Your Restaurant Should Be Able to Open Without You
40 anonymous interviews, 1 on-the-record series of questions, and why Feld's Cooks' Dinner isn't as fun as it seems.
1. Feld doesn’t open if Chef Jake can not be present.
On March 21st, Feld published this on their Instagram.
The top comment was from the person whose wedding Chef Jake was attending. That comment said, “Now I feel less guilty making you close to be in my wedding.”
While everyone else acted like this was a really fun thing, this entire thing from concept to post to comment made my stomach drop.
Imagine if Chef Thomas Keller needed to be in Per Se for it to open. It would never open. Imagine if after beloved chefs passed, their restaurants shuttered instead of standing as pillars to their legacy—because no one on the team was able to execute their menu. Imagine if as Alinea went on tour, Chef Grant Achatz had to shut Alinea in Chicago.
Imagine telling someone, “I have to close my restaurant to go to your wedding, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
I reached out to Chef Jake Potashnick asking for comment about this. He responded to me twice, but I’m going to address the first time he commented in this section first.
In that first message, if he had said something like, “We’re young and I hope to be able to open the restaurant without me in year two,” I’d get it. If he had said, “I’m working on training my entire team on the concept,” I’d get it. If he said, “There’s a few things I haven’t cross-trained people in yet but I’m working on it,” I’d get it. If he said, “We actually need every single person in the kitchen and I mean everyone, my entire team, even me, but one day, I hope to have one more set of hands when we can afford it,” I’d get it.
But originally, that’s not what he said.
In an email, Chef Jake said, “Our service operates quite differently than pretty much any other restaurant in Chicago/the States.”
He thought that if I came in, I’d be able to see that (I was already planning on coming in).
As a girl who travels the country to eat, I have news for him: it doesn’t operate differently than pretty much any restaurant in Chicago/the States. There are restaurants like his that came before him, in every single aspect.
Later, Chef Jake doubled back saying, “I don't know a single fine-dining restaurant, at the price point and style that Feld is, where the Chef is not present every day for service in the first couple of years.” (Emphasis mine.)
And while I think this is seen as industry standard (more on that in a minute), I do actually have a list of chefs who nine months in were able to take one single day off, because I called them while writing this piece. By single day, I do mean single day. I am not saying that every restaurant needs to run for weeks or months without their chef. Not all are designed like that. But if the restaurant cannot open for one day without you, that’s a management problem.
One of the chefs I talked to who did take time off in the first nine months said to me, “It took getting sick to realize that my team could function without me. After I got sick, I stopped coming in on Sundays. They were able to handle it.” That was six months in. That restaurant is also a small team, tasting menu. It has a Michelin Star.
Another said, “When I opened my first and second restaurants, I was there every day for the first year. At restaurant three, I hired a team I could trust. It killed me to be there every day and it wasn’t good for building leadership on my team.” When I asked him if he thought he had to leave the restaurant to build leadership, he said, “Big time. Who steps in is who leads.”
A third chef who took four days off total (each one single day) in the first year, said, “Does he have a second in command?” He doesn’t, at least not formally, though other chefs I interviewed in Chicago kept telling me that Chef Miguel Huerta was the sous chef. Everyone except Chef Jake at Feld is a chef de partie. The chef I was interviewing said, “He needs that. Chefs can leave their kitchen when they have that.”
I share these quotes because it’s important for you to know that I talked to 40 chefs over the course of writing this piece, including 20 chef/owners—and none of them told me, “Don’t run this piece.”
Instead, they all said some version of, “That’s an important thing to write.”
Instead, most of the ones who once opened restaurants with this same attitude about the restaurant not being able to run without them said, “If I had to do it over, I’d change how I did it.” By that, they meant, building in the ability to take a day off.
And the line cooks I talked to? The sous chefs? They said some version of, “If the restaurant can’t open without you, it feels like you don’t trust us.” Some of them said with much more colorful language and a decent amount of swearing.
So while it might be “industry standard” (again, more on if it actually is in a minute), the question I’m asking is: should it be?
Writer’s note: two chef/owners, one executive chef, one chef de cuisine, one person who runs a pop-up, two sous chefs, and three line cooks reviewed this piece before it went live at different iterations of the draft. I did not write this piece in a vacuum. I wrote it in deep conversation with chefs.
