Chef Position
An established North Shore upscale restaurant, gourmet market is seeking a Head Chef. The restaurant focuses on classic French bistro dishes and refreshing Italian trattoria fare while the market has wonderful international prepared foods, soups, sauces, pastas, breads, pastries, wine, cheese and more. Our menu is composed of signature dishes and customer favorites but the new chef will be able to with desire to create interesting specials and expand on many dishes if needed. We do have a library of recipes to learn and follow from Convito’s founder, and this is a large portion of the daily work. It is a great opportunity to manage a scratch kitchen while providing delicious and interesting food for our customers.
Salary & Benefits
Negotiable salary, depending on experience and hours.
Medical, dental insurance and no late hours usually past 10pm.
Open 7 days a week, closed 5 major holidays.
Expected to work long hours preceding holidays and over 50+ hours per week sometimes more.
2 weeks paid vacation.
Expectations & Skills Required
- Culinary degree a plus. Italian Cuisine Experience Required.
- 3 to 5 years' experience as a Chef or Sous Chef managing a scratch kitchen
- Training and supervisory experience a must (our kitchen 10-15 staff members)
- Authentic regional Italian and/or French cooking experience a plus
- Excellent organizational skills, flexibility with work schedule
- Attention to detail, food quality & ingredients
- Knowledge of food & administrative costs in a kitchen as well as inventory control
- Ability to work within a budget
- Leadership skills to motivate & supervise employees
- Optimistic, energetic attitude with great communication skills
- Ensure and manage a clean, neat organized kitchen
- Respect for longtime kitchen employees and ability to work with all different levels of skill
- Kitchen Spanish or bilingual a plus
The Chef must have the ability to work in every capacity in the kitchen, whether it is prepping, working on the line, expediting, problem solving, overseeing equipment, schedule, ordering, food cost, receiving product, organizing the kitchen, scrutinizing invoices, hiring staff, cleaning and more.
We expect the Chef to work well under pressure (we have an outdoor cafe in the summer, and produce food for catering events from time to time and have busy weekends and sudden bursts of customers). The right candidate will have a positive mental attitude and ability to work to help ensure all our guests can't wait to come back for their next meal.
The Chef will work with the Owner on the menus and carry out the brand & concept (which has been in place since 1980), however will have capacity to create and improve. We change our printed café menus twice a year for seasonal changes, keeping customer favorites and signature dishes all year. We are seeking someone with creative skills to implement and pull from prior recipes of our specials or develop new ones every day for the cafe as well as the market prepared food to go.
