So about five days ago I started working for this semi-fine dining restaurant that I was hired on to help open. I was moving from a pretty labor intensive, less technical fast casual (with rather high standards) kitchen to this place, hoping to beef up my skills and learn more and progress in my professional cooking. I have gained some pretty good chops, and was ready to put in more work and hopefully improve my overall ability and standards. But get this: our training before the soft opening entailed only a few hours of orientation, and quick rundown of what the menu would entail, one and a half days of frantic prep, zero demonstrations of how the dishes were to be prepared, plated, or taste, and three soft-opening days of trial-and-error, on-the-fly learning of these dishes during service (about 75 covers each night). I get that the pressure, learning speed, and work load is heightened in fine dining setting, but am I wrong in expecting such a high standard kitchen to provide at least somewhat decent levels of training on composing dishes and recipes before having staff serve them to the public? The chef/owner boasted and explained that he wanted to work towards Michelin quality service, yet had very few finalized recipes and appeared to have not tested dishes prior to opening (he didn’t even brief his sous chef on all the major, let alone minor, details of preparing the dishes, or how prep should be executed). I would also like to add that the restaurant was originally slated to open at the end of July (which meant he had three whole months to dedicate even a little time to R&D for the menu and set up a semi-efficient and effective plan to train a team of 8 cooks - but didn’t). Or even take a week to prepare his sous chef...

This is not meant to be a venting rant, I am genuinely interested in hearing if this is normal or out of the ordinary, as I am rather new in my cooking career and want to know what to expect when moving on to more fine dining kitchens.

Additional detail:

The menu claimed to source many of its produce and proteins from local farms, yet the chicken, duck, cheeses, and some of the produce were definitely not from the farms listed on the menus. Besides the severe lack of preparation, this seemed to be another red flag. I understand they were having trouble sourcing these items due to the suddenness of their opening, but this just seemed like a flat out lie to the public (their/our friends and family, as it was our soft opening).

I have since decided to no longer be a part of their venture.