The Rogue Estate

text encapsulated epicurean elitism

The Joe Head cake, created for an art director at Campbell-Ewald

Sometime over the summer, I got a little ahead of myself and had an “audition” at a local, well-known bakery just to have the experience and see what happened.  I’d say it was an ambitious move on my part, because up until my recent decision to take culinary courses at OCC in Farmington, I was a self-taught baker and kind of took pride in the fact that I knew enough to have gotten a little baking business started.  However, I found out that wasn’t quite enough to work in a bakery.

For one thing, I couldn’t do buttercream roses, which is a staple in traditional bakeries such as the one I found myself in that summer morning.  I’d never been asked to, I explained to the owner, who quickly showed me how to do one and then pretty much dismissed me for the day.  I went home, having learned my lesson and looked forward to my next class at OCC, which was to cover basic cake decorating skills.

Oh, if only that bakery ad had been after I took this course.  After five weeks I had made not only buttercream roses, but royal icing flowers galore.  I was also happy to discover that I had actually figured out how to do some things correctly on my own, but there were still a lot of neat tricks that I learned in that brief time.  It was fun, and exciting to gain new and practical knowledge that I could apply to my business.

But there were a couple of things during this course that didn’t really fly with me. The class, I soon discovered, was meant to teach traditional ideas – as in things you’d find at your typical market or corner bakery.  Stuff your mother or grandmother would fawn over, like pastel roses with trailing vines, and perhaps some delicately piped garlands.  I think it was the garlands that upset me.  They’re so…I don’t know, 1955.  For some reason, they irritated me like Steve Allen and his completely unfunny sense of humor.  I believe they make me want to punch someone.

There were also some things the chef instructor commented on regarding my work that I just didn’t agree with.  Colors, she insisted, had to be on the intense side – reds the color of tacky nail polish, blues the shade of a gumball.  Yes, all appropriate on children’s cakes and the like, but not my style at all.  I complained to my commercial interior designer husband one afternoon about theses outlandish expectations, and he responded with some good advice:  Take what they teach you, and make it your own.

I took his words to heart.   Once I got through the damn course with its garish greens and over-stimulated oranges, I’d use my new skills to further my designs and hopefully make myself more noticeable in the market and, ideally, successful in what I do.  And I know I ain’t gonna get rich from it, but anyone who has a creative outlet knows the joy of being in that zone and just letting what’s inside come out and have a day in the sun.  And that, I know, is something they can’t teach.

150 West, by Kerry Gluckman of K. Evan Designs

I keep asking myself….”Why me”?

Why would a group of professional chefs and dedicated food snobs ask me to be a member of their secret society? I am not a particularly accomplished chef, (although I make a mean omelet). And while I do have a fairly discerning palette, so do many others. I have eaten in some fine and not-so-fine restaurants but that hardly makes me special. So I guess it must be the fact that I’ve spent the last 25 years as a commercial interior designer and have designed and overseen the construction of some 75-plus restaurants and food service projects. Some of these projects you may have heard about: Zingermans Roadhouse (Ann Arbor), Copper Canyon (Southfield), Rocky’s Rotisserie (Novi), Edamame Sushi (Madison Heights) and The Stage & Co. in West Bloomfield, just to name a few.

My focus is not where the food is being prepared but rather where it is being consumed, otherwise referred to as ”the front of the house”. That is where my unique perspective comes into play and that, I believe, is why I have been shown the secret handshake and taken the vows.

I recently had the pleasure of participating in two Rogue Estate dinner parties, one at the home of good friend and fellow Rogue Ian Malbon and most recently at my own home as it was my wife’s turn to host and lead the preparations. Both evenings were memorable for the food consumed, beverages sipped and level of banter overheard. Chefs, it seems, are a bawdy and profane group. And I mean that as a positive -it was very entertaining!

It was at the last event that I was asked to participate and thus offer my first blog to Rogue Estate.

My Restaurant Philosophy

I have a fairly simple criteria for judging restaurants: Is the price paid for your meal a pleasure to pay or a burden?

Take this example.  Tribute, one of my all time favorite restaurants which is sadly now defunct was an ornately designed monument to gastronomy and was very, very pricy. However, both times my wife and I dined there we had amazing meals. The food, service and decor were of an extremely high caliber and paying $150.00-$200.00 for our meal did not offend me in the least.  Conversely, I clearly recall walking out of Morton’s Steakhouse in Southfield before even being served. In a boring, pedestrian and clichéd setting, it took over ten minutes for the waiter to even stop by, water our table and take our drink orders.  By then, we were getting antsy. He then proceeded to take another ten minutes to bring us our drinks, which were totally incorrect and had to be returned. It was at this point I asked the hostess for another server and while we waited many more minutes for our new waiter to arrive we glanced at the menu and saw the entrée prices ranging from $40.00 to $75.00. It was at this point, with a high degree of negativity in the air, that we got up and excused ourselves, much to the chagrin of the flustered hostess She made valiant attempts to get us to stay, even at one point offering us her first born but alas, it was too late! Our evening was already ruined before it even began. Whatever we would have paid would have been too much!

