mental mise en place

Alright, so I've mentioned before that I can't understand how someone would choose to go to culinary school when it seems as though they really don't care much about food or where food comes from. It makes me wonder if maybe they're just there because they don't know what else to do and it seemed like a good idea. It's one thing to enjoy cooking. It's another to want to do this for a living professionally. Let's face it. Cooking in a restaurant isn't nearly the same as cooking dinner for your family at home.

That being said, I wanted to talk a bit about mental mise en place. I know a lot of cooks who have no trouble getting mise together for service. They get all their prep work out of the way so that everything runs fairly smoothly. Except that somewhere halfway through service, when things start to get stressful, they begin to flip out. Why? They aren't mentally prepared for service that night. They might know the recipes, but can't adapt to the pace of the kitchen. They get stuck and they hold things up for everyone. "What do you mean I can't saute 2lbs of mushrooms at one time in the same pan?" As they lose focus, they panic and that only makes things worse. It's a slippery slope and it shatters their confidence and this bleeds into the next night, and the next... and the next...

Whenever I head into the kitchen, I spend some time before service preparing my mental mise. I know the recipes, but I like to go through service in my head a few times so that if something goes wrong, I can fix it. Hopefully, this keeps things running more smoothly. You never know when something might happen. Maybe someone isn't ready with a garnish or they didn't realize they needed a bain marie ready for a timbale. Because I've got myself ready mentally, I can run over to help out. I'm less likely to panic if something does go wrong.

Mental mise en place is something that I think separates a good cook from a great cook. It takes average cooks to new levels. If you can't get into "the zone" mentally, forget it.

Yet, even with all this discussion, most of my peers will come in for service not knowing what the menu is for that night's production. They don't have recipes written out. They can't even prepare standard mise because they just don't know what's going on. So do yourself, and the folks in your kitchen, a favor. Take a half hour and prepare your mental mise en place. It'll make you a better cook and, hopefully, it'll catch on.