Alternatives to Escoffier's brigade system for professional kitchens?
August 31, 2019 12:28 PM Subscribe
My understanding is that Escoffier's brigade system is the only game in town for organizing Western kitchens, but I've read of alternative organizations for, e.g., Singaporean restaurants. What other systems are there for organizing professional kitchens?
Best answer: This is US specific, and with the caveat that I've been out of the restaurant world for 21 years now, but the only places I ever worked that had anything resembling the classical brigade system were large hotels where there were enough staff to form a brigade, or restaurants where the chef had trained under that system and was trying to enforce it, usually with little success.
Most restaurants are too small to have anything other than a flexible team where people did whatever needed to be done. I didn't have to spend a year doing salad prep before I could work the grill - most kitchens in the US are run on a shoestring budget and with the minimal amount of staff possible. During service you worked a particular station (grill, saute, salad, etc.) but that was more for efficiency than for enforcing a rigid hierarchy.
However, no matter how you try to organize it, someone has to be in charge. Someone has to control the flow of service, someone has to make decisions on the spot when things go wrong, someone has to be responsible. This allows everyone else to concentrate on the work at hand, because they know that there is someone looking at the big picture and keeping things organized.
The difference is that in some places this is done in a very authoritarian manner with yelling and screaming, which is probably what you're thinking about in terms of "the brigade," and in other places this is done in a calm, cool, professional manner where people work together to solve any issues and the work goes smoothly. The work to be done and the way the work is done is generally the same, the difference is in the kind of behavior that is tolerated.
The Singaporean restaurant system described reads very much like a brigade to me - rigid structure, command and control management, and very explicit roles. That's what the brigade system is about - the structure, not so much the exact roles. I've talked to a few people who worked in large Chinese kitchens in Hong Kong and on the mainland and the organizational structure they described is very much a brigade.
posted by ralan at 7:39 AM on September 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
Most restaurants are too small to have anything other than a flexible team where people did whatever needed to be done. I didn't have to spend a year doing salad prep before I could work the grill - most kitchens in the US are run on a shoestring budget and with the minimal amount of staff possible. During service you worked a particular station (grill, saute, salad, etc.) but that was more for efficiency than for enforcing a rigid hierarchy.
However, no matter how you try to organize it, someone has to be in charge. Someone has to control the flow of service, someone has to make decisions on the spot when things go wrong, someone has to be responsible. This allows everyone else to concentrate on the work at hand, because they know that there is someone looking at the big picture and keeping things organized.
The difference is that in some places this is done in a very authoritarian manner with yelling and screaming, which is probably what you're thinking about in terms of "the brigade," and in other places this is done in a calm, cool, professional manner where people work together to solve any issues and the work goes smoothly. The work to be done and the way the work is done is generally the same, the difference is in the kind of behavior that is tolerated.
The Singaporean restaurant system described reads very much like a brigade to me - rigid structure, command and control management, and very explicit roles. That's what the brigade system is about - the structure, not so much the exact roles. I've talked to a few people who worked in large Chinese kitchens in Hong Kong and on the mainland and the organizational structure they described is very much a brigade.
posted by ralan at 7:39 AM on September 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
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This Eater article kind of buries the lede, but the last third is basically about how you can be a successful (Michelin-starred) kitchen without buying into the bullshit of the brigade system.
posted by parm at 1:11 PM on August 31, 2019 [5 favorites]