Like my physician wife, I wear two hats, figuratively and occupationally. In another post, I've compared my two occupations as I saw them, then. Here, while on sabbatical leave from my academic position, I jot down a segment of a conversation in my head, as the academic in me queries the cook in me, from the ivory tower looking into the kitchen.
M: Do you use recipes which require exact amounts or proportions of ingredients?
C: No I don't. In fact, my food is only as good as my palate. As I taste creations, especially sauces, I adjust ingredients as I go but never keep track of seasonings. When I wrote a book which had recipes, naturally that changed a bit. But day in and day out, taste, sight, smell, and sometimes, feel are the senses which drive my creativity. When we hit a desired mark with a dish, we may try to keep the proportions consistent, but that is the extent of it.
M: So, you do not use any non-trivial Mathematics?
C: That is not true at all. If I understood what my high school Algebra teacher always told me, Math is supposed to make you think better. And by better, I mean more analytically. The rigor and discipline developed by repetition and focus is a valued life skill. When I am faced with a challenging set of deadlines and tasks, I always think about what one of my culinary instructors taught me about mise en place. After that, I use my analytical skills to efficiently place tasks in actionable pigeon holes. Ultimately, my goal is to prepare the tastiest food for my guests in a timely manner, while ensuring that I stay true to my pledge about sourcing and sustainability.
M: That's great. I also try to teach my students that, but I don't think they buy it. What I meant is that you don't use equations in your business, do you? I mean, I can see how one would, but I don't think real-life people actually did that. Do they?
C: Funny that you mention equations. I was fortunate to attend a high school where many of my teachers tried to push the students to see beyond the course syllabus and learning outcomes. I remember something about Linear Programming and the Simplex Method. About four months ago, we changed the concept at Cress shifting to serving exclusively "Chef's Tables" and tasting menus for the bulk of our dining room. We also knew that we wanted the cooks (all two of them, myself included) to be intimately involved in the service of the food. But the only way we could achieve that would be by cutting the volume of our restaurant, significantly. As we planned the logistics of that radical transformation, I began thinking carefully about the plan from an optimization point of view. As I saw it, we were constraining ourselves with seating capacity, size of tasting menus, all-inclusive menu price before state sales tax, hours of operation, length of dining times, days of operation, historical tendencies of our guests learned from being in business for seven years, etc. Yet, at the end of the day, we didn't want to compromise the financial health of the restaurant (the objective function). I managed to model our problem as a Linear Programming Problem and used an online tool to solve it using the Simplex Method. We've set our booking times to closely pattern the optimal solution. My wife, Jenneffer, does a tremendous job of executing our model for reservations. Sometimes, guests don't see that, but we often will turn away potential business if we think it compromises the quality and financial feasibility of our concept.
M: I wish I had thought of that. How is all that working for you?
C: That may be the most frequently asked question since we changed our concept. Not meaning to sugar quote (pun intended), but so far, so Grrrrreat!
M: My students are always leery of applications of what I teach them, especially in non-majors classes. Would you be a guest speaker in one of my classes when I return to my full-time academic position in August 2016?
C: Certainly. I don't think I will have a choice.