2. Is “The Chef” the restaurant?
I was going to go to the Cooks’ Dinner and one other dinner at Feld back to back. I planned to publish this piece the day after the Cooks’ Dinner, not a week before. But Feld (having not claimed on their website that this dinner would be a no-restrictions dinner) canceled my reservation. (Yes, that’s a pseudonym.)
I would have gone to Feld three times before this piece was published if Feld had not canceled my reservation for the Cooks’ Dinner (which they totally are in their right to do). I was going to make a special trip to Chicago to attend and I was genuinely looking forward to it! I had booked a flight, a hotel, and was coming because I was genuinely excited to see what the cooks would do.
I wanted to write a piece that detailed how Chef Jake could trust his team. I wanted to witness that dinner. I wanted to tell him how he’s trained them to do a good enough job without him. I wanted to write a different piece than this one. But I can only write what I know.
I think Feld’s cooks are exceptionally talented. I think Chef Jake is exceptionally creative. I think the NA beverage pairing at Feld was stunning. My food at Feld was very good, with a few key misses, but some very fun takes on the end-of-winter veg. I didn’t have the problems with salt that plagued early meals—and if you know me, you know, I harp on under-seasoned food. They did all that while down two cooks.
Chef Jake even commented on this in an email to me, saying, “The cooks regularly rotate stations. Nine months into being open they are almost all trained on each station by this point. The night you ate was unfortunately a bad example of this, as by fluke of timing and health issues, we were short two cooks that evening. I do not feel that affected your meal (I would not open if I felt it would).”
I loved my interactions with the staff, especially enjoying the conversations I had with Chef Miguel Huerta and both members of the beverage team. And I agree with Chef Jake: my meal wasn’t impacted. I felt that Feld operated exceptionally well for being down two staff. But it did strike me.
Why can Feld be down two cooks and run like a well-oiled machine, but not down on a chef/owner and operate that way, too? Is Jake that much better than his team? I’m guessing probably not.
And look, regardless of what he says directly in response to this piece, this is what he’s saying by telling me that he opened Feld down two cooks because it will not impact the quality of my meal but won’t open when he’s not there. He’s saying he’s not better than one cook. He’s better than two.
I don’t review restaurants off of one visit. I don’t think it’s ethical. Sometimes, restaurants that are stunning on visit one are just okay on visit two. Sometimes, a restaurant has a bad night on the first night you go and a great one on night two. Consistency is something I value. I go far more times than the average person reviewing a restaurant, including 18 times to a restaurant that has a lot of acclaim, but is incredibly inconsistent. I won’t review Feld off one visit, but I can tell you my thoughts of that single visit.
I thought that Feld was finding its stride. This piece isn’t about the food, though. This is a restaurant culture piece.
Feld’s Cooks’ Dinner isn’t as fun as it seems. It continues the myth that Chefs and Chef/Owners are The Restaurant, your team is replaceable, and The Grind reigns supreme.
Chef Jake said to me, “These restaurants are incredibly personal, and often very difficult to operate, so having the Chef present is important. I also think there's a certain level of expectation from the guest that the Chef will be present, and I feel a duty to live up to that.”
The idea that in the first year a restaurant cannot open without you, should not open without you, because 1) the restaurant is personal and 2) guests expect the Chef to be there perpetuates this idea that restaurants are projects of one person versus the entire team (for the record, most Michelin starred restaurants I go to do not have their chef/owner present when I’m there).
And while chef/owners might get a little grouchy that I’m pushing back against that concept, I am, because restaurants are team efforts and because I spend most of time talking to chefs de cuisine, sous chefs, and line cooks versus chef/owners, so I know how this attitude impacts them. The restaurants where the chefs lift up their entire team and push for a restaurant that goes beyond personal to collaborative are better places to work, but they’re also more honest.
The idea that a restaurant is the chef/owner holds your team back. It’s also a lie chefs tell themselves.
I could clearly see the influence of other chefs in the menu. I asked people who conceptualized dishes. I do this in every restaurant. Not every dish I asked that on had the answer of, “Chef Jake.” This is not bad. In fact, it’s great. The team that opened Feld is still at Feld. This is not just Chef Jake’s baby. It’s theirs. Some of them moved for these jobs. Others left really solid positions with higher titles elsewhere.
It proves that restaurants go beyond “personal for me” and transcend to “personal for us.” I just wish Chef Jake could see that the standards, the stakes, and the passion he has for Feld is not just in him, but in his entire team. If he did, maybe he’d be able to leave for one night and charge full price for the menu.
Before I decided to write this piece, I went on a listening tour.
