The professional kitchen is organized as a brigade: a hierarchy of ranks, each responsible for a station, with every plate passing through a single inspection point before it reaches the dining room. The structure dates to Auguste Escoffier, the late nineteenth century French chef whose brigade system organized the modern professional kitchen, and it still runs most serious kitchens today. This page sets out the ranks, the pass and the front of house counterpart, then turns to what the chefs interviewed for my books say about coming up through the brigade and what they changed when they ran their own.
The brigade as Escoffier organized it and as it runs today
Escoffier divided the kitchen into stations under a single chain of command, so that a large kitchen could produce many dishes at once to one standard. A modern restaurant kitchen keeps the logic and compresses the roster: a chef, one or two sous chefs, a handful of chefs de partie, and the commis and stagiaires beneath them. A hotel kitchen, feeding several restaurants, banqueting and in room dining, runs closer to the full structure, with an executive chef over several chefs de cuisine. Technical proficiency is assumed at every level: the commis is expected to know the basic cuts on day one, the sous chef to run a station alone.
The ranks, from the top
The executive chef heads the whole culinary operation: at a hotel, every kitchen on the property, the menus, the purchasing, the hiring and the brigade’s culture. At a standalone restaurant the chef and the executive chef are usually the same person. The separate page on what an executive chef does covers the role in full.
The chef de cuisine runs a single kitchen. In a hotel this is the chef of one restaurant under the executive chef. In a restaurant it is the chef’s deputy, who owns the line in the chef’s absence and, in the best kitchens, shares authorship of the food. David Kinch at Manresa is explicit about it.
“I’ve learned that it’s important to rely on my chef de cuisine.” David Kinch, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)
The sous chef is second in command on the line: runs service when the chef steps away, checks the mise en place of every station, orders, schedules and trains. Eric Ripert counts a sous chef’s suggestion among the sources he draws on for the menu at Le Bernardin.
The chef de partie runs a station. The classic stations are sauce; fish; meat, including the roast and the grill; garde manger, the cold kitchen responsible for salads, terrines and cold starters; and pastry, which in a large kitchen is almost a separate brigade under a pastry chef. A chef de partie is the first rank with real authority: the right, in a kitchen that runs properly, to pull a plate that does not meet the standard before it reaches the pass.
The demi chef de partie assists on a station and covers it when the chef de partie is off. The commis is the junior cook, assigned to a station to learn it and moved between stations over the first years. Kai Speth, long before he ran hotels, was a commis de cuisine at a one star Michelin restaurant in Hamburg. The stagiaire is the unpaid or barely paid trainee serving a stint in the kitchen of an established chef. In the book I describe the stagiaire years as a long, deliberate sorting: the same cut repeated, the same fish broken down, until the kitchen and the cook both know whether this is a person who will do the work for twenty years. The kitchen porter, or steward, washes, cleans and keeps the kitchen supplied. George Cozonis and Tom Roelens both started there, washing dishes.
The pass and who stands at it
The pass is the strip of stainless steel between the kitchen and the dining room where finished plates pause for a final inspection. The chef stands at it during service, or the chef de cuisine or sous chef does when the chef is away. It is the kitchen’s equivalent of the general manager’s lobby walk: a place to see. The chef at the pass catches a temperature six degrees too cool, reads the body language of the saucier whose station is falling behind, and tastes the third spoonful of the same sauce against the first. Éric Frechon of Epicure at Le Bristol puts it plainly.
“Being present in the kitchen and always checking the work are essential ingredients to consistency and to successfully leading a team.” Éric Frechon, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)
Enrico Crippa at Piazza Duomo in Alba puts the same posture as a question.
“How can I ask my team to sacrifice if I don’t get my own hands dirty?” Enrico Crippa, chef of Piazza Duomo in Alba
The front of house counterpart
The dining room has its own brigade. The maître d’ runs the room; the captains, or chefs de rang, run sections of tables with commis de rang beneath them; the sommelier runs the wine program. Tom Roelens remembers his days as a commis de rang, allowed only to carry the plates out and hand them to the captain or maître d’, who engaged with the guests. The two brigades meet at the briefing before service, where the chef, the maître d’, the sommelier and the captain review the night’s reservations. In the better kitchens the sommelier is also part of the creative process: Richard Ekkebus at Amber brings the sommelier in to taste a dish as it nears completion. The separate page on what a maître d’ does covers the room in more detail.
Coming up through the brigade
The chefs in the book describe their years inside this structure with a consistent lack of romance. Albert Adrià entered El Bulli at fifteen because his brother Ferran was head chef and needed cooks. He did not want to be a chef and had no idea what cooking entailed.
“For two years I moved from station to station, learning everything I could.” Albert Adrià, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)
He ended up in the bakery, drawn to the level of knowledge and technique a good baker requires. Sven Elverfeld completed an apprenticeship as a pastry chef and then another as a chef. Guillaume Galliot worked in a brasserie, did pastry and cooked in a hospital before finding the part of the industry that excited him. José Andrés, on the pastry section at El Bulli, watched the pastry chef tell Ferran Adrià there was no point building the dessert cart on a cold April day with no reservations, and heard Ferran reply that today he would love to see the best dessert cart. The chefs who came through this way talk about acceptance: submitting to a master before you have earned the right to imagine being one.
What they changed when they ran their own
The structure survived. The tone inside it did not. Le Bernardin moved, around the year 2000, from the authoritative culture it had inherited to the calm one it operates today, on the argument that a standard as demanding as Eric Ripert’s cannot be sustained by a brigade operating on fear. Emma Bengtsson at Aquavit names patience as the discipline that makes an open kitchen possible, with a second half most leaders find harder.
“On the flip side, as head chef, knowing when to ask your team questions and when to let them solve problems for themselves is equally important.” Emma Bengtsson, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)
The second change is in who gets to contribute. Galliot at Caprice runs the kitchen as coach and collaborator, cooking with his cooks rather than over them, so that the chef de cuisine and the senior cooks run their own development line and the chef tastes and edits. Joan Roca learned at El Celler de Can Roca that managing a large team in an inclusive way, based on all their various talents, was the only sustainable path. The third change is in hiring. Jonnie Boer put every applicant through a few days on trial and told me that experience was not that important; he looked for passion, perseverance and the right personality. The chef accepts, sometimes, a commis two notches below what the kitchen needs technically, because that gap closes and the character gap never would. The site’s question on how to become an executive chef and the question on whether culinary school is worth it follow the path from commis upward.