Boulder is experiencing a dire shortage of cooks and other restaurant workers. Ask any chef or restaurant owner in town about their biggest challenges — finding and keeping dependable people will top the list. I know it is true. I’m seeing it first-hand in my other life as a prep cook in the kitchen of a local catering company.
Since April I have been cooking about 30 hours a week doing things like making 20 pounds of fruit salad and turning 13 pounds of tortillas into crisp, hot, salty corn chips. (How I ended up cooking in a Boulder commercial kitchen for the first time since the early 1980s is the subject of a different column.)
When I went looking for a cooking job I doubted that anybody would hire me. Who needs a chunky 64-year-old former dining critic with multiple impediments ranging from arthritis and bad elbows to mediocre knife skills for a tough physical job using sharp or sizzling implements?
This kitchen apparently needed me. I’ll always be grateful that the chef and owners took a chance on me. I work hard, and I’ve become a decent prep cook. I’ve seen cooks and chefs come and go. Some local eateries go months or much longer without ever being fully staffed.
There are a limited number of applicants for food jobs, which often start at $11 an hour. Some applicants have had a little experience working in other kitchens. Others are the fresh culinary school graduates with Top Chef fantasies who aren’t prepared for the physical rigors and minor injuries involved in preparing food for four weddings over the course of a single weekend.
Look through Craigslist and you’ll find hundreds of postings for Boulder-area restaurant jobs with subject lines like: “!!!SERVERS NEEDED!!!” and “Night Time Line Cooks-$15/Hr. & $300 signing bonus.”
The reasons for the worker shortage are multiple and varied including the current presidential administration’s business-damaging approach to immigration, the opening of many more restaurants, and competition from the health care, construction and cannabis industries, which offer significantly higher wages.
If you have the interest, skills and stamina, you may be welcomed into a kitchen regardless of whether you are a baby boomer or a millennial.
Tons of free culinary training is also available locally. Approximately 140,000 Colorado high school students take ProStart classes in culinary and restaurant management every year. The Culinary Quick Start program at Denver’s Emily Griffith Technical College is a free, hands-on, four-week course that includes a restaurant-focused job fair. You are basically guaranteed to be offered a job as soon as you complete the course.
What if this trend continues and the supply of cooks continues to dwindle? California-based Miso Robotics has raised $10 million to expand deployment of Flippy the burger-flipping robot at CaliBurger chain restaurants.
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Some late season grilling advice
“Put the onions, either unpeeled or peeled and foil-wrapped, just at the edge of the fire to roast. Remove the charred outside, or the foil, and eat this most pungent and delicious of vegetables while it is hot, crisp, and tender, adding some salt, freshly ground pepper and butter.” — James Beard
Tired of Gatorade?
Athletes have long sipped electrolyte-rich pickle juice straight from the glass jar to fight leg cramps. Meanwhile, many others routinely pour the juice down the drain after chomping the dills. Littleton-based artisan pickle packer TRU made sipping a little easier recently by introducing TRU Juce, a 4-oz shelf-stable pickle juice pouch. Juce is just Tru pickle juice with no calories, no gluten and no sugar.
Local food news
Major foodie event alert: The James Beard Foundation Celebrity Chef Tour dinner Sept. 8 at Boulder’s Black Cat Bistro features an all-star local chef lineup including Patrick Ayres (Cloverdale, Steamboat Springs), Caroline Glover (Annette, Aurora), Sheila Lucero (Jax Fish House), Kyle Mendenhall (Arcana), Kelly Jeun and Eduardo Valle Lobo (Frasca Food and Wine), Will and Coral Frischkorn (Cured), and mixologist Bryan Dayton (Acorn, OAK at fourteenth, Corrida). Tickets: jamesbeard.org/events/boulder … Boulder’s OZO Coffee Company hosts a hands-on beginning barista class Aug. 25 including green coffee, roasting and milk steaming fundamentals. ozocoffee.com/classes … Cellar West Artisan Ales is moving from Boulder to 778 W. Baseline Road in Louisville, where it will reopen as a pub, brewhouse and barrel cellar. … Ashley soft-ripened cheese from MouCo Cheese Co. in Fort Collins took home a silver medal at the American Cheese Society annual competition. … Happy 10th anniversary to Boulder’s Savory Spice Shop.
Taste of the week
I rediscovered the tastiness of the Parkway Cafe, 4700 Pearl St., at a recent breakfast with old friends. I like Parkway’s side dish choices that range from hash browns to home fries and includes French toast and grits. I enjoyed crispy house-made corned beef hash with eggs over easy and sides of green chile and pancakes… a balanced diet. Also recommended at Parkway: chilaquiles and the buenos dias torta, the jefe of breakfast sandwiches.
Words to chew on
“When immigrants farm your food, cook your meals and clean your plates, that’s politics. When trade tariffs affect the price of your whiskey or your fried chicken sandwiches, that’s politics. When the President is involved in lawsuits with celebrity chefs, that’s politics. When you have to save a little extra to eat out because of changes in minimum wage law, that’s politics.” — Food writer Jessica Sidman, Washingtonian.
John Lehndorff is the former dining critic of the Rocky Mountain News. He hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:25 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU (88.5 FM, 1390 AM, streaming at kgnu.org)
