“Do or Do Not”- Small Scale Absolutes

May 4, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I can’t identify the music coming from the interior of the burger truck behind my favorite local taproom, but it feels appropriate- an atmospheric endless riffing of electric guitar, like Kurt Cobain vamping on his guitar and deciding whether or not to sing. The sky is overcast, all but guaranteeing a cooler, rainier tomorrow than the last two days of pseudo-warmth. I’ll be back in the kitchen for those, hopefully getting through the day with a minimum of angst.

May is right around the corner, and it’s usually a rough month for my family. Memories of my grandmother and uncle flood through on the anniversary of their deaths, and being in a kitchen- where I tend to feel my grandmother’s presence the most- can make experiences that were already going to be fraught feel downright hostile and ironic. Is whatever I’d be doing just then what they’d want for me? Am I falling short somehow? Who can tell me what they might have wanted?

Nope, no good. I can do my best, but the dead don’t get a say anymore. Our ancestors march behind us, but any rivers we choose to cross, we make the decision alone. We can’t make a song just riffing forever, and the clouds need to empty themselves eventually. Shit or get off the pot.

My dream pie truck is on the metaphorical fire again. I’m piecing together a business plan- a real one, with gratitude and apologies to Chris Gillebeau– and Trying To Do It Right This Time. In a little more than two months, I turn 40. I have plenty of time to make it happen to my own schedule, and I’d promised myself that the winery would be the last time I worked for someone else. Recent events seem to have underlined it for me, and when such disparate minds as my wife, my mother-in-law, my therapist, and coworkers look at me and say “About friggin’ time, you won’t be happy any other way?” That’s a choir you’d better be sitting in the pews for. “You’ve got a song in you, we know it- quit riffing and sing.”

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Kindness by the Cup

January 26, 2026January 29, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / 3 Comments

Ever since I was old enough to actually appreciate hot “adult” beverages, I preferred tea to coffee. In fact, there’s only one coffee drink I really like. It’s a cappuccino with cinnamon and honey that I was introduced to at my favorite West Side writing cafe as a cafe con miel, but I’ve since understood is easier to explain to baristas just as “cappuccino with honey and cinnamon at the bottom.”

I’m drinking that coffee drink right now at Taborspace- the cozy social hall of a church on Mount Tabor where the base of the bell tower was rented out to a series of cafe and fast-eats ventures. Most recently, and popularly, it became the third satellite location of the cafe I worked at nearly a decade ago. I talked briefly with the new faces about the old faces (and recipes, and wall notes, and procedures most likely) still around the main kitchen that used to be my world. Then I took my scone and Only Coffee Drink I Actually Like into the sunny, raftered, cozy hall with Christian-themed stained glass windows that only adds to the vibes.

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Greasing the “#Grindset”

October 19, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

The ups-and-downs of the hospitality industry are no joke. Bosses and owners use words like “feast or famine” to describe the activity between the “busy seasons” and “slow seasons.”

I came from a beach town, where “slow season” meant quiet time. It meant half the local, non-chain ice cream stands and places on the boardwalk simply shuttered from Labor Day to Easter. Kids who wanted/needed summer jobs near their parents summer homes knew they needed to have their applications and resumes in shortly after Valentines Day if they wanted an apron waiting for them by the time Mom and Dad aired out the “life’s a beach” and “Island state of mind” decor.

The winery’s busy season starts around Easter- our “dress rehearsal” for Mother’s Day Brunch- and lasts the entirety of Wedding Season (May- September) with possibly a small lull before the Holiday Party. After New Years Day, however, business goes off a cliff. Hours get cut, and employees cash out reserved PTO to fluff up their checks and pay bills. They find gig work, pursue side hustles, or even pick up per diem jobs at places with skeleton crews and sick time policies.

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The Cult of Pastry

February 23, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V Scene I

At the end of his own weird and raunchy comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare lets us in on his own thoughts regarding passion and madness. Passion, Creativity, and Insanity are the coin of the realm in culinary arts. The work of food writers, celebrity cooks, and media like The Bear parade our damage for the public and make us heroes, horror stories, characters, and even martyrs when we die.

I don’t think for a second it’s somehow undeserved. That’s the part of our lives that kitchen veterans miss and swap stories about. What some people think needs to be done about- or with- that passion, however, has me wondering. How to do you temper, train, guide, and coordinate that kind of raw passion and madness? History would tell us we need to be like the military. Owners and executives who spend more time owning and eating in restaurants than actually making them work tell us we need to lead and manage like a business or a factory- possibly one that turns Dirt into Diabetes.

Personally, I think that the answer to leading and managing cooks is to stop seeking “employees” as much as finding acolytes.

Long shot of a stone hallway in a medieval cathedral — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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Curiosity and Humility- The Not-So-Secret Weapons of Leadership

November 4, 2024November 4, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

When you work in a restaurant, experiencing growth in your skills or knowledge is often a humbling but pretty neat experience.

Imagine for a minute you are a capable chef. You’ve been at it for awhile and a couple cooks reporting to you. You’re not in charge of the restaurant, but the executive chef trusts you to work their will and keep the team performing. You’ve got techniques in your hands and recipes/formulas you trust to get the job done.

One day, one of your cooks- younger or maybe just newer- looks at a method and recipe you just handed them and says, “Hey, why do we do it this way?”

In a moment, a wave of responses flash through your mind: “That’s my method. Who does this little shit think they are? Kids these days are so fucking lazy… that’s the way we’ve always done it…”

You might feel enraged, exasperated, or at the very least annoyed… but there’s something else behind it all. We don’t wanna look at it. We can’t always afford to honor or accept it, so we spend a lot of time pushing it down or numbing it.

Doubt. Doubt and Questions.

It can seriously suck to feel Doubt when you are so used to the meritocracy of the kitchen. Doubt is the mind killer. Doubt is the little death that brings total clusterfuckery. You can’t afford the time or space to doubt.

But, in a moment, you realize “I never asked that question… I just did as I was told.” You look at the cook and finally say “That’s the way we do it here… why? Do you know another way?”

Maybe that cook suggests a method you know (from your knowledge and experience) won’t get the result you need. “We roast the squash rather than steaming because we don’t want the added moisture in the recipe.” “We coddle the eggs so they won’t be so cold the butter seizes when we add them to the batter.”

Maybe they don’t and it’s an honest question. It seems like a wasted step. It seems redundant. In all your knowledge and experience, you can’t explain why that method is so important. “It’s the way we’ve always done it…” it made sense to someone some time ago and no one’s ever been bothered to check their work.

That’s where the growth happens. You either figure out the reason, or you figure out it HAS no reason and it’s a waste. In a meritocracy, you are judged by what you accomplish and are capable of- not what you were, who you know, or how long something as been done your way.

By choosing Curiosity and Humility over Hubris, the answer is found. Dispassionate and clear as a failed sauce or a botched bake. It’s either “this is why’ or “this is a waste.”

Curiosity weaponizes Doubt against itself. Curiosity is powered by Humility. We can’t know everything, or everyone’s experiences.

For me, Curiosity and Humilty are crucial to leading well. If my staff are watching me and hoping to see their future in the field, I need to show them that asking questions and having doubts are good.

They need to see that even the pastry chef, with knowledge and experience, still has a lot to learn and can even learn from them. It’s been a tenet of mine for a long time that if one of my apprentices comes up with a new way to do something that renders a better product, does a job more efficiently, or both, that’s how we do it now. My ego takes a backseat, and if it turns out there’s a problem with that new method, we all learn why.

Imagine what you will learn when you admit you don’t know everything.

Stay Classy,