As executive chef for Restaurant Associates at Bloomberg’s New York City headquarters, Ankish Shetty is responsible for feeding 2,500-3,000 employees on any given day. His culinary skills landed him the job, but his engineering background has proven to be a real bonus in such a high-volume operation.
“I was studying engineering in school, but before my last year, I realized it wasn’t really interesting to me and didn’t make me happy. Cooking was what made me happy and fulfilled,” said Shetty. “That’s when I decided to take the risk to jump from engineering and become a chef.”
Shetty enrolled in culinary school in Switzerland, and while there, got a chance to work at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Geneva and several fine-dining restaurants. Soon after he completed his training, he returned to India, worked for over year, and then moved to the United States when his wife accepted a job here. Shetty helped open and develop menus for two Baltimore restaurants — one Greek and another an all-day café — before landing at Restaurant Associates in New York. There he wears many toques.
Although Bloomberg doesn’t have a central corporate cafeteria, Shetty is responsible for corporate catering, which can range from service for 40-50 people to as high as 500-800. He’s also in charge of creating a promotional event every day centered around food.
“We send around small plated tastings to all three office locations in mid-morning,” he said. “Bloomberg’s workforce is 40% to 50% South Asian, and a few weeks ago I did a chai flan with an Indian twist for 2,800 employees. It was flavored with cardamom and cinnamon and went over really big.”
Here’s where his engineering background comes in: “You can’t just take a recipe for 10 and multiply it by 280,” said Shetty. “Mathematically, I calculate to batch the recipe for 50 servings, then assign a certain number of batches to each of my three cooks and three prep cooks.”
He also has to make sure every recipe he divides has a proper timeline so the steps are followed in the right sequence. Shetty calls it “batch scheduling as production architecture.”
“I have a cold prep station and a hot prep station, so I make sure they are aligned. I want my hot prep station to be ready by this time, so my cold prep station can be ready at this time, and I can combine those steps together to make my product,” he said.
Fault tolerance sounds like engineering speak, but Shetty applies it to cooking.
“When you cook at high volume, such as a batch of 100 pounds, you may get 10 or 15 pounds that might not turn out right or is spoiled,” he explained. “So you need to calculate the cost, the prep, and the time accountable for those 15 pounds. And you have to set a limitation … 15 pounds may be acceptable, but another two pounds goes beyond the limit.”
Shetty’s engineering training also paves the way for acclimating staff to technology and equipment. For example, he figured out it saved time to poach eggs in a high-tech combi oven instead of the traditional bain-marie, then trained his cooks on the technique, and worked that into the timeline for batching a recipe. And he maximized the use of the blast freezer by familiarizing the staff with all of its functions.
“Previously, they were just using it as a refrigerator, opening and closing the door frequently, which built up frost on the fans,” said Shetty. “Now they know exactly how to use it.”
Chef Ankish Shetty works for Restaurant Associates, where Bloomberg is a foodservice client.
Restaurant Associates has installed tracking equipment for organic waste that not only helps reduce waste, but it also educates staff where the waste is coming from and teaches them to be accountable.
“A kitchen is a place where people don’t have much patience, so I can help ease the process and show them that it doesn’t take more than a minute or two to record the tracking,” said Shetty. “I know what the basic technology is and I can be the mediator and simplify it for my staff.”
All of this expertise came to fruition when Shetty prepared a special tasting of butter chicken meatballs for the Hindu festival of Diwali.
“We used about 600 pounds of minced chicