Re:What happened when I opened a restaurant in Portland
by marak830 on Tuesday October 10, 2017 @06:25PM
(#15445836)
Damn there is a shortage of pastry chefs everywhere.
Biggest issue is, as apprentices (in general), they have to be at work at 2am. (Situational I know, but in general their hours are rather inverted).
I had the option to specialise in pastry when I was an apprentice, but the hours looked so bad.
Now I'd give my left trsticle for a decent pastry chef(well before I left hospitality), so I guess that's karma.
Also croissants - you can get rather high quality par baked fairly cheaply, you can import/export them, as long as they are snap frozen(and most people can't tell the difference). - yes there is a difference before anyone tells me off, I'm just pointing out an alternative
Re:What happened when I opened a restaurant in Portland
by ido on Tuesday October 10, 2017 @01:41PM
(#15443757)
I always wondered why pita bread is so stale/bad in middle-eastern restaurants in Germany and Austria, being that baking pita bread is not that difficult (almost every falafel/shawarma place in Israel have decent pita bread and they can't all be genius bakers).
Re:What happened when I opened a restaurant in Portland
by marak830 on Tuesday October 10, 2017 @06:26PM
(#15445845)
That isn't due to the lack of pastry chefs. At least it shouldn't be if they have access to refrigeration.
Re:What happened when I opened a restaurant in Portland
by ido on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @04:01AM
(#15448042)
Right, and you honestly don't really need to be a pastry chef to make decent pita bread (I'm a layman and i can make them just fine).
Which makes it all the more puzzling! It's not like it requires any exotic ingredients either...
It's an interesting dilemma - Croissants have a shelf life of a few max, so they can't be imported. I'm guessing immigration rules + cost of expatriation would make it hard to fly in french boulangers-patissiers? Then I guess the money would be in opening "viennoiserie schools" in the US...