hiring for attitude and training for skill.

The growth spurt in the Middle East has led to a bit of a challenge in regards to ongoing training and development of staff because the key today is about staff retention, developing your team and building a strong team.
If you look at any successful team in the world, they weren’t built on a couple of years, they were built on many years.

It’s the same people doing the same thing over and over, but then developing their creativity and that takes time, and you can only do that if you keep and retain the same people.

The challenge there is you have optimistic individuals that want to move quickly for the wrong reasons, you have that in many places, but here you find it because of the multiculturalism. You take single culture environments like India, Hong Kong and Barbados and they stick like glue — there’s a cultural aspect to it.

When you look at multicultural environments like Singapore, Dubai, Australia and many other countries, you will find the tendency that people move quite frequently and that’s where for us leading teams it becomes challenging.

You have to pull a different book off the shelf. There are two ways of managing — one where you are in a single culture and one in a multicultural environment, and if you are experienced enough to be both you understand what you need to do, but today in the UAE the biggest challenge is staff retention.

So what are these differences?

MP: It’s a different approach, you have to be culturally aware of where your team is from, you need to adapt the way you manage. I’m talking culture, but I’m also talking about age demographics, generation Y and X.

We are all baby boomers here, a bit older, but 65% of my team are all born after 1981 and they work on a completely different beat of the drum. You have to learn what motivates them, why do they want to put a uniform on and be creative and do the same thing day in and day out.

Steven Benson-Flower: But retention has got better. I arrived in 2007 and staff were flying out the door left right and centre and it took me a long time to stabilise and get it back up to where I wanted it. But once you have it maintained, boom another five have gone or 10 drop because another three hotels have opened up around you.

Let’s say you lose a couple of commis or demi chefs, first I look at stewarding, are there any stewards with catering diplomas that have just come in to get the foot in the door?

And that’s what I didn’t do when I first arrived because I was too busy looking for chefs and a lot of mistakes would be made where I would bring in a chef de partie, and you rely so much on the chef de partie, and the guy just wouldn’t be able to cope.
I found that looking at stewarding first and only bringing in from outside if nothing is there and building up the team like that is the right way to do it.
That helps retain staff because they see that I’m not bringing in senior chefs from outside unless I have to.

There are some chefs that just need a little more motivation and guidance and to be told they have potential. I can then leave a position vacant and say ‘if you do this, this and this in the next three six months, if you are strong enough we will slot you in there’.

JC: As Steven said, it’s all about loyalty and the culture you create in your establishment. And now as executive chefs we are far more than just creative, passionate people.

But the key is how you create a culture, a sense of loyalty where they want to work with the staff and the company, because, let’s be quite honest here, everyone’s here for the same reason, to make money to send home, we all have responsibilities elsewhere.

They say ‘they don’t leave the company, they leave who they are working for’. I think our roles are far more critical than in years gone by because of that responsibility we have to our people.

MP: Not only that, if you want to be good at anything you are going to have to build a team that is loyal and from that loyal team you are going to get results. But you have to practise a lot and get better at it every day.

But from a regional point of view I think that is something that has to be highlighted, sometimes it’s too easily accepted. You will have someone turn up say on Steven’s door ‘I work for chef Mark over in the Atlantis’.

We need to have an understanding amongst ourselves that we are not going to grab that guy because he is good, maybe pick up the phone and say ‘hey Steven this guy has turned up on my doorstep’, and once people realise we do that then the good guys will move for the right reasons.

SBF: On the loyalty side, very few chefs are doing two years in a position. From day one it was always a minimum of two years. When I see CVs sometimes I call them ‘you have a good CV, why do you have a year here and half a year there?’.

Just sit put and work a minimum of two years and if you go to three years that just really puts a tick, because it shows you have company loyalty, you are not ducking and diving and I think as executive chefs go, 100% every CV I get that’s a year or year and half I don’t touch it. It really frustrates me when they move on after a year — it shouldn’t be like that.

MP: That comes to the generation X and Y. When we were doing our training we would never think twice that we wouldn’t stick by what we said we would do.
It was a minimum of two years, maybe more, and that’s where we have to manage differently. The generation now is as fickle as a 15-year-old girl on her prom night, no disrespect, but they will move for a better looking uniform or AED 10 (US $2.7) more in their pay packet.

So to get them to show that loyalty you have to show them something more than getting them to work every day. It’s all relative, the only benefit you do have with multi-outlets is you have the opportunity to move people around so there should be less reason for someone to leave.

I promote on average 80 to 100 a year out of a team of 440 so that’s pretty good going and September will be our third year open. I have dropped my turnover by 50% from last year, that took a lot of work.

What sort of things did you have to implement to achieve this?

MP: Because 70% of our team were born after 1981, they want to be heard, so I asked what was annoying them. Anyone could give feedback and they came back with their five top peeves, and from that data I was able to find out the main reasons why people were leaving and number one was the uniform.

Remember the age you are dealing with. You are not really classed as a chef, sure your title is chef, but you are a leader of the team, a leader within the organisation and you have to build that reputation with your team so it’s changing.