I started my listening tour by sending the Instagram post to a series of chef/owners with similar sized teams doing similar restaurant concepts who did have the ability to leave for one night during their first year (even if Chef Jake doesn’t think they exist, they do, all over the country) with just, “Can I get your reaction? Anonymously.” Because of the controversy surrounding Feld, I normally redacted the restaurant name when I asked this.
Responses from chef/owners were sharp. Multiple people I texted called me to rant. One of them said, “Your restaurant should be able to open without you.”
Some of them had empathy. “He’ll figure it out,” one said. “You have to burn out to get your ego out of the way.”
Then, I chased that initial question with Chef Jake’s email remark that the restaurant runs differently than most anywhere else. This got people even more heated. Still, I redacted the restaurant name. I knew enough about Feld to know this was necessary to get a non-biased response from Chicago chefs, especially (controversy plagues Feld and after I disclosed the restaurant everyone had something unrelated to this piece to share with me).
Most of the responses were focused on the same thing I was: that Chef Jake was claiming that his restaurant runs differently than any other restaurant in Chicago. I explained the concept and service, which Chef Jake said would be enough for me to understand how the restaurant was different in his email. Feld is a small team with one turn flat sat, daily changing menu, cooks who serve you dishes sometimes, and identifies as relationship to table—it’s not truly all local or seasonal—restaurant. When I said that to chefs, they told me, “He has contemporaries.”
Most of the time, in response to reading this email from Chef Jake about how his restaurant is somehow different, chefs just gave me names of restaurants that ran similarly (often, their own).
Feld is not run unlike any other restaurant (it’s also not 30 courses, see my marked-up menu below). It fits into a similar vein as minibar, Myriel, Cellar Door Provisions, Schwa, Kiln, Ilis, Coach House, and Tenant.
Each of these has significant elements that Feld has. They all have key differences from Feld and each other, but there’s enough overlap there to mark them as contemporaries on multiple elements (some have daily changing menus with big teams, some have static menus with no front of house, etc). But Coach House, for example, is a teeny tiny team that was still able to operate when Chef Zubair Mohajir went away for months to Top Chef—because he trusts his team immensely. Myriel’s tasting menu is essentially run by a chef de partie while the rest of the team works on the main dining room (the dining room is split by tasting and main menu). And in each of these restaurants, I have eaten there when the chef/owner was not present. Some of them, I have exclusively eaten there while the chef/owner is not present. Which is not me saying that’s how restaurants should run (again, I am talking about one day off), but it is me saying it’s possible.
A tiny team, limited front of house (all beverage), multi-course tasting menu that changes menu items in and out every day isn’t like every other restaurant in the country, but it’s not zero of them. It’s actually pretty standard in American fine dining.
Menu notes: If you remove the broth as a course (most restaurants do), combine multiple dishes served at the same time where you’re instructed to eat them together (most restaurants do), if you remove the vinegar listed here as a course (most restaurants would), and remove the dessert mignardises (most restaurants do), this is 19 courses. If you combine all the desserts together that are served together (most restaurants do, in fact, most restaurants that serve multiple desserts just have one single dessert course listed), it’s 18 courses, which puts Feld in line with a lot of restaurants in the country, like most Omakase.
Feld putting a literal vinegar course and a single piece of ham on their menu shows me that they haven’t yet adjusted the expectations of diners and are pushing to still maintain the “over 20 courses” as their namesake. Feld is not the only restaurant to do course inflation, but it’s a prime example of what that looks like, and it’s something I’m commenting on because I think guests deserve to know the true number of courses on the menu. This is 18 if you’re looking at how most menus are written. It’s 20 if you’re feeling generous. It’s not close to the 30 that Feld has marketed on.
I’ll also note that while Feld might be more courses than a 12 course menu, it’s not necessarily more unique cooking elements. Some 12 course restaurants include meat with veg as one course, where Feld separates them so you get one single thing at a time. For example, many restaurants would serve the concentrated purple carrot alongside the dry aged beef and count that as one course.
While you see lots of mark ups here for EO (execution error), it’s important for me to note that those errors were mostly on temperature and pastry execution, two things that I think would be different if Feld had two more cooks working, and which were not major errors.
3. Your team is the restaurant.
While Chef Jake says that all the special meals at Feld are discounted, it hit a lot of chefs in the gut to see this discount for this specific dinner posted online. Lots of chefs sent it to me. But running the restaurant with your cooks is different than bringing in a cheese guy for a dinner or collaborating with other restaurants. What Chef Jake is saying to guests, whether he wants to or not, is that without the head chef, the meal is worth less.
