About Alejandro Cantagallo

Growing up in Queens, the son of immigrants, Alejandro had an early start in the food world helping his father out in the family's butcher's shop. Throughout his twenties he worked his way through the front of the house at a number of north shore country clubs and later shifted gears and started culinary school at CUNY CityTech. In 2010 Alejandro opened Floresta and despite acclaim closed a year later. Currently, he is a senior college lab technician in the purchasing and operations arm of the Hospitality Management Department at CUNY New York City College of Technology and is also an adjunct professor in the same department. Alejandro's current instructional workload includes Culinary 1 and Introduction to Food and Beverage Management.

Have all the training grounds for chefs disappeared?

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Alejandro Cantagallo

In the 1990s, the handful of restaurants where talented up-and-coming cooks wanted to work were four-star (or aspiring to it), French, and run with precision. What distinguishes Lespinasse—the showpiece of the St. Regis Hotel from its opening in September 1991 until its closing in April 2003—is not only its position as a groundbreaking restaurant among its contemporaries, but also its storied reputation as a proving ground: the place where young, ambitious cooks were molded or broken.

Food for thought about how we grow food

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Alejandro Cantagallo

MOREL MUSHROOM WARNING: PRICES COULD DROP 50 PER CENT

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Alejandro Cantagallo

That’s the warning from a leading mushroom expert at an information session held in Yellowknife on Tuesday.

The territory is expecting its biggest-ever morel mushroom harvest in the burn areas left behind by last year’s devastating forest fire season….

An Indispensable Guide To Cutting Any Recipe In Half

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Alejandro Cantagallo

From the Huffington Post:

Recipes are great. They encourage us to try new spices and play with different techniques. The only problem is that sometimes they make way too much food. Sure, there are occasions when we need to make chicken dinner to feed eight people, but those times are rare. Sometimes a couple dozen cupcakes are necessary, but we only want to bake a half dozen more often than not.

3 Kitchen Commandments from Anthony Bourdain

Posted on March 28, 2015 by Alejandro Cantagallo

On Lists
I’m a big believer in lists, which focus the mind and serve as a reference point. When I worked in restaurant kitchens, the very first thing in the morning, I’d write the day’s prep lists, go through the refrigerators and see what I had and what needed to be used quickly, and take stock of what was missing. I’m also a strong believer in forward motion. A less-than-great decision is better than no decision or endless dithering. Improvise, adapt, go forward. And remember that credit and blame accrue to the chef in equal proportion. If your subordinates fail, it’s your failure. To blame others is loathsome. That itself is failure.

On Punctuality
I devoted an entire chapter of Kitchen Confidential to my old mentor, Bigfoot, whom I described as “a bully, a yenta, a sadist and a mensch…the most stand-up guy I ever worked for.” Bigfoot had a rule: Arrive 15 minutes early for your shift. The first time I was 14 minutes early, I was advised that the next time it happened, I’d be sent home and lose the shift. And the next time after that, I’d be fired. I was never late again for any job, and I instituted the same policy in my kitchens. To this day, I’m pathologically early to every engagement—business or social. Arrival time is an expression of respect; it reveals character and discipline. Technical skills you can learn; character you either have or you don’t.

On Knives
Knife skills are the first thing you learn in a kitchen. Whenever I saw cooks muscling a red pepper with a dull blade, I’d put them on knife-heavy prep, doing basic cuts again and again and again until they got it right. Most of the really gruesome wounds I witnessed on the job (or wrapped up before rushing a bleeding cook to the ER) came from rotary slicers or can edges—not knives. I made sure my cooks had a good chef’s knife, a flexible fillet knife for fish, an offset serrated knife and a paring knife. Some butchering hotshots also had the super-skinny remnants of a knife they’d ground down to a thin jailhouse shank and were using to scrape meat off the bone.

Link here to original blog post in food and wine. Thank you to Prof. Moore for sharing this great advice piece.

NY’s secret weapons…

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Alejandro Cantagallo

A nice tribute to the people who are never mentioned but always counted on. For many new food professionals the lights of attempted fame can be blinding, but for these folks the allure of making things work and being the best at what you do is enough.

In the NYC restaurant world, when an eatery gets a good review or a high rating, it’s typically the executive chefs, owners and managers that get all the glory. But the real backbone of every restaurant is never any of these boldfaced names; it’s the quiet, skillful, passionate folks who toil behind the scenes without high title or recognition, making sure that all the key elements of the restaurant are in place each night. Today, 10 of these unsung heroes will finally get their due. We scoured NYC’s kitchens looking for them — everyone from a dedicated Mile End dishwasher to Michael White’s low-key pasta master. Read on to hear their untold stories and learn their secrets to success.