Gareth Mullins

Aoife, what have we got this week?

Have we had this before?

We probably have this every single day in our professional lives.

I mean, I'll jump in here.

The thing is when you first come into the world of professional kitchens, it's really intimidating space because you're surrounded by...

A lot of moving parts, as in there's lots of different menus, there's lots of all this new equipment, there's lots of terminology that we use naturally.

A lot of it is from French.

And people are not saying it to make you feel...

or stupid or anything.

They're saying it because that's what everybody else understands.

And when I interview any young chef, I tell them it's going to take them three to six months just to learn the environment.

I say, you're going to have to learn all the food and all those bits and pieces.

And during that six months process, there's going to be a lot of

you're going to be told a lot that you're doing something wrong.

We call it corrective coaching.

So somebody, you're chopping something a certain way, or you're seasoning something a certain way, or you're cleaning something a certain way, and whoever's above you, so if you're a commie, it might be a demi-chef or a chef de party, which is kind of your boss on the section that you're working on, or indeed it could be your sous-chef or your head chef that's coming along telling you that you've done something wrong.

But they're not telling you you've done something wrong to give out to you.

They're telling you you've done something wrong because you need to move on to the next thing and learn how to do it correctly.

And because the world that we work in, you're always on the clock.

So when somebody orders something in your restaurant as a starter, they expect it to be on the table within 15, 20 minutes.