As a designer I like high quality design, but that alone cannot save a place with poor food and poor service. With that said, a “dump” with excellent food and service can survive and even thrive……go figure. Restaurant gestalt is a delicate balance between atmosphere, service and food preparation, and if any one of these elements are out of whack the entire endeavor can come tumbling down.   A great example is my all time favorite Detroit restaurant, Roma Café in the Eastern Market. It’s an unremarkable looking place, and looks as if it was decorated by somebody’s grandmother in the 1950’s.  However, with excellent food, service and prices (not to mention singing waiters), I have eaten there many times and have never been disappointed.

To summarize, no matter how good a restaurant looks, if the food sucks word will get out and people will not come.  Good food trumps all else!

In the coming months I hope to share some restaurant reviews, general thoughts on design and other restaurant related insights with you and my fellow Rogue Estate members.

Until then I bid you adieu.

Kerry Gluckman

Chef. The word gets thrown around a lot lately. The advent of the Food Network has done much to further this phenomenon, and has even catapulted some chefs to celebrity status. Something that wasn’t even thought possible just 20 years ago. There is much debate among us as to whether or not this is a good thing, but it is what it is. Most of us prefer to be sequestered away in our kitchen, far from the prying eyes of the public at large. Toiling in our secluded little universe so you can enjoy your night out, date, anniversary, -insert special occasion here-. Quite happy to not have to deal with you face to face. Toiling quite hard, in most cases, might I add. Understaffed, underpaid, overworked. This is a condition that is industry wide. We’ve worked very hard for the title of “chef”, so it get’s under my skin a little when non-professionals try to take on that moniker.

In the classic French use for the word (derived from “chief”, by the way), it refers specifically to the leader of a professional kitchen. Not even the other cooks in the same kitchen fit this title, only the boss. The other cooks (again, in the classic French brigade system) all have their own titles. Garde manger, saucier, patisier, ect.. Time has changed the meaning, however. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. I do think the definition could be expanded to include dedicated professionals. Those of us that consciously try to become better at what we do everyday, and have been doing it for longer than 10 years or so. Formal education, i.e. college/culinary school, doesn’t always help, either. I’ve met more than a couple kids right outa culinary school that were nearly worthless in a restaurant kitchen. This seems to be a person to person occurrence, however. Everyone takes away something different from schooling, and some that go to culinary school only go because they think it’ll be, pardon the pun, a cakewalk. The industry shakes these people off pretty quickly, however, when they get into the real world and are confronted with the stress, working conditions, hours, and the band of not-so-merry mercenaries they have to work with. Regardless, this is a title that I have worked very hard to attain. I’ve earned my stripes, done my time, paid my dues, and it wasn’t easy. Several times I was ready to walk away from professional cooking and not look back, but this is all I know. Anyway, I could never survive the regular 9-5 Officespace world. That would end very poorly, to say the least…

In my mind (and this might just be me, but I doubt it) “chef” is a title that is earned through hard work, dedication, blood, sweat, tears, and countless burns. I get shivers, and somewhat agitated, when I hear someone say they are a chef that doesn’t even work in a kitchen. It also makes me want to slap the piss out of someone that calls them self a chef and follows it with “I work at Red Lobster”. You’re not a chef, dude, your a cook…. and there’s nothing wrong with that! Just accept it! You’re a cook! Don’t try to make yourself feel better by pasting a title on yourself that you didn’t earn. I find it demeaning to my efforts and hard work when the word chef is thrown around lightly. I don’t go around calling myself a doctor just because I have a decent knowledge of human anatomy, and you’re not a chef!

I HAVE encountered a few that I let slide on this issue, however. The rest of the guys here at R.E. for instance. Currently there are only two of us that cook professionally. The others get a pass, and not just because I can tolerate being in the same room with them for longer than 10 minutes, but because they are very dedicated and have great intuition regarding food and drink. My knee-jerk reaction is still to cringe when I hear it, though.

So, maybe the term could stand to be re-defined, but it’s still gonna be a touchy subject with me. Then again, there are a lot of those…

Jack