When feeding the staff comes first

Family meal at Parche in Oakland, California, includes Colombian classics like a smashed fried plantain (patacón) topped with fried rice (atollado), braised beef (carne desmechada) and salsas. The family meal tradition of serving workers before customers is getting new life as a perk, a motivator and a teaching tool. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

WHEN Eric Ripert was a young cook at La Tour D’Argent, possibly the oldest restaurant in Paris and certainly one of the stuffiest, all the cooks sat down before service to a proper French meal: appetiser, entree, dessert and cheese.

He is hardly nostalgic for his time there. (“I have PTSD” from the experience, he said.) But he had that meal in mind when he posted a job opening for “Staff Meal Chef” at Le Bernardin, his temple of seafood in Manhattan, New York, making it possibly the first US restaurant to hire a chef just to cook for its own employees.