EXECUTIVE CHEF AT AGE 21 – Part 25

CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY

By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil

President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada

Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum

chandij@sympatico.ca

The Acid Test

On my second day at Coral Gardens Hotel, the Manager had gone out to do some public relations (PR) with the Inspector of Police in charge of the Hikkaduwa police station. After working the whole day in my new role as the Executive Chef, I returned to my apartment around 6 pm. Soon after that, I heard a loud bang on my door. Two leaders of the hotel union – Edmond and Kalansooriya, had turned up to see me. The younger and more aggressive, Kalansooriya said, “We have a big problem in the staff canteen. You should come there immediately!” I enquired, “What’s the problem?” “We will explain when you come”, Edmond said. “OK, I will be there in five minutes,” I told them.

When I got to the staff canteen about 50 employees were standing outside the staff kitchen holding their plated dinners, waiting for me. Most employees were provided with full-board accommodation in staff quarters behind the hotel. “The fish curry served to us this evening, is made with spoilt fish!” I was told. I took a plate, tasted it and agreed with the union that the fish was not fresh. While all 50 employees were watching how I handled this hostile situation, I spoke with the staff cook who prepared the dinner and instructed him that in the future, if he was ever unsure of the quality of anything issued for staff meals, he should return the item to the stores and inform me immediately.

I then checked with the staff cook what alternative dish he could prepare as quickly as possible if I sent a cook from the main kitchen to help him. We decided that an egg curry will be made within 20 minutes to be served with already prepared rice, tempered potatoes and coconut sambol. I then addressed the 50 employees in Sinhala, apologised for the delay and said, “Your dinner will be ready in 20 minutes.”

Twenty minutes later the dinner was served. Most of those employees seemed satisfied, but not the union leaders. “For today, we will accept your solution, but any repetition of such incidents will not be tolerated by the union”, Edmond warned. I felt that he was being unfairly provocative, but I decided to be as patient as possible. Calmly but firmly, I told him looking him in the eye, “Look here, the poor-quality dinner was prepared by a member of your own union. This time, I will pardon him with a warning letter, but if it happens again, I will fire your member. Do you understand?” Edmond looked baffled, and did not talk any more. There was pindrop silence while I walked back to my apartment.

That evening, my father telephoned to check how I was doing in my new job. I told him about the incident. My father, who was a civil administrator, said, “Oh I see, Chandana. That was an acid test.” When I asked the meaning of that term, my father said that, “The union was checking if you were real gold!” and loudly laughed. “Son, you did well, but watch your back”, he warned. Later, I learnt that the whole incident was set up by the union with help from the stores to find some old fish for the ‘acid test’. My father was right.

I also discovered that all hotel union leaders belonged to Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) which had been founded in 1935 with Marxist-Leninist ideals. In 1975, this party left the coalition government led by the Prime Minister Sirima Badaranaike, and became more aggressive in leading the unions they controlled. The LSSP organized a series of one day strikes as a warning to the government. Edmond, a Restaurant Butler was the old school type of union leader. Kalansooriya, a barman, was young, more educated and more radical. As I looked after the kitchen, stores, restaurant and bars, they both worked in my departments and reported to me. I decided to keep a close eye on them out of the 50 employees who reported to me directly. The hotel had around 100 full-time employees and the other half reported to the Manager through a few supervisors.

Researching the Hotel History

In anything we do, understanding the past always helps in building a brighter future. Often, cultures of hotels are shaped by the previous managers/leaders. The good, the bad and the ugly sides of their personalities, leadership styles and habits seem to impact hotel culture for some time, even long after their departures. As a new and young manager, I decided to research the hotel’s history and culture.

Coral Garden Hotel had different phases of development over the last 100 years. Its location was the best in Hikkaduwa. It was a small rest house until expanded into a hotel in mid-1960s by Ceylon Holiday Resorts Limited floated by a group of investors. It was one of the first hotels to be opened in Ceylon in 100 years, since the opening of the famous three – Mount Lavinia Hotel, Galle Face Hotel and Grand Oriental Hotel in the mid-1860s. Coral Gardens was one of the first three hotels to open in the mid-1960s, encouraged by tax concessions to tourism and hotel developers. Barberyn Reef and Blue Lagoon were the others to open at that time.

At a time when Ceylon did not have a single hotel school, the owner’s choice of manager when Coral Gardens opened was Carl Young, a legendary hotelier, probably the first Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) to be professionally trained in hotel management in Europe in the 1950s. He was a former trade union leader at the famous Galle Face Hotel. Its British owners, in an attempt to weaken the union, had sent Young to Europe for training in hotel management. On returning to Ceylon after his training, and resigning from the union, he had been promoted as a departmental manager. Unfortunately for me, I never had the opportunity of meeting this pioneer. Two decades later, when I worked as the Consultant to the Chairman of Galle Face Hotel, Cyril Gardiner, I heard more interesting stories about Young.

In the mid-1960s, a large group of experienced workers loyal to him left the Galle Face Hotel to join him at Coral Gardens Hotel he was opening. Most of them were from the southern part of the island closer tha Colombo to Coral Gardens. Carl had also hired many fellow Burghers (a small Eurasian ethnic group descended from Portuguese, Dutch or British) as they were culturally westernized and fluent in English. In the early 1970s, Young migrated to Australia. Four successors who managed Coral Gardens Hotel over the next four-year period thereafter, could not match Young’s charisma, leadership style, knowledge, popularity or stability.

