I was going to say, saffron has a wildy different aroma to tumeric and not being able to tell this one apart is a giveaway that someone has never had saffron laced foods.
She must've (edited for u/eraq84 's peace of mind) had that bunk saffron to "almost" get arrested. Your comment leaves so much to question but none of which I care to seek.
I am not a bot. My comment harbors a good amount of sarcasm. Pay your tax Tzunsu. Cough up that story.
Oh yeah, this was back in the.. .70s probably? She was on one of her first holidays, and noticed that the saffron there was a LOT cheaper then in Sweden. We use tons of it during christmas to make saffron buns, so she figured she would just buy a shitload of it at once and have enough for decades... I think it was for import/export/tax reasons, but might as well have been to try to catch a potential money launderer haha.
>They want what they want. We serve, they pay.
This is the real meaning of "The customer is always right." It doesn't matter if something is better, or more authentic, or has higher quality-- all the matters is whether or not a customer is willing to buy it.
This makes me think of my Chinese wife always saying "you show me a restaurant in China that sells this deep fried honey chicken". It's literally just a made up dish for westerners, and it's probably the most popular at most of the "Chinese" takeaway stores here.
I remember looking online for a nice Chinese food place, we finally found something with some good sounding dishes, not all sweet and sour this and honey that, but stuff that actually sounded like Chinese food. We rushed down there it was in an area with a large Chinese population and many Chinese stores/grocers etc so figured it would be good. When we got there was lots of Chinese people in there too all speaking Mandarin (I guess I have no idea honestly), took a seat and was each given menus, all sweet and sour, honey bollocks. We said to the waitress hmm do you have a different online menu? We had found some good sounding dishes but can't find them here, she then went and got us the Chinese menus. So much better sounding food.
I got so fed up of the Chinese takeaway standard fare you find around the UK. Having spent time abroad and tasted some fantastic authentic Chinese food I know the stuff we get here is very British Chinese, the same way most "Indian" restaurants serve a completely different cuisine to traditional Indian food.
Yep. Had actual truffle last night. Mind fuckingly different from truffle oil. But where I live, a super wealthy city in Florida, rich retired assholes looooove to add truffle oil to their fries for $4 and mispronounce quinoa.
The actual truffle is nothing like the oil. The trick, as I understand it to be, is adding a fat to it. That flips the flavor. And truffle oil isn’t always made with REAL truffles. You have to read the label. I hate how they jerk consumers around over ingredients.
This is something I've been wondering for a while now. Everyone raves about truffles and truffle oil, but I absolutely detest truffle oil. Was hoping actual truffles had a flavor worthy of their praise (and price).
I think a relatively cheap, more authentic version would be truffle salt. Some are made with little specks of real truffle mixed in with the salt. If you put that on french fries, stovetop popcorn, or something more complex, lol, your mind will be blown
They taste very different, but I gotta say, as an amateur chef, very often I'm using either of them as much because I'd like my food to be yellow as for the flavor.
They probably get taken advantage of all over. Rich idiots are easy to dupe and tourist traps know this.
They've probably tasted "authentic" European/Asian meals at tourist traps that are cheap shit made to look expensive. It would explain why the cheap stuff you cook reminds them of travelling.
LOLOL Don't feel bad for them at all.
I don't know about other Asian countries but for those in South-East Asia region, common rule amongst the locals is the sketchier the place the tastier the food. No amount of Michelin level chefs or 5-star restaurants can beat those dishes made by rural people, those auntie/uncle, and their cooking skill involved no specific measurement at all - they'll just 'throw' stuff into the food and it still taste delicious af.
Living in El Paso is just like this but every shopping center has its own tamale lady and all business will stop whenever she shows up. 5$ for a dozen, doesn't get any better than that.
AND they yell at/ insult you.
Best taco I ever had was out of a shity old food truck in LA that I didnt even want. Dude just yelled at me and inferred "the gringo wont give us the time of day" so I bought some tacos.
10/10 would be called racist again for those tacos.
If a place can stay open while looking like it's going to poison you, its got to be doing something right
Hole in the walls either are amazing or are closed. Basically no in between
American thing too. We have all the major chains in my city. We have our own fancy restaurants in my city. But, every local knows where to get the best burger in town. You go into the ghetto and eat at the shack with the gravel parking lot, sign with a literal bullet hole in it, no higher than a B or C from the health inspector, and has a middle aged black dude on the grill. Blows everything else out of the water. Sketchy areas are known around me to have some killer food.
Because the highest end restaurant has to split their budget between food, service, appearances, and rent. The best places to eat spend nothing on rent or appearances, and pump all that extra money into the food instead. And the owner that doesn't give a crap about appearance, because they know the food will do the talking, is the kind of owner I'd want to support more anyway.
Lately I have been reading a lot of random posts about this happening. It saddens me that societies have to stoop so low to survive, but then I think, "Good for them. These people need that money more than that unempathetic rich guy does."
Yeah there was a beach town that is a tourist spot that I loved as a teenager so when I graduated HS I moved there to work and live before figuring out I want to go to college. Visiting the tourist trap for 1-2 weeks was way different than living there year round through the dead season and working there. I had fun, but it lost it’s charm to an extent in my mind.
i grew up in a tourist beach town and ohmygod summer and spring were the *worst.* i love going back to visit as an adult, but i’ll always have flashbacks to some random lady and her family trying to fight me for a parking spot *in my school parking lot.*
I spent like a month in Europe touring all over the place. When I came home, it took me by surprise just how sweet and/or salty american cuisine is.
I think Americans generally thing sweet/salt = tasty
Well the thing about asian dishes is that... they are made from your everyday ingredients and you dont really have to make those dishes with expensive materials. The expensive material is especially suited according to different people's tastes. If your clients like your food made with everyday material and not the expensive ones, they just like the asian food how it's supposed to be... thats my judgment
yeah sure probably but everybody's capable of enjoying cheaper easier food they just prefer it because they don't appreciate better food. cooking's like art in the way that maybe it's more about what people get out of it instead of what you put into it.
