What is the difference between sous chef and chef de partie

Working in restaurants or the foodservice industry requires a lot of hands-on experience, but obtaining a Culinary Arts certificate or degree can expand your career choices. Either way, working in a kitchen is the goal.

In every kitchen there are a number of different job roles that keep a kitchen running smoothly in order to deliver orders in a timely manner. In this blog, we review the potential career options available in a restaurant kitchen. Not every restaurant has an executive chef; that title normally applies only to large chains or restaurants. Generally, an executive chef does very little cooking. Their primary role is managing the kitchen and its staff. This includes overseeing and training personnel, planning menus, managing the culinary budget and sometimes purchasing.

To be an executive chef, you need prior experience cooking as well as good management skills to ensure that the kitchen is run efficiently. The head chef remains at the top of the hierarchy in restaurant kitchens without an executive chef.

Like an executive chef, this person controls all aspects of the kitchen. They are responsible for creating menus, controlling kitchen costs, and managing the kitchen staff. Some head chefs leave the cooking to the sous chef and the rest of the team, while others are more hands-on and prefer to be involved in the day-to-day cooking activities. If you have the position of a sous chef, the chances are you already have multiple years of experience in the field and are thriving towards the career of a head chef.

Sous chefs need to be as or even more motivated than everyone else in the restaurant. Sous chefs have many responsibilities within the restaurant, but they are more involved in cooking and communicating with the line cooks. Sous chefs usually do some responsibilities head chefs assing them, and if the head chef is away, sous chef steps in and takes the lead, so they have already awarded with the trust of all in the restaurant. There are some similarities between head and sous chef tasks; however, you can see that they are more involved in the actionable steps at the restaurant.

Sous chefs need to have excellent cooking, organization, and efficiency skills, see the big picture and work well with others.

They are the middle people between the line cooks and head chefs, so the responsibilities are vast. In conclusion, chefs are more involved in the monitoring, planning, ordering, side of things. They need to make sure that the external factors work well that consider the kitchen.

Sous chefs are more involved in the internal side of things under the guidance of the head chef, of course. Line cooks. Things get interesting when talking about line cooks. This is because they are the muscles behind the brain in the restaurant engine , and they are the ones who do most of the cooking. People who have a culinary education can often start their careers from here; however, self-taught chefs often start from the position of a prep cook or dishwasher but more on that later.

Most of the kitchen staff is filled with line cooks, which is understandable because a restaurant can get hundreds of orders per night, so they need a lot of efficiency.

There are many different kinds of line cook jobs out there, such as:. As you can see, there is a great variety of line cook positions, and certainly, not everything of these is within a single restaurant. Also, many restaurants have line cooks that are capable of doing multiple of these. For example, I have been a grill, vegetable, and fish chef at the same time while other days fry, appetizer, short-order chef on others.

Also, when doing mise en place food preparation , many sauces and pantries can be done in advance. All of this really depends on the restaurant. Prep cooks are in charge of mise en place food preparation. Nonetheless, there are specific job descriptions to prep cooks, and their duty is to ensure the mise list is updated, ingredients are handled, and old foods are dealt with. Read also: Why Do Chefs Smoke? Kitchen porters are helping hands of the kitchen whose main purpose and responsibility are to keep the area clean, make sure that kitchen supplies find their places, wash dishes, count inventory, fetch items for the chefs, and even prep food.

Many self-taught chefs can get their foot between the door as a kitchen assistant or prep cook, and they can quickly advance if they show enough skill. They are the helping hands of the kitchen. The 8 positions listed below are the most typical. The Executive chef sits at the top of the kitchen hierarchy; their role is primarily managerial.

Executive chefs tend to manage kitchens at multiple outlets and are not usually directly responsible for cooking. The Head Chef will typically focus on managerial duties relating to the whole kitchen.

For example, they supervise and manage staff, control costs and make purchases, and liaise with the restaurant manager and suppliers to create new menus. The sous chef shares a lot of the same responsibilities as the head chef, however they are much more involved in the day-to-day operations in the kitchen. There is more than one chef de partie and each one is responsible for a different section of the kitchen.

This makes kitchen operations much more productive and helps to coordinate large quantities of meals at busy times.

The commis chef works under the chef de partie to learn the ins and outs of a specific station. The junior chef has usually recently completed, or is still partaking in, formal training.

Kitchen porters assist with basic tasks in the kitchen, and are less likely to have had formal training. Their role typically involves introductory food preparation, such as peeling potatoes, and some cleaning duties. This person is responsible for washing anything that was used in the food preparation and cooking process. Waiters and waitresses work at the front of house and are customer-facing. They serve customers their dishes and anything else they order.

If a customer has a problem with their food, it is the role of the waiter or waitress to report this to the kitchen. The image provided below offers a visual representation of the kitchen hierarchy and how the Brigade de Cuisine operates. We hope that this article has been useful in explaining the Brigade de Cuisine.