Do any of the chefs cook at their restaurants anymore?

[cotedor]

I have had a few major disappointments at some of our top restaurants in the city. I'm starting to notice a pattern that it seems to be the ones where the chefs have moved on to other ventures and are no longer focusing on their main restaurants. I don't see this at places like Topolobampo, L2O, NoMi where they are there practically 24x7. Has anyone else noticed this?

[gleam]

Well, what are you asking? Are you asking if the chef's are working in the kitchen, or if they're working the line? Bayless is always floating between Xoco/Frontera/Topolo but you'll never see him working the line anymore. Same goes for almost every chef. Some of them might expedite and do quality control, but I don't think you can expect more.

Keep in mind also that the exec. chef has a lot more duties than the dinner service, and that most of the really upscale restaurants have a chef de cuisine who will be doing most of the QC/expediting/new menu development, leaving the executive chef to focus on profit/loss statements and that sort of thing.

So... what restaurants have you been disappointed by?

[Wrigley12]

From what I have read, I agree with gleam. Many restaurants cannot afford to have the chef in kitchen due to the fact that they usually disrupt the flow that normally occurs. This doesn't really bother me when I go out.