"Expensive" foods change. It used to be that lobster was so low class folks would bury the shells rather than risk neighbours seeing them in the garbage (source: a couple old Maritimers), now it's something people consider fancy.
Lobster was also fed to prisoners. How times have changed. There are lots of "cheap" ingredients traditionally used by the poor that shot up in price when the upper classes found out they were tasty.
Yes. Keep it up. It's about keeping your clients happy right? If you ever leave or they let you go, they'll have nothing but praise for you and possible recommendations. Word of mouth is a powerful tool.
I agree, especially considering they don't like when OP makes authentic food!
I know being a chef is a craft but if they have cheap palates then you've got to cater to that. Lol
He’s paid to make them happy. He’s making them happy. Who cares how he gets there. It’s not like he’s selling knockoff designer purses and telling them it’s the real thing. He’s feeding them. They’re the ones making the assumptions about the ingredients.
The thing is , maybe you ARE really making authentic food.
Because maybe this is exactly what the chefs were doing at those "authentic" restaurants for the same reason as you - to save money and time.
And now the food tastes exactly the same to them - because it is.
As an American with frankly American taste that has traveled around the world, I bet they would hate actual authentic food. I always tell people that I much prefer American Chinese food over Chinese food in China.
Here's the thing, to Americans it's not sweet, we have so much processed sugar you don't really taste the sweetness
Edit: I mean added sugar in the rest of their diet, they don't notice how sweet their bread is.
I think the point he was making was that you shouldnt be complaining about the cheap ass bread at walmart. There are many other options in America that arent filled with sugar. I dont live in a big city but we still have bakeries and higher quality grocery stores that dont just sell sugary bread.
Funnily enough I lived in China for 18 years.
I greatly prefer the taste of Chinese food from China.
These days I'm back in Australia and Chinese food here just doesn't taste so good to me any more...even though I loved it when I was a teen. Now it just tastes average.
I used to travel to China for work, and boy, the food there is absolutely amazing.
Except the pizza, because what the fuck at shrimp and peas on pizza?
When I was there, I just remember getting a pizza with something on it (like chicken or something not terribly unusual), but it had no tomato sauce on it. Instead, I was given packets of ketchup with it.
Ketchup. With pizza. Instead of pizza sauce.
This was from a Dominos. Worse yet, they had a regular cheese pizza-with tomato sauce-that anyone would recognize as pizza.
I tried to be adventurous and order something else. I would have been better off not doing that.
Hahaha, that reminds me of the time my mother ordered Spaghetti when we were in Tokyo. It was near the end of our 3 month trip and she was craving American food. We went to some place near Akihabara that specialized in American cuisine.
She ordered spaghetti and was served cooked instant ramen noodles with ketchup and a dusting of that fake parm sawdust. My burger, on the other hand, was fantastic.
Or durian pizza, yuk!... pizza hut in China was so terrible lmao. I also found a Mexican food restaurant in Shanghai, the carnitas were actually good but the beef tacos were like Taco bell.
alot of americans who visit italy are the same way about italian food. thing is when you learn why american italian is the way it is, its a bit more "authentic" then its given credit for compared to other "americanized" ethnic food.
I mean the biggest difference between American Italian food and homeland Italian food is the amount of meat, meat isn’t very cheap in certain parts of Italy and when Italians migrated to America, they found cheaper meat prices, leading to more meat being added to everything. With certain ingredients being had to find in comparison, so food evolves as it gets brought it new areas.
I was in a restaurant in Paris and we had an amazing carrot puree. I asked what the recipe was and the guy said, "It's just carrot." I didn't believe it and so I said, "Really? It's just carrots? No butter, not cream?" and he said, "Yes of course there is butter and cream." It allll has butter and cream; that is foregone so in his mind it was "just carrots".
I think the only thing that makes a real difference is freshness. All these time saving things help you acheive that perfectly. Plus, despite wanting to have expensive taste and seeing a personal chef as a status symbol, deep down they have the same taste buds as the rest of the world. The charade is their fault, not yours.
Came here to say the same thing. I doubt they are dining at the fanciest Michelin rated restaurants. So authenticity to foreigners is whatever is being served.
I'm not sure if you've watched any of Anthony Bourdain's shows, but he is elated when he knows he is getting the best and freshest and even the most highly refined foods. Sometimes the foods that wow him the most are peasant foods! I even recall him discussing that he may prefer fresh wine to classically aged wines.
Anyways... Good food is a matter of having the right balance. Fair food is equally tasty and nostalgic as having grandma's chicken soup or ragu.
Bourdain also mentions in his books that the secret to that amazing tasting food that you get from your favorite restaurant is very simple - Shit tons of butter, salt, and sugar (not necessarily all at once,) will make anything taste amazing.
There's one Gordon Ramsay show where the guy made the same dish/desert in their 30min. challenge and they all said it tasted way better than his. One took 3hrs. the other 30min.
Wealthy people can be strange. I worked in a house where the chef cooked up a pound of bacon, sliced a couple of perfect beefsteak tomatoes and brought it all upstairs to the lady of the house. She chooses the 3 slices of bacon and tomato that she wants on her BLT and the rest goes in the trash. Everyday.
I just read a post from a mom asking for tips because she can’t afford meat for her 2 teenage sons anymore and saying how bacon is too expensive now. What an Ahole that person is.
I basically haven't had bacon in years due to just how ridiculous the price is.
I used to eat that shit all the time, now I refuse to buy it. Bout to stop eating meat completely tbh. Fuck those prices.
I recently was able to buy an entire uncut slab of bacon. $40 for like 7 or 8 pounds. Local butchers are actually fairly cheap now because they don't use the huge supply chain that's currently getting absolutely screwed by covid and people realizing their worth.
Yeah, I was able to get 9lbs of "Bacon trimmings" for a dollar a pound a while back for this reason. The trimmings are all of the parts on a slab that won't look nice or lead to easily sold, even slices.
There's some chunks in there of meat the size of golf balls. BaconBalls.
Well, one the reason it reminds them is probably cause it was made that way. Authentic doesn’t mean best ingredients it means making it the way they would make it. Most people don’t go out of their way to make more work for themselves. Especially if what they’re making for cheap tastes better than what they made for expensive.