I think our job changes all the time, so to answer your first question I don’t think it’s the same as when I was first an executive chef about 15 years ago — it’s changed dramatically.

AW: That’s one of the reasons we all do it, because it’s not a nine-to-five office job or a desk job, every day something new comes up.

MP: It’s a lifestyle not a job, not even a career, it’s your life. Twenty eight years I’ve been doing this by January next year, what a great journey so far, you meet some great characters out there, you get to work with some amazing guys, this industry is as big as a pin head.

There’s no six degrees of separation, it’s about half a degree of separation, because we have all worked with someone somewhere, or know someone and when you are at our age you probably know someone at a senior level doing something.

JC: It’s unfortunate that the youngsters don’t realise that and I think one of the biggest challenges is nobody calls for a reference. One thing I do, any employee I hire, I ensure we do a minimum of two references and then phone the chef and speak to him. And then you can have that conversation. I have had people say ‘he’s good but I don’t think he is ready’ and we leave well alone.

Is there anything positive about this new generation of workers?

ALL: Absolutely.

MP: When they create a good mouse trap there’s a smarter mouse and that’s where the adaptability comes in. Every time you learn something you put it in your tool box and remember it , because you never know you might need to pull it out one day.

I hav e 45 chef de cuisines, so when I get a management team together and we start talking about the challenges and the problems, that’s where I need to pull out these experiences that they’ve had and put it into a context that the team can understand — that’s where cultural sensitivity comes in.

SS: And you do an engagement survey and you find that different cultures have different needs or believe different things. The people that complain about the uniform is one culture and food from the canteen is the biggest problem with another.

MP: It’s an area of our industry that as leaders we don’t spend enough time on. We talk the talk about people, but what do we do about it? Product okay, that’s what we do, it’s food.

When it comes to numbers we can tell them all, process yes, logistics, but when it comes down to emotional leadership, it comes to the staffing and culturally understanding what we are doing, this is an area where I think we can make a difference in building Dubai into a number one destination.

If I asked where do you think the top food capital in the world is today what would you say?

ALL: (Singapore, London, Sydney, Hong Kong and New York)

MP: I would say Hong Kong, Singapore and London and you have to look back as it stems from consistent delivery of the product, innovation, but bang on when it comes to understanding concepts start to finish.

That’s where we have a great opportunity in Dubai, where we can have a foot in the door for trying to do something for the emirate while we are here to drive that forward.

Are there any conflicts in the relationships between exec chefs and GMs?

SBF: If you have respect for the company, respect for the team and you look after what you are supposed to, I don’t really see why you would have any issues with the management.

If you are a pleasant enough character and not an idiot, you are a manager and it’s the same with the general manager. I’ve never had any issues; we try and do the best we can with what we have.

SS: I suppose you expect the same relationship you have with your staff with your management — an open door policy so when there are issues they can be sorted out and things that need to be fixed get fixed.

SBF: Nobody likes to be micromanaged, especially chefs. We are different breeds and a lot of GMs and a lot of the new ones try to micromanage and it doesn’t work for us.

AW: Every GM I have ever had I’ve had heated discussions with. In a lot of ways it’s healthy.

JC: I think things have changed a great deal. People look to us far more for our input, we have far more of an impact in the hotel, honestly it’s fantastic.

MP: They want your 10 cents for everything, because when you are grown up about it all, it’s amazing how you become an asset.

SBF: Experience with knowledge is key. If you are a young 27- or 28-year-old exec chef you may not have that.

SS: But that’s why they get those 27- to 30-year-olds in, because they need someone to be a face for the that position, but they micromanage from behind. But when you have maturity and spend time in a property, they can see you can do the job so it becomes harder for some GMs to control.

MP: It’s also what you want to do; it’s in our blood if we’ve been doing it this amount of time. Would you ever be in F&B or change to GM?

JC: I did it and came back. I was an F&B director before I came to Abu Dhabi for three years. It was a great experience, but I missed the creativity and the passionate connection with people.

MP: Did you also find you were being micromanaged?

JC: Absolutely.

MP: That’s because you are [under the thumb] when you are an F&B manager. You are always a chef first, and when you are chef if you are doing a good job you’re left well alone. Nobody wants to have a clue of the kitchen. When it comes to suits, they don’t care, they want it to work and if it works you are a superstar, but in our industry you are a hero one day and zero the next.

JC: You are right, there is no other position in a hotel with that freedom. We can decide and we don’t have to go to a committee. It’s automatic, we change a product we move on, we try a concept and it’s exciting and you have ultimate control over your day and your destiny.

SBF: There are not many managers that can tell you what to do because we are specialists.

MP: Why do you want to become an F&B? You want to because you want to be a general manager; it’s a stepping stone to something else. But remember you have to be F&B, resident, or hotel manager, director of ops and then if you are lucky you might get to be GM.

You have to go through all those stages and then when you have an owner looking at your CV and you have been a chef for thirty years, how is their mind going to work?

