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It's a Family Affair
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Family meal, staff meal, employee meal, help food—these terms describe a daily restaurant ritual that customers rarely witness. New Jersey restaurants may vary in the way they provide these complimentary meals, but they share the goal of promoting camaraderie among the staff.
Everyone works on the staff menu and dines together in the kitchen before dinner service at Nicholas in Middletown. Everything from steak to pizza to whole roasted fish may be served. “Leftovers are not used,” says chef/owner Nicholas Harary. “We treat our staff with the same respect that we treat our customers.”
“Family meal is one of the most valuable tools a chef has to keep his staff loyal to his establishment,” says executive chef Brian Walter of Acqua in Raritan. Walter, too, serves his staff healthy and delicious meals, not just scraps. One recent menu consisted of romaine salad, Dijon-roasted chicken with broccoli gratin, and rosemary-roasted Idaho potatoes.
At 3:30 pm, everybody from management to hourly employees eats together at Chakra in Paramus. “We call our staff meals family meals. We spend a great deal of time with each other, often more than with our own families,” says executive chef Edward Lake. Latin-inspired cuisine such as South American sancocho, a stew of plantains, yucca, sweet potatoes, and chicken on the bone, is a favorite.
“Family meals, not staff meals—as that sounds like an infection—are served daily,” says Betsy Alger, owner of the Frog and the Peach in New Brunswick. The garde-mangers, usually recent culinary school graduates, take turns preparing nutritious meals. “I find preparing family meals a good way for new cooks to learn organizational skills,” says executive chef Bruce Lefebvre.
Each day, the Manor in West Orange serves diverse ethnic meals to 60 employees from 14 countries. All dishes are freshly prepared. Co-owner and vice president Wade Knowles says that the chicken soup made by a prep-woman from Peru is so delicious, “when it’s served, I rush to the kitchen from my morning meeting before it’s all gone.”