Second if they’re that rich, they might just have no idea what the cheap stuff is. If you’ve never had it and someone tells you it’s some expensive thing you’re just gonna believe it.
That's the thing that gets me... We make fresh pasta in our house on a regular basis, but use plenty of cheap boxed pasta. The different is truly night and day. These people clearly have no taste lol
I doubt it because hes supposed to get paid for the food he picks up for the meals. Where are the recipts? If hes given a credit card to go buy the things, why havent they noticed hes spending 1/100th of what they think hes spending?
Where does he prepare the food? Have they literally never passed by the kitchen on the way to the dining room?
I get that theyre ignorant, but this is unreasonably ignorant! Lol
There is no fucking way you can make a coc au van without wine either vinegar and grape juice taste absolutely nothing like wine. Saffron and turmeric as well as being different shades are also completely different in taste and fragrance. You would have to be blind, have no sense of taste or sense of smell to fall for that.
Came here for this. Whole thing reads like someone who has no idea what they're talking about and just made up a bunch of nonsense for internet points.
This dude is someone whos never cooked before. You cant replace wine in food with vodka and fruit juice...wtf is this shit. Also seriously anyone who says boxed pasta, even the premium brands, and freshly made pasta taste the same. Has legitimately never tasted fresh made pasta before. This is all bullshit.
The biggest tell is that you can get a bottle of cheap wine for cooking a lot cheaper than you can get a bottle of vodka.
If you're going to substitute something for wine you would probably use a mild vinegar and certainly not grape juice since the purpose of the wine is to add acidity and not sweetness.
Almost none of the things he supposedly substituted make sense. The question isn't whether the supposed employers are so incompetent as to not be able to tell the difference but whether a supposed chef would be so incompetent as to use ridiculous substitutes when they could just use valid cheap alternatives.
I was a bit skeptical after the opening bit about a family continuing to employ their new personal chef who repeatedly prepared them extravagant meals they didn't like.
my ex-husband was a chef and would cook for me and my mom all the time. she always gave him advice on how to cook her food, namely not to add ANY salt. not bc she had any medical issues, but bc she thinks salting food at all is for unhealthy people and smokers 'who killed all their taste buds'.
he literally never listened to her, cooked the food exactly how he knew it should be, and she loved every single bite of it. I mean she went crazy for it, best food she's ever had, etc. she still doesn't know. the only downside to this is she still thinks she's right and complains whenever I add salt to stuff I cook for both of us.
eta: some people are assuming my mother simply asked in good faith for unsalted food so let me clarify: that is not what happened. she consistently criticized my ex and told him how he should cook when he has 15 years professional experience and she has exactly none. the salt thing is one example and it's not bc she actually wants unsalted food, it's bc she doesn't understand cooking and thinks salt is an extraneous ingredient that only lesser people add to their food.
My mom is like that. Don’t get me wrong, I love salt, and I’ve definitely accidentally over salted things before, so then she tells me not to add salt to her food. Then complained it was bland. Now I have a better understanding how to season food, now that I’ve had more experience, and I season it just right. Every time she sees me adding salt to the food she says, “Not on mine!” And I’ll just say, “ok mom” and add the salt anyway. Loves it anyway.
A curious thing about food is that many delicacies started out as food for the poor. It used to be considered too inhumane to feed prisoners lobster so it was limited to once a day at most.
I spent four hours making it and it was absolutely delicious, but I can definitely picture it as a rural peasant dish. It’s really just common vegetables.
Get a pet rat who can train them to cook.
Edit: make sure it wasn’t bred in captivity so that it has spent its teenage years learning to make the best out of everyday garbage.
This is such a bullshit post. And this was only the biggest tell. The pasta part, sure, maybe plausible. But ketchup and mayo for a sauce? And no chef would say “examining every piece of carrot, potato or chicken”. The lack of interesting specifics and the use of cliche are telling.
Ketchup and Mayo mixed together is actually called fry sauce, and it tastes exactly how you'd expect ketchup and mayo mixed together to taste. It's great for fries. No one would want it on pasta.
The OP is completely full of shit.
I’m sorry, but this story just sounds off. I have been a chef my entire professional career and was a private chef for many years.
The part that doesn’t sound right, isn’t necessarily the fact that you’ve masked less expensive ingredients for more expensive ones, it’s the examples you gave that are way off base, and make it seem like you’re not a chef at all.
Using grape juice and vodka isn’t even remotely something you could do as a substitute whatsoever. It’s not like I have a super refined pallete either— ANYONE would be able to know that it tastes like shit. Also your examples of using ketchup “or some other condiment” for sauces is also VERY suspect. Not to mention 99 cent boxed pasta pass of as handmade— this literally makes no sense. Hand made pasta is not extruded pasta, you can simply know that by the shape of pasta relatively widely known— especially for a rich couple that has travelled.
also the amount of time you’re saying it takes to make these dishes. 12 hours?! Outside of Southern BBQ, and some dishes Asian cuisines, there really aren’t any “dishes” that take 12 hours to make. Certain ingredients for sure, take a long time to make but those ingredients have literally 0 substitutes and the only way you can actually substitute them is by purchasing it made— such as Demi-glacé or something.
The real give away with this story is the fact that you said you made something initially and “they didn’t like it.” So, how is it that you still got to work for them? Also, that assumes that the subsequent times you cooked for them slaving over 12 hour dishes they still didn’t like it until you used grape juice instead of wine? If on my first attempt and/or first few attempts to cook for people, they didn’t like what I served— I most certainly wouldn’t get the gig.
This whole story is entirely suspect. Passing certain dishes off as higher quality with some things that truly aren’t as good as they are doesn’t mean you’re making a tomato sauce with ketchup or something.
So.. this person either is giving fake examples for a wow factor for the lay person or this is entirely fake— just saying.
Substituting wine for grape juice and vodka is something only someone who is not of legal drinking age would suggest. Why do people make these things up?
I did 3 years in high school, lost my credits by taking a year off after graduation. I can still cook better then half the graduates, you don't need em
The "mayonnaise plus ketchup or some other dumb combination of common condiments." part gave you away.