Maybe it seems dramatic, but the idea that your team isn’t as good without you is the culture that Feld is perpetuating with this messaging. Or, at least, this is how it’s being received by line cooks, sous chefs, and chef/owners I talked to.
I want to be so, so clear: Feld has its accolades because of its team, not just Chef Jake. I want Chef Jake to believe that enough to walk away for a wedding guilt-free, charging what his team is worth: the full cost of the menu.
I get what Chef Jake is saying. Most restaurants in their first year have the chef there almost all of the time. But the messaging that the restaurant doesn’t open without him, the claim that he can’t leave for one night and have service run without him (when it can run down 2 staff people), that is what Jake saying: I am the restaurant.
And hey, chef/owners, that isn’t true. Your team is the restaurant.
Since I started writing this piece, I made a choice to do something I rarely do. I went to 10 restaurants in their first six months, all fine dining. The number of chef/owners in the kitchen? 4/10 restaurants. I asked how often the chef was there. One night, I was there on the only night she hadn’t been in. Ever. Another had a schedule and was off on the slow nights every week. Most of them were there almost all of the time.
The teams ran those kitchens just fine without them. And look, maybe Chef Jake would say Feld is somehow different, but sitting at another long, farm-to-table (this is relationship-to-table, when done correctly) tasting menu running without its head chef, I’m going to say it’s not.
Feld is hotly debated. Some people love it. Some people hate it. But it’s gotten a lot of buzz, regardless. Recently, reviews have shown that the restaurant is getting better.
Chef Jake alone could not get these accolades. Chef Jake with a group of shitty line cooks also couldn’t get them. And Chef Jake alone with a different (but still good) team might not get them. His success is because of his team. When anyone on your team turns over, the restaurant changes. This culture of “the chef is the restaurant” means that chefs and owners miss that and lose their top talent to the void of" “I am the restaurant.” Whether he means to or not, this is the culture of restaurants that hurts the people who work for you.
What the Cooks’ Dinner is saying to Feld’s cooks (and to us) is that Feld only functions at 100% only with Chef Jake there. That the quality is so different, you need a discount. Gonna be honest, if that’s true, Feld can never be Chicago’s best restaurant. And we all know that’s what they’re pushing for: not good enough, but best.
I’ve been to a restaurant functioning at best with just line cooks working a waitlist-only brunch because the sous got drunk and wound up in Philadelphia for the night with a girl from a bar instead of DC (yes) and the chef/owner was clear in another state on vacation. That chef/owner trusted his team enough to open. He was right to trust his team with that.
That’s your best restaurant right there—one functioning at 100% without even a sous chef—not a restaurant that has to close when its owner goes to a single day wedding. That shows proof that people are trained well and feel ownership over the restaurant. When the sous came in, he was scrambling like the restaurant couldn’t function without him, too. He came in out of breath saying, “I’m here, I’m here.” He was met with convivial boos from line cooks who were put in the shits because of him and killing it. One of them said, “We don’t need you,” and threw a towel at him. It was true, though! They didn’t.
That, to me, was kitchen magic.
The thing is, I think Chef Jake’s team would turn up with that same energy. I believe if he called out 30 minutes before service, they’d figure it out. I think the reason Feld doesn’t open without Chef Jake has nothing to do with the quality of his team’s cooking when he’s not there and has everything to do with ego.
After I reached out to chef/owners about Feld’s Cooks’ Dinner, I reached out to the same number of sous chefs and line cooks. “Tell me your response to this,” I said, sending them the Instagram post. Most of them responded something like, “Ouch.” One of them said, “If your restaurant only functions at 75% without you, that’s your fault.” I agree with this sentiment.
Of the 20 line cooks and sous chefs I talked to, only 2 said they’d respond to this positively. And it doesn’t really matter what other people think if the chefs at Feld respond to it positively, but I think it’s worth noting that this culture of “the chef is the restaurant” will hold Feld back from reaching the greatness Chef Jake thinks his restaurant is worthy of. And look, regardless of Feld’s early missteps, I think they’re capable of greatness, too.
In all likelihood, if Chef Jake left his team to run the “normal” menu without him, they’d knock it out of the park. And as any line cook will tell you, they might even find ways that their owner was getting in the way of what their best looks like.
This piece isn't just about a kitchen, it's about good leadership!