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

SFN is a common line note below an item on a ticket. SFN is short for Something For Nothing, meaning that the waiter who rang in the order intends to give the diner something free of charge. 

Servers can give out SFNs for various reasons  - perhaps the guest had an unusually long wait for a table, maybe they are industry, a former employee, or some other form of VIP. They could also be regular visitors to the restaurant and the managers want to make sure they know they are appreciated. 

Whatever the reason, it is important that SFNs are added to the ticket so that there is a record, but also so that the item doesn't get lost in the shuffle in an otherwise busy service. 

SFN'd items tend to be the ones that don't involve large proteins or something where the food item itself is too expensive a cost for the restaurant to eat. A large format steak will probably not be SFN'd the way a carpaccio or tartare would. It's likely going to be an item that the kitcen is proud of and may have taken some serious time to prepare, but isn't a big hit in terms of food cost. 

SFN - Something For Nothing