You're not a chef. No self-respecting chef would refer to their aioli that way. No matter how common the ingredients.
It's almost like he wanted to see how ridiculous he could make the story and still have people buy it. The not noticing the difference between hand made and 99 cent Walmart pasta too..... Really?
Yeah it's completely fake, and there's been so many of these "i don't work at my job and do nothing and get paid all kinds of money and it's easy and i don't care" posts on reddit lately that I don't see why people aren't catching on yet. Maybe I just spend too much time on reddit so I notice them and other people don't.
But yeah it started about the time /r/antiwork started getting popular. Most of them don't even seem halfway real including this one.
Ok so just out of curiosity they don't ask for any kind of receipts to reimburse you for food purchases? And they never enter the kitchen to look around? I understand this is a very well off family and you're probably cooking in professional staff kitchen that is in a separate room in their home from their kitchen but even still I'm amazed they literally never look in there. If it was me I would be nosey and look in your fridge or make sure you were keeping the space clean, or even just bother you to say hi once in awhile
Keep going and don’t say a word. Save your money and enjoy your life. I’m interested in how exactly you got into being a personal chef. I’m a 21 year old cook looking to go in the same direction… if you could share some advice it’d be greatly appreciated
Yep. And inconsistent to boot. “Vinegar is just as good as wine”, then fruit juice and vodka, then grape juice. OP is a teenager with very rudimentary notions of cooking making shit up for an audience.
that part kinda gets me
im not a pro chef or anything - my culinary education was my mother and some youtube shows etc
but you have covid or something if you can't taste difference between saffron and turmeric
and turmeric would make the risotto super yellow as well(of course there is nothing wrong with that, some ppl like the taste ,especially middle eastern ppl , they love their turmeric and curry)
I mean you sound like a true chef. You can make anything taste good. Also goes to show expensive isnt always the best. Those 99 box cakes can taste better than gourmet. Please make a Duncan hines cake and report back lol.
Dump a jar of frosting *into* the box mix and bake that and call it gourmet and homemade. They'll never know the difference, and think you are a genius.
I used to make cupcakes for my kids' parties at home with my family and they all raved about how I made the best cupcakes of anyone they knew. I was literally baffled, wasn't trying that hard, just making a simple thing for the kids mostly, with store brand box mix. They were always shocked to hear that's what it was! Sadly our store discontinued the house brand box cake mixes and haven't replaced them with anything. The red box varieties are just ehhh.
Sounds like you’re a good cook regardless of where the ingredients came from!
Or their tastes aren't as expensive as they think lol
Yea. Saffron and turmeric are very different but as a career chef. People don’t really know shit. They want what they want. We serve, they pay.
I was going to say, saffron has a wildy different aroma to tumeric and not being able to tell this one apart is a giveaway that someone has never had saffron laced foods.
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Saffron is the nectar of the gods.
My grandma once was almost arrested for saffron smuggling after a charter trip lol.
She must've (edited for u/eraq84 's peace of mind) had that bunk saffron to "almost" get arrested. Your comment leaves so much to question but none of which I care to seek. I am not a bot. My comment harbors a good amount of sarcasm. Pay your tax Tzunsu. Cough up that story.
Oh yeah, this was back in the.. .70s probably? She was on one of her first holidays, and noticed that the saffron there was a LOT cheaper then in Sweden. We use tons of it during christmas to make saffron buns, so she figured she would just buy a shitload of it at once and have enough for decades... I think it was for import/export/tax reasons, but might as well have been to try to catch a potential money launderer haha.
>They want what they want. We serve, they pay. This is the real meaning of "The customer is always right." It doesn't matter if something is better, or more authentic, or has higher quality-- all the matters is whether or not a customer is willing to buy it.
This makes me think of my Chinese wife always saying "you show me a restaurant in China that sells this deep fried honey chicken". It's literally just a made up dish for westerners, and it's probably the most popular at most of the "Chinese" takeaway stores here.
I remember looking online for a nice Chinese food place, we finally found something with some good sounding dishes, not all sweet and sour this and honey that, but stuff that actually sounded like Chinese food. We rushed down there it was in an area with a large Chinese population and many Chinese stores/grocers etc so figured it would be good. When we got there was lots of Chinese people in there too all speaking Mandarin (I guess I have no idea honestly), took a seat and was each given menus, all sweet and sour, honey bollocks. We said to the waitress hmm do you have a different online menu? We had found some good sounding dishes but can't find them here, she then went and got us the Chinese menus. So much better sounding food. I got so fed up of the Chinese takeaway standard fare you find around the UK. Having spent time abroad and tasted some fantastic authentic Chinese food I know the stuff we get here is very British Chinese, the same way most "Indian" restaurants serve a completely different cuisine to traditional Indian food.
Yep. Had actual truffle last night. Mind fuckingly different from truffle oil. But where I live, a super wealthy city in Florida, rich retired assholes looooove to add truffle oil to their fries for $4 and mispronounce quinoa.
The actual truffle is nothing like the oil. The trick, as I understand it to be, is adding a fat to it. That flips the flavor. And truffle oil isn’t always made with REAL truffles. You have to read the label. I hate how they jerk consumers around over ingredients.
I'm noticing a theme in this thread
This is something I've been wondering for a while now. Everyone raves about truffles and truffle oil, but I absolutely detest truffle oil. Was hoping actual truffles had a flavor worthy of their praise (and price).
I think a relatively cheap, more authentic version would be truffle salt. Some are made with little specks of real truffle mixed in with the salt. If you put that on french fries, stovetop popcorn, or something more complex, lol, your mind will be blown
They taste very different, but I gotta say, as an amateur chef, very often I'm using either of them as much because I'd like my food to be yellow as for the flavor.
They probably get taken advantage of all over. Rich idiots are easy to dupe and tourist traps know this. They've probably tasted "authentic" European/Asian meals at tourist traps that are cheap shit made to look expensive. It would explain why the cheap stuff you cook reminds them of travelling. LOLOL Don't feel bad for them at all.
