Generation Chef: Risking It All For a New American Dream

Things should be looking good for Jonah Miller. He’s an NYU grad, former sous chef, worked in restaurants since he was a teen, starts his own Spanish restaurant, has to open with a bang. The problem is that he’s starting an expensive restaurant with high prices, where the chance of failing is high. He can tell right away that the customers must have money; they have wide-gauge holes in their ears, which aren’t allowed at most day-jobs. In the first chapter you already get the feeling that he’s in way over his head, even though he clearly has the work ethic and the ambition. Now you see that things are not looking good; on the contrary, they look unsteady, and soon they look bleak.

   A little about the chef; obsessed with cooking from a young age, he got into it before cooking became hip, apprenticed in restaurant kitchens, lots of internships, and he was clearly an excellent chef by the time he opened Huertas. The problem, at least from the way the author puts it, is that he’s big on the cooking and short on the business sense. The first, and funniest chapter, is called “Stampede,” where the opening night makes them all crazy. He rebukes the head waiter in earshot of the customers, which pisses off the staff. Then customers start sending back medium rare chops because they’re too pink. Then they start asking for substitutions, which is always trouble, and the problem graduates to customers trying to make their own menus. You want to say “for crying out loud, enjoy what the chef creates, don’t dictate how you think the artist should paint the picture!” But this is a problem that a lot of restaurants have, where the customer demands customization. What chef Miller needs to do is follow Marco White’s example and toss these whiners out.

    The good thing about this book is that it shows you how the restaurant is as much about business as it is about food. Whole chapters are devoted to finding a place for the restaurant, then getting the alcohol license, building it, and dealing with the politics of the community boards. The first problem he has is that he doesn’t want to buy an existing restaurant, because he’s afraid the reputation will carry over. This is called a “vanilla space,” where you’re building it up from scratch. Then the landlord won’t rent until he sees the alcohol license, because it’s the only way he can guarantee that the lease can be sold. That means dealing with the downtown community boards, always hostile to alcohol-serving establishments. Then he has to find a contractor who can renovate in time and give him a good price. Then he has to deal with permits and ordinances. Everyone involved resents dealing with this 26 year old.

    I get the vibe that Miller started the restaurant out of resentment. He was clearly overqualified to be a sous chef, and I know from experience how frustrating it is when you don’t get promoted. I could really relate to how this guy would feel, I would be thinking “come on, I’ve proven myself, give me the chance to move up will ya!” But then it doesn’t happen, and he feels like there’s no choice except to strike out on his own. Maybe his real problem is that he confuses thinking with feeling? Following your heart and not your brain can ruin you.

    Generation Chef is one of many chef biographies that have come out in the last 15 years on the coattails of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Unlike that, and Marcus Samuelson’s book, it doesn’t have all the humor. Other chefs would rather be hired by someone else’s restaurant, rather than have to do everything themselves. The only thing Bourdain and Samuelson ever had to do was cook, at the worst they’d have to manage the kitchen. But Miller, he has to raise the money, find the place, get the license, find the contractor, get it built. He may be a great cook, but he’s no builder, and definitely not a businessman. It almost reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School, where he questions the professor about building a factory. “Why build?” he asks, “when you can lease it for a buck and a half a square foot?” He’s right on that one, the building costs can deplete the entire investment.

    The story is a little confusing and hard to follow. The introduction, with the opening night debacle, should’ve been restricted to one page. There’s also too much back-and-forth in the story, so you get distracted by trying to keep things chronological. It might have done better as a multi-article series in the New York Times.