When Indrapala Munasinghe (Muna) and I took over its management in October 1975, a majority of the supervisors and clerical employees who were at Coral Gardens were those Burgher gentlemen who were loyal to Carl Young. As a result, the hotel culture was very different to that of Bentota Beach Hotel. I decided to include two popular dishes, ‘Lobster Carlo’ and ‘Chicken Maureen’, named after the popular manager and his wife, in my first à la carte menu as featured items. That gesture of respect proved very popular, among hotel employees.

Challenging the Boss/Baas

In settling down in my new job as the Executive Chef, most of my work involved creating a 14-day rotating menu for lunch and dinner for full-board guests, new buffet menus and an à la carte menu. As the hotel was criticised by the locals for exclusively using Colombo suppliers, I tried to increase purchases of mainly fish, vegetables and fruit from them.

When I commenced training the kitchen brigade on new dishes, I encountered a new challenge. The head cook frequently undermined my authority and disagreed with me publicly. He was about 30 years older than me and well-experienced. He had joined the kitchens of Galle Face Hotel, a few years before I was born. Understandably, he was reluctant to report to a youngster like me with very little experience. He was stubbornly stuck to some older methods and was resistant to modernizing the menus to suit changing tastes of tourists. I decided that I had to put him in his place sooner than later. Next time he disagreed with me about the preparation method of a dish, I decided to take the bull by the horns and challenged him to a cooking competition.

The head cook was respectfully addressed by the cooks as baas unnehe (boss gentleman). “Baas, as you are so sure that your method is better than mine, let’s each prepare the dish using our own method and ask the kitchen brigade to choose the better tasting and better presented dish.” He agreed, and we commenced the competition immediately. I took a chance with this challenge as most of the old-timers in the kitchen were loyal to baas.

I made it a friendly competition. “Baas and I have decided to consult all of you today about the future recipe of one of the most popular dishes of this hotel”, I announced. Then I asked the cooks to stand in a circle to watch baas and I while we were cooking. As they never had such consultation in the past, they were excited. The dish was ‘Lobster Thermidor’ and I did not like baas’s version using an ‘old fashioned’ thick white sauce with a lot of flour. My version was lighter, with less cooking time and ended with a little brandy.

We both cooked at the same time, and the cooks were the judges of the recipe, cooking method, duration, taste, presentation and the cost. My version of the dish was overwhelmingly popular and was voted as the clear winner. With that one incident I commanded lots of respect in the kitchen. When leading a team of skilled workers, nothing is a better motivator than the technical skills of the manager.

Baas immediately changed his attitude and became an obedient member of my kitchen team. Eventually, after a few weeks, he left Coral Gardens to join The Village at Habarana. I was thinking, ‘good riddance’, but gave him a good farewell. After some training, I promoted the ‘hotel school-trained’ kitchen clerk’, Winston Daniel as the kitchen supervisor and my number two in the kitchen. Years later when I became the General manager of The Village, I met baas again. By then he had retired from hotels and had become a small businessman settled in Habarana. We continued to have a cordial relationship. When I addressed him as ‘baas unnehe’ in Habarana, he was pleased, as he felt respected.

Improving the Team Spirit and Food

After that episode in 1975, I used a more participative style in menu planning and kitchen management. I asked each cook to prepare and showcase each of their favourite dishes. As a team we picked the best also with serious consideration of changing the tastes of our guests. This proved to be a highly successful approach, which I continued throughout my career in hospitality. By the end of the month, the team was ready. All were re-trained, menus were printed, and suppliers contracted. We were ready for the tourist season, my first as an Executive Chef.

Having done my research, I was ready to start the tourist season with a bang to make a name for myself as a creative Executive Chef. I used all I learnt during my rewarding year as the Trainee Executive Chef at Bentota Beach, such as organizing buffets with a wide variety of dishes and decorations. I taught myself skills such as cooking Chinese food that the Ceylon Hotel School did not teach then. I also had a few private lessons on cake decorations with a well-known pastry making teacher in Colombo. Using my childhood experience in sculpture, I also learnt to do butter carvings and ice sculpture to improve buffet decorations. The first Sunday lunch buffet we did was a big success in terms of quality, variety, presentation, popularity and profits.

Making a Name

I also commenced a weekly barbecue dinner buffet brainstorming with the restaurant team on the ideal location for this new weekly feature. As it was convenient to them, they suggested laying it just outside the restaurant. Having consulted the tour leaders and a few long-staying guests, I identified the beach as the better location and managed to convince the restaurant team led by the union leader, Butler Edmond, that a little extra work taking all items further to the beach may improve guest satisfaction and waiters’ tip earning potential. That worked.

The surrounding coconut trees, sounds of the waves of the Indian Ocean, fishing boats beyond the reef with flickering lanterns created a positive first impression for our beach barbecues. The sky with a galaxy of stars, the moonlight, and the gentle sea spray created a magically romantic mood. We enhanced the ambience with fire torches, limbo dancers carrying flaming torches and calypso music and finally, with the buffet decorations and aromas of the freshly barbecued fish and meat. It was a big hit!

Many of the repeat guests were highly impressed by the improved menus, theme nights, buffets and decorations. We made a good name for our food and service. The Sunday lunch buffets attracted many well-to-do Sri Lankans from Galle and other nearby towns as well as guests from other hotels. Satisfied tour leaders had praised the ‘improved’ operation and food quality at the head office which in turn complimented the Hotel Manager, Muna and I, for commencing the 1975 tourist season with a bang.