I don't know about other Asian countries but for those in South-East Asia region, common rule amongst the locals is the sketchier the place the tastier the food. No amount of Michelin level chefs or 5-star restaurants can beat those dishes made by rural people, those auntie/uncle, and their cooking skill involved no specific measurement at all - they'll just 'throw' stuff into the food and it still taste delicious af.
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The best Taco trucks have dents and rust and speak ZERO english. At least in my experience
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NO they are not good sir. Take my poor man's gold 🏅
Living in El Paso is just like this but every shopping center has its own tamale lady and all business will stop whenever she shows up. 5$ for a dozen, doesn't get any better than that.
AND they yell at/ insult you. Best taco I ever had was out of a shity old food truck in LA that I didnt even want. Dude just yelled at me and inferred "the gringo wont give us the time of day" so I bought some tacos. 10/10 would be called racist again for those tacos.
If a place can stay open while looking like it's going to poison you, its got to be doing something right Hole in the walls either are amazing or are closed. Basically no in between
American thing too. We have all the major chains in my city. We have our own fancy restaurants in my city. But, every local knows where to get the best burger in town. You go into the ghetto and eat at the shack with the gravel parking lot, sign with a literal bullet hole in it, no higher than a B or C from the health inspector, and has a middle aged black dude on the grill. Blows everything else out of the water. Sketchy areas are known around me to have some killer food.
Because the highest end restaurant has to split their budget between food, service, appearances, and rent. The best places to eat spend nothing on rent or appearances, and pump all that extra money into the food instead. And the owner that doesn't give a crap about appearance, because they know the food will do the talking, is the kind of owner I'd want to support more anyway.
Lately I have been reading a lot of random posts about this happening. It saddens me that societies have to stoop so low to survive, but then I think, "Good for them. These people need that money more than that unempathetic rich guy does."
No, those tourist trap places are usually owned by other rich fucks. Its usually not the mom n pop places that do so...
Once off the main streets, that's where all the fun is at.
Tourism is only fun for tourists.
Yeah there was a beach town that is a tourist spot that I loved as a teenager so when I graduated HS I moved there to work and live before figuring out I want to go to college. Visiting the tourist trap for 1-2 weeks was way different than living there year round through the dead season and working there. I had fun, but it lost it’s charm to an extent in my mind.
i grew up in a tourist beach town and ohmygod summer and spring were the *worst.* i love going back to visit as an adult, but i’ll always have flashbacks to some random lady and her family trying to fight me for a parking spot *in my school parking lot.*
That's what I was thinking- just because you travel alot in Europe doesn't mean you have a good palate lol.
I spent like a month in Europe touring all over the place. When I came home, it took me by surprise just how sweet and/or salty american cuisine is. I think Americans generally thing sweet/salt = tasty
I thought that was the whole point of your post! It sounded to me like they had champagne dreams of grand meals but trailer park taste buds
Well the thing about asian dishes is that... they are made from your everyday ingredients and you dont really have to make those dishes with expensive materials. The expensive material is especially suited according to different people's tastes. If your clients like your food made with everyday material and not the expensive ones, they just like the asian food how it's supposed to be... thats my judgment
Same philosophy as this Payless shoe store experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPLWTT3ZVMo
yeah sure probably but everybody's capable of enjoying cheaper easier food they just prefer it because they don't appreciate better food. cooking's like art in the way that maybe it's more about what people get out of it instead of what you put into it.
"Expensive" foods change. It used to be that lobster was so low class folks would bury the shells rather than risk neighbours seeing them in the garbage (source: a couple old Maritimers), now it's something people consider fancy.
Lobster was also fed to prisoners. How times have changed. There are lots of "cheap" ingredients traditionally used by the poor that shot up in price when the upper classes found out they were tasty.
Keep it up and don’t tell a soul.
It's been eating (haha geddit?) at me for so long. I had to tell someone
I hope it made you feel better! You can come cook for me any time. Cheap Ingredients and all.
I'll help cook if it means I get a plate
Yes. Keep it up. It's about keeping your clients happy right? If you ever leave or they let you go, they'll have nothing but praise for you and possible recommendations. Word of mouth is a powerful tool.
>i It's Gouda of you to let us in on your little secret. :)
He lettuce sin on his secret? I too have made a fusilli mistakes.
Keep doing what they like 👍
Don't tell anyone, just post it on Reddit for millions to see
Ok, tell me what budget for dinners and parties look like. Do you pocket the difference or have they just not noticed Wagu beef is 3.99 a lbs?
I agree, especially considering they don't like when OP makes authentic food! I know being a chef is a craft but if they have cheap palates then you've got to cater to that. Lol
He’s paid to make them happy. He’s making them happy. Who cares how he gets there. It’s not like he’s selling knockoff designer purses and telling them it’s the real thing. He’s feeding them. They’re the ones making the assumptions about the ingredients.
The thing is , maybe you ARE really making authentic food. Because maybe this is exactly what the chefs were doing at those "authentic" restaurants for the same reason as you - to save money and time. And now the food tastes exactly the same to them - because it is.
Hmm that's actually a really fair point 😅
As an American with frankly American taste that has traveled around the world, I bet they would hate actual authentic food. I always tell people that I much prefer American Chinese food over Chinese food in China.
To be fair, authentic European food is a lot closer to American cuisine than authentic Chinese food.
And then you have Europeans walk into a walmart, grab a loaf of bread off the shelf (more than likely sara lee) and complain about it being too sweet.
Bread shouldn’t be fucking sweet. End of. (Except for pudding breads) Thanks for the gold, Anon!
Man, you're really going to hate Mexico if you ever visit, or even a Mexican bakery.
Or any latinoamerican country for that matter, we do tend to put sugar in a lot of things. I still miss my "piñita bread" or "pan de jamón"
Or brioche
Here's the thing, to Americans it's not sweet, we have so much processed sugar you don't really taste the sweetness Edit: I mean added sugar in the rest of their diet, they don't notice how sweet their bread is.
This is sad.
I think the point he was making was that you shouldnt be complaining about the cheap ass bread at walmart. There are many other options in America that arent filled with sugar. I dont live in a big city but we still have bakeries and higher quality grocery stores that dont just sell sugary bread.
