The Shanle tweet got me thinking, and I'll stick with his metaphor.
Eichorst made a calculated gamble by hiring Riley. His gamble was that Nebraska plays in a state-of-the-art kitchen with devoted patrons that sell the restaurant out every night. The ingredients in that kitchen aren't five-star, but they're still solid. The thinking was that rather than ripping up the entire restaurant and throwing out all the ingredients, a skilled chef could come in and get us that third Michelin star. (The previous chef was a tyrant who screamed through dinner service and spit in patrons' food.)
We didn't hire the latest celebrity chef, but rather a guy who was classically trained--the kind of guy who could make a solid béchamel. We thought that he was doing okay in a shoddy kitchen with shoddy ingredients and that once he came into our shiny kitchen with better ingredients, the food would speak for itself.
So, three meals in, and the results are pretty mixed. Our new chef brought his old sous chef along, and he's living up to his mediocre reputation. More depressingly, the new chef is still making simple mistakes, and he's keeps smiling when he makes them. There have been some excellent courses (the new chef specializes in fourth course desserts), but he hasn't really put together a complete meal.
And now some folks are starting to say that it's not the chef but rather the chef's ingredients. It's sort of a laughable argument. Remember, we didn't hire this chef because he was good at finding the best ingredients; we hired him to come and do amazing things with the ingredients we already had.
And for those patrons who really thought the last chef had to go, I agree completely. That guy was a jerk.
Eichorst made a calculated gamble by hiring Riley. His gamble was that Nebraska plays in a state-of-the-art kitchen with devoted patrons that sell the restaurant out every night. The ingredients in that kitchen aren't five-star, but they're still solid. The thinking was that rather than ripping up the entire restaurant and throwing out all the ingredients, a skilled chef could come in and get us that third Michelin star. (The previous chef was a tyrant who screamed through dinner service and spit in patrons' food.)
We didn't hire the latest celebrity chef, but rather a guy who was classically trained--the kind of guy who could make a solid béchamel. We thought that he was doing okay in a shoddy kitchen with shoddy ingredients and that once he came into our shiny kitchen with better ingredients, the food would speak for itself.
So, three meals in, and the results are pretty mixed. Our new chef brought his old sous chef along, and he's living up to his mediocre reputation. More depressingly, the new chef is still making simple mistakes, and he's keeps smiling when he makes them. There have been some excellent courses (the new chef specializes in fourth course desserts), but he hasn't really put together a complete meal.
And now some folks are starting to say that it's not the chef but rather the chef's ingredients. It's sort of a laughable argument. Remember, we didn't hire this chef because he was good at finding the best ingredients; we hired him to come and do amazing things with the ingredients we already had.
And for those patrons who really thought the last chef had to go, I agree completely. That guy was a jerk.
