Craigslist want ad of the day
A screen shot of the Google search, "how to cook cailles en sarcophage." Credit: Newsday / Erica Marcus
A “popular steak and seafood restaurant” in Glen Head is seeking a sous chef. The ad on Craigslist’s Long Island food-and-beverage job board began predictably enough: “If you have held position of sous chef or are a seasoned line cook who is ready to step into that role, we want to speak to you.”
And what skills should the candidate have? “Candidates should have strong cooking skills, be able to Google direction and recipes and also work with neatness and organization.”
Wait a minute, “be able to Google direction and recipes”? Like, if the daily special is miso cod, the sous chef is expected to use Google’s search to figure out how to make it?
Google is indeed a great tool for finding recipes, and YouTube is a trove of useful instructional videos. I use both of them regularly. But I always thought that creating recipes and teaching the staff to cook them was the job of a restaurant's executive chef, not the job of the World Wide Web.
“Butchering, sauce and soup making and also some dessert experience move you to the top of the list,” the ad continues. Come on, with your smartphone and a pair of earbuds, you can totally bluff your way through those skills.