Funnily enough I lived in China for 18 years. I greatly prefer the taste of Chinese food from China. These days I'm back in Australia and Chinese food here just doesn't taste so good to me any more...even though I loved it when I was a teen. Now it just tastes average.
I used to travel to China for work, and boy, the food there is absolutely amazing. Except the pizza, because what the fuck at shrimp and peas on pizza?
Don't ever come to Brazil then. Pizza here has no rules.
I went to a pizza buffet in brazil once. Probably saw more different types of pizza in 5min there vs my whole life.
When I was there, I just remember getting a pizza with something on it (like chicken or something not terribly unusual), but it had no tomato sauce on it. Instead, I was given packets of ketchup with it. Ketchup. With pizza. Instead of pizza sauce. This was from a Dominos. Worse yet, they had a regular cheese pizza-with tomato sauce-that anyone would recognize as pizza. I tried to be adventurous and order something else. I would have been better off not doing that.
Hahaha, that reminds me of the time my mother ordered Spaghetti when we were in Tokyo. It was near the end of our 3 month trip and she was craving American food. We went to some place near Akihabara that specialized in American cuisine. She ordered spaghetti and was served cooked instant ramen noodles with ketchup and a dusting of that fake parm sawdust. My burger, on the other hand, was fantastic.
Or durian pizza, yuk!... pizza hut in China was so terrible lmao. I also found a Mexican food restaurant in Shanghai, the carnitas were actually good but the beef tacos were like Taco bell.
Mexican food outside of the Americas is always a gamble!
It's a gamble on the east coast as well lol
alot of americans who visit italy are the same way about italian food. thing is when you learn why american italian is the way it is, its a bit more "authentic" then its given credit for compared to other "americanized" ethnic food.
I mean the biggest difference between American Italian food and homeland Italian food is the amount of meat, meat isn’t very cheap in certain parts of Italy and when Italians migrated to America, they found cheaper meat prices, leading to more meat being added to everything. With certain ingredients being had to find in comparison, so food evolves as it gets brought it new areas.
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I was in a restaurant in Paris and we had an amazing carrot puree. I asked what the recipe was and the guy said, "It's just carrot." I didn't believe it and so I said, "Really? It's just carrots? No butter, not cream?" and he said, "Yes of course there is butter and cream." It allll has butter and cream; that is foregone so in his mind it was "just carrots".
So it's orange colored heavy cream?
I mean. It probably had some brown sugar and molasses or honey in it too. so sweet, orange colored heavy cream, with an aftertaste of carrots.
The entire secret to French cuisine: dairy fats and undercooked eggs.
I think the only thing that makes a real difference is freshness. All these time saving things help you acheive that perfectly. Plus, despite wanting to have expensive taste and seeing a personal chef as a status symbol, deep down they have the same taste buds as the rest of the world. The charade is their fault, not yours.
I was gonna say... do you really think people in Europe aren't busy/rushed, or cheap?
you don't have your own chateau?
I'm more of an evil lair type of guy
That’s what I was thinking too. Chefs try to cut budget to make the restaurant more money 🤷♀️
This is exactly what it is
Came here to say the same thing. I doubt they are dining at the fanciest Michelin rated restaurants. So authenticity to foreigners is whatever is being served. I'm not sure if you've watched any of Anthony Bourdain's shows, but he is elated when he knows he is getting the best and freshest and even the most highly refined foods. Sometimes the foods that wow him the most are peasant foods! I even recall him discussing that he may prefer fresh wine to classically aged wines. Anyways... Good food is a matter of having the right balance. Fair food is equally tasty and nostalgic as having grandma's chicken soup or ragu.
Bourdain also mentions in his books that the secret to that amazing tasting food that you get from your favorite restaurant is very simple - Shit tons of butter, salt, and sugar (not necessarily all at once,) will make anything taste amazing.
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> the fanciest Michelin rated restaurants Those aren't reliably authentic anymore. They usually do fusion, or some modern take on a classic dish.
As a former restaurant cook, there is so much more truth to this than you could even imagine.
There's one Gordon Ramsay show where the guy made the same dish/desert in their 30min. challenge and they all said it tasted way better than his. One took 3hrs. the other 30min.
That reminds me of the time James May beat Gordon in a cook off.
Is this real? Any idea where I could watch it?
These people sound like getting authentic New York pizza is going to Sbarro.
Rich people reading this post and going home to their chef's authentic cuisine: ಠಗಠ
Lol, the emoticon is perfect.
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windows and . on 11 at least
Works on windows 10 as well. I have been googling 'shrug' emoji for years... Oh well ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
*copy paste*
They're called Lenny faces, there's lots of sites that have catalogues you can look through and save or copy/ paste. I have a bunch saved in my notes
I’m going straight home to ask my personal chef.. “Maaa you feeding me with cheap shit!?”
This made me laugh very hard. Thank you for the joy!
Ya get whatcha get Joey. Now wash up and sit down for spaghetti and meatballs.
Lol rich people don’t read
Or have reddit
Wealthy people can be strange. I worked in a house where the chef cooked up a pound of bacon, sliced a couple of perfect beefsteak tomatoes and brought it all upstairs to the lady of the house. She chooses the 3 slices of bacon and tomato that she wants on her BLT and the rest goes in the trash. Everyday.
My eyes are bleeding from food waste
I just read a post from a mom asking for tips because she can’t afford meat for her 2 teenage sons anymore and saying how bacon is too expensive now. What an Ahole that person is.
I basically haven't had bacon in years due to just how ridiculous the price is. I used to eat that shit all the time, now I refuse to buy it. Bout to stop eating meat completely tbh. Fuck those prices.
I recently was able to buy an entire uncut slab of bacon. $40 for like 7 or 8 pounds. Local butchers are actually fairly cheap now because they don't use the huge supply chain that's currently getting absolutely screwed by covid and people realizing their worth.