JC: It was a great experience for me but my passion was the kitchen, I have a huge respect for all food and beverage directors.

I think I work far better with any F&B director because I have been there and I know exactly what they are going through. As an F&B director if you are not there [at an event], it doesn’t matter.

They are a critical role, but at the end of the day the chef is there, the banquet director is there, there’s a party going on for a 1000, the professionals are there doing the job, we’ve (the F&B director) set it all up, but do I need to be there?

We now impact hotels hugely, in every direction, marketing, PR finance, concepts, creativity, human resources. The chef today has a huge impact and it’s very exciting and that is how the job changed.

What sort of markups do you work on?

JC: I think we all offer great value for money in the product we serve.

MP: If you talk about profitability, let’s talk about increases. Nobody around the table has increased their prices in the last 12 months. With inflation, the product is costing us more, but our prices aren’t increasing.
You need to be a very frugal operator today. If you go and buy a car what’s the first thing you do? You check your bank account, you aren’t going to buy a Maserati if you can only afford a Yaris.

Then you watch what’s coming in because we have fresh produce coming in every day. If I ask how much product you hold, meaning if food stopped today how many days until your kitchen ran out food, what would you say?

ALL: (Between one and three days).

MP: One point five for me. We are not holding product, because product is money, and it’s fresh.

If we control ourselves, well we are fine because we don’t hold a lot of product. Rule of thumb is you should be holding 5% of your total revenue.
When it comes to bottom line profitability we might all have different ones, but when it comes to running and managing the product philosophy is very similar.

Now it’s about added value, what we are offering to our customers at a brunch for the price they pay; what additional stations, what experiences can we offer?

JC: It’s all about the experience, you need to create a loyal clientele and create an experience for them to come back and there needs to be value. We are all professionals and we all do the same jobs really, it’s just that our owners and companies expect different things. It’s not rocket science, but it is challenging in the environment that’s for sure.

SBF: You need to offload your knowledge and teach the chefs de cuisines what Mark was saying. Let them understand that this beef that comes from America is not cheap, it costs money and they have to make money out of that tenderloin.

AW: We are like parents.

MP: I always take a leaf out of the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. There is a part that talks about Lou Holtz, a famous American football coach, who talks about three types of individuals within a team. The first group are the ones that you give them what they need to do and they get it straight away.

The second group of people sort of get it, takes a bit of time to get hold of it, but then they get it and move forward. The last group doesn’t get it, isn’t interested and has no idea whatsoever.

He said he used to spend 80% of his time working on the third category because he thought they needed the most help — that’s wrong, it’s wrong in management, it’s wrong in leadership.

He spends most of his time with the top two and mainly with the top group, because when you work with a team that gets it they go on and things get better. Then you build a team with longevity, we do the same thing in our business and we have to do it and it doesn’t stop.

Getting to know you: Hotelier's Expert Panel
Mark Patten
Vice president culinary Atlantis
Chef Patten has worked as a chef for nearly 28 years. He has been awarded numerous accolades around the world for his achievements. Having worked across the globe his knowledge and skill saw him take the reigns at Atlantis three years ago.

Steven Benson-Flower
Executive chef Hilton Dubai Jumeirah
Chef Benson-Flower has worked at Hilton Dubai Jumeirah for nearly four and a half years. Previous properties included The Dorchester in London and Edinburgh Grand Sheraton Hotel and Spa.

Andrew Whiffen
Executive chef Raffles Hotels and Resorts Dubai
Before moving to Raffles, Chef Whiffen worked with Oberoi Hotels and Resorts for more than five years. He also worked with Chef Patten in Barbados on the reopening of the Sandy Lane Hotel.

Salvatore Silvestrino
Executive chef Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts, Deira
Chef Silvestrino helped with Movenpick’s recent expansion in the UAE and is now the executive chef at the recently opened Movenpick Deira. Silvestrino has had a career that has taken him across the globe but was most recently based in Singapore working for Fairmont.

John Cordeaux
Executive chef Fairmont Bab al Bahr
Chef Cordeaux knows one or two things about loyalty. He has worked with Fairmont Hotels for an impressive 23 years. He is also our reigning Hotelier Middle East Chef of the Year.

Key lessons
Dealing with
Generation X and Y
Executive chefs are urged to develop strategies of management specific to the age of their team. These generations respond to different incentives than those of the baby boomer generation and you need to have various tactics to manage them effectively.

Supply issues
Because the region’s reliance on importing goods is so high, it is essential executive chefs are ready to react quickly to any outside or internal influences that may affect the delivery of the products they need.

Relationships with management
Executive chefs don’t like to be micro-managed so it is vital you learn how to “manage upwards”. Ensure you know what your bosses want and then deliver to ensure you get the freedom you need.

Cultural differences
Different cultures, like generations, need different incentives and learn in different ways. Make sure you have a number of different management techniques to deal with the region’s incredibly multicultural workforce.

Making the region a top food destination
For the region to become a food destination it is vital executive chefs work together to raise the bar and impression of the region. Communication and common goals will help make this a reality.