Some tips for garde manger cooks out there tasked with making family meal salad every day. Learn to think outside of recipes for vinaigrettes and creamy salad dressings. 

Mastering Salad Dressings

Making an aïoli is something every cook should be able to do without a recipe. I’d even go so far as to argue that aïoli is a mother sauce of the modern restaurant kitchen. 

There’s no recipe required for Mayonnaise

Culinary school can teach you so much about cooking, but it's a mighty questionable value proposition. Is it worth it? 

Should I go to Culinary School?

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina’s Your Table Is Ready, Tales of a New York City Maître D’ is here.

The Next Big Industry Read Has Arrived

The very essence of cooking lies in learning to make use of the mealy bits - the bones, the vegetable trim, the parsley stems. The good news is that making stock is way less complicated than the culinary Gods want you to believe.

Stock is a necessary touchpoint on the road to culinary enlightenment

The story behind the genesis of usefirst.com. How a New York City line cook used his down time during Covid to try and change the industry for the better.

Why I Built Use First

Tips on how to show up for that big first restaurant job interview. First appearances are everything. Make sure you’re not ice-capading around the kitchen in a hairnet in front of your future comrades and other lifesaving tips.

What tools should you take on a restaurant trail?

Ever wonder how professional line cooks make use of cake testers to hit the pass with perfectly cooked proteins every time? Here's everything you need to know to become a ringer on grill.

How To Use A Cake Tester

For The Table is a common directive given to waiters and food runners in a restaurant. It means that the menu item or items are to be shared by the whole table as opposed to a single position number. Thanks to the popularity of share plates and tapas, many appetizers and entrées are now intended to be shared. When the server rings in the ticket for the kitchen, the dupe will read “share” or “for the table” under the individual menu items.

When the food is ready at the pass, the expeditor will tell the food runner which items are are assigned to individual position numbers, and which ones are “for the table”.

"Share" can mean that an item is to be shared between two dinners at a table of four. So, "for the table" can be more reliably employed to indicate that an item is to be shared among all of the diners.

Expediting sous chef: “Hands to the pass, I’ve got food to run”

Expediting sous chef: “You’re going to table 32, penne position one, salmon position two, artichoke for the table.”

Food runner: “Table 32, Penne one salmon two artichoke share, 32 out.”

For The Table is a common directive given to waiters and food runners in a restaurant. It means that the menu item or items are to be shared by the whole table as opposed to a single position number.