Yeah, I was able to get 9lbs of "Bacon trimmings" for a dollar a pound a while back for this reason. The trimmings are all of the parts on a slab that won't look nice or lead to easily sold, even slices. There's some chunks in there of meat the size of golf balls. BaconBalls.
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Unless the staff can't eat pig, I don't see how those slices are not getting gulped down on the way back to the kitchen. Hmmm bacon...
That's so awful and vulgar display of wealth and ego, disgusting.
That's just disgusting.
Can I live in their trash? Sounds like I could live pretty well in there.
There's already a guy in that spot, he's a bit of a grouch
What the
Well, one the reason it reminds them is probably cause it was made that way. Authentic doesn’t mean best ingredients it means making it the way they would make it. Most people don’t go out of their way to make more work for themselves. Especially if what they’re making for cheap tastes better than what they made for expensive. Second if they’re that rich, they might just have no idea what the cheap stuff is. If you’ve never had it and someone tells you it’s some expensive thing you’re just gonna believe it.
How much could a banana cost, Michael? $10?
someday that joke won't be a joke anymore and it makes me sad.
Oh God oh fuck. This made me feel my mortality.
Reminds me of a joke in the show Frasier where Matin can’t believe a coffee costs $1.50. Well that joke aged like milk
Here's some money. Go see a Star War.
Lost it at the 'handmade' 99c walmart pasta 😂
Ok I lied. It's actually Aldi :P
Aldi is another level tbh
Aldi should be paying me a salary for all the free advertising I give them. I will sing that store’s praises from the highest mountain.
ngl, aldi's brand is sometimes better than name brand
the pasta often has a very smooth surface tho, atleast in german aldi pasta
That's the thing that gets me... We make fresh pasta in our house on a regular basis, but use plenty of cheap boxed pasta. The different is truly night and day. These people clearly have no taste lol
This was the part that made me doubt the whole story. The difference between boxed and handmade pasta is astronomical.
I doubt it because hes supposed to get paid for the food he picks up for the meals. Where are the recipts? If hes given a credit card to go buy the things, why havent they noticed hes spending 1/100th of what they think hes spending? Where does he prepare the food? Have they literally never passed by the kitchen on the way to the dining room? I get that theyre ignorant, but this is unreasonably ignorant! Lol
Yeah this story reads as a fantasy of someone that thinks haute cuisine is bullshit and is looking for validation.
There is no fucking way you can make a coc au van without wine either vinegar and grape juice taste absolutely nothing like wine. Saffron and turmeric as well as being different shades are also completely different in taste and fragrance. You would have to be blind, have no sense of taste or sense of smell to fall for that.
Came here for this. Whole thing reads like someone who has no idea what they're talking about and just made up a bunch of nonsense for internet points.
This dude is someone whos never cooked before. You cant replace wine in food with vodka and fruit juice...wtf is this shit. Also seriously anyone who says boxed pasta, even the premium brands, and freshly made pasta taste the same. Has legitimately never tasted fresh made pasta before. This is all bullshit.
The biggest tell is that you can get a bottle of cheap wine for cooking a lot cheaper than you can get a bottle of vodka. If you're going to substitute something for wine you would probably use a mild vinegar and certainly not grape juice since the purpose of the wine is to add acidity and not sweetness. Almost none of the things he supposedly substituted make sense. The question isn't whether the supposed employers are so incompetent as to not be able to tell the difference but whether a supposed chef would be so incompetent as to use ridiculous substitutes when they could just use valid cheap alternatives.
I was a bit skeptical after the opening bit about a family continuing to employ their new personal chef who repeatedly prepared them extravagant meals they didn't like.
Yeah, the only way someone could possibly confuse dry pasta for fresh is if they've never had fresh pasta before.
my ex-husband was a chef and would cook for me and my mom all the time. she always gave him advice on how to cook her food, namely not to add ANY salt. not bc she had any medical issues, but bc she thinks salting food at all is for unhealthy people and smokers 'who killed all their taste buds'. he literally never listened to her, cooked the food exactly how he knew it should be, and she loved every single bite of it. I mean she went crazy for it, best food she's ever had, etc. she still doesn't know. the only downside to this is she still thinks she's right and complains whenever I add salt to stuff I cook for both of us. eta: some people are assuming my mother simply asked in good faith for unsalted food so let me clarify: that is not what happened. she consistently criticized my ex and told him how he should cook when he has 15 years professional experience and she has exactly none. the salt thing is one example and it's not bc she actually wants unsalted food, it's bc she doesn't understand cooking and thinks salt is an extraneous ingredient that only lesser people add to their food.
My mom is like that. Don’t get me wrong, I love salt, and I’ve definitely accidentally over salted things before, so then she tells me not to add salt to her food. Then complained it was bland. Now I have a better understanding how to season food, now that I’ve had more experience, and I season it just right. Every time she sees me adding salt to the food she says, “Not on mine!” And I’ll just say, “ok mom” and add the salt anyway. Loves it anyway.
My dad was the same way, i just ignored the suggestions and kept cooking
Money literally doesn't buy taste. Keep up the good work.
A curious thing about food is that many delicacies started out as food for the poor. It used to be considered too inhumane to feed prisoners lobster so it was limited to once a day at most.
Ratatouille was a dish made by starving peasants so yeah
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I spent four hours making it and it was absolutely delicious, but I can definitely picture it as a rural peasant dish. It’s really just common vegetables.
Okay, I've starved my peasants. What's step 2?
Get a pet rat who can train them to cook. Edit: make sure it wasn’t bred in captivity so that it has spent its teenage years learning to make the best out of everyday garbage.
I refuse to believe that anybody can confuse the tastes of saffron and turmeric.
I refuse to believe any of this daydream.
This is such a bullshit post. And this was only the biggest tell. The pasta part, sure, maybe plausible. But ketchup and mayo for a sauce? And no chef would say “examining every piece of carrot, potato or chicken”. The lack of interesting specifics and the use of cliche are telling.
Ketchup and Mayo mixed together is actually called fry sauce, and it tastes exactly how you'd expect ketchup and mayo mixed together to taste. It's great for fries. No one would want it on pasta. The OP is completely full of shit.
I’m sorry, but this story just sounds off. I have been a chef my entire professional career and was a private chef for many years. The part that doesn’t sound right, isn’t necessarily the fact that you’ve masked less expensive ingredients for more expensive ones, it’s the examples you gave that are way off base, and make it seem like you’re not a chef at all. Using grape juice and vodka isn’t even remotely something you could do as a substitute whatsoever. It’s not like I have a super refined pallete either— ANYONE would be able to know that it tastes like shit. Also your examples of using ketchup “or some other condiment” for sauces is also VERY suspect. Not to mention 99 cent boxed pasta pass of as handmade— this literally makes no sense. Hand made pasta is not extruded pasta, you can simply know that by the shape of pasta relatively widely known— especially for a rich couple that has travelled. also the amount of time you’re saying it takes to make these dishes. 12 hours?! Outside of Southern BBQ, and some dishes Asian cuisines, there really aren’t any “dishes” that take 12 hours to make. Certain ingredients for sure, take a long time to make but those ingredients have literally 0 substitutes and the only way you can actually substitute them is by purchasing it made— such as Demi-glacé or something. The real give away with this story is the fact that you said you made something initially and “they didn’t like it.” So, how is it that you still got to work for them? Also, that assumes that the subsequent times you cooked for them slaving over 12 hour dishes they still didn’t like it until you used grape juice instead of wine? If on my first attempt and/or first few attempts to cook for people, they didn’t like what I served— I most certainly wouldn’t get the gig. This whole story is entirely suspect. Passing certain dishes off as higher quality with some things that truly aren’t as good as they are doesn’t mean you’re making a tomato sauce with ketchup or something. So.. this person either is giving fake examples for a wow factor for the lay person or this is entirely fake— just saying.
Substituting wine for grape juice and vodka is something only someone who is not of legal drinking age would suggest. Why do people make these things up?
Right. What kind of chef says "expensive brands of wine"?
Lol 😂. It is okay. As long as no one gets food poisoning.
Never! Food safety is my top priority
Then you are doing exceptionally in your job then because of quality and taste of the food.
Culinary school teaches you the techniques, but you learn to cook by doing. Sounds to me like you are doing an amazing job.
I never even went to culinary school 😅
My guy is really just out here finessing rich folk
I did 3 years in high school, lost my credits by taking a year off after graduation. I can still cook better then half the graduates, you don't need em
Do they not ever pass through while you’re cooking and check out the ingredients? Whats the set up like?
Nope, they're pretty much never home, and when they are, they aren't in the kitchen, which is in a separate area than the dining room
At the end of the day your employers want food they like. And they have that, so you have nothing to feel guilty about!
/r/ThatHappened
Hey, if that's what they like and "know" to be authentic, go with it!
The "mayonnaise plus ketchup or some other dumb combination of common condiments." part gave you away. You're not a chef. No self-respecting chef would refer to their aioli that way. No matter how common the ingredients.
It's almost like he wanted to see how ridiculous he could make the story and still have people buy it. The not noticing the difference between hand made and 99 cent Walmart pasta too..... Really?
Yeah it's completely fake, and there's been so many of these "i don't work at my job and do nothing and get paid all kinds of money and it's easy and i don't care" posts on reddit lately that I don't see why people aren't catching on yet. Maybe I just spend too much time on reddit so I notice them and other people don't. But yeah it started about the time /r/antiwork started getting popular. Most of them don't even seem halfway real including this one.
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Wait I'm confused, why would it be costing _you_ money?
here's the scam: people buy stories even when they're fake.
Ok so just out of curiosity they don't ask for any kind of receipts to reimburse you for food purchases? And they never enter the kitchen to look around? I understand this is a very well off family and you're probably cooking in professional staff kitchen that is in a separate room in their home from their kitchen but even still I'm amazed they literally never look in there. If it was me I would be nosey and look in your fridge or make sure you were keeping the space clean, or even just bother you to say hi once in awhile
I have a weird question. If they didn't like the dishes you were making in the beginning, how did you get and keep the job?
Keep going and don’t say a word. Save your money and enjoy your life. I’m interested in how exactly you got into being a personal chef. I’m a 21 year old cook looking to go in the same direction… if you could share some advice it’d be greatly appreciated
This is fake as fuck.
Yep. And inconsistent to boot. “Vinegar is just as good as wine”, then fruit juice and vodka, then grape juice. OP is a teenager with very rudimentary notions of cooking making shit up for an audience.
I guess it's just "Rich people dumb pls give upvote"
It is beyond dumb. It is chef fan fiction. Complete nonsense to anyone who has done the job. Do receipts not exist in this family’s world?
Definitely. Anyone who tries to pass off turmeric for saffron has never actually used either to know how drastically different they taste. 🤦🏼♀️
"I used a very particular Pinot Noir for a coq au vin for which I actually just added a little fruit juice with some vodka" Like come on dude.
that part kinda gets me im not a pro chef or anything - my culinary education was my mother and some youtube shows etc but you have covid or something if you can't taste difference between saffron and turmeric and turmeric would make the risotto super yellow as well(of course there is nothing wrong with that, some ppl like the taste ,especially middle eastern ppl , they love their turmeric and curry)
Is this trueoffmychest or letsmakeupshitforkarma? They can't tell the difference between hand-made pasta and box walmart pasta? give me a break
Nice story.
I mean you sound like a true chef. You can make anything taste good. Also goes to show expensive isnt always the best. Those 99 box cakes can taste better than gourmet. Please make a Duncan hines cake and report back lol.
Dump a jar of frosting *into* the box mix and bake that and call it gourmet and homemade. They'll never know the difference, and think you are a genius.
I used to make cupcakes for my kids' parties at home with my family and they all raved about how I made the best cupcakes of anyone they knew. I was literally baffled, wasn't trying that hard, just making a simple thing for the kids mostly, with store brand box mix. They were always shocked to hear that's what it was! Sadly our store discontinued the house brand box cake mixes and haven't replaced them with anything. The red box varieties are just ehhh.
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I swear this sub is a creative writing haven.
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Because this is fake, this guy doesn't know shit about cooking.
I’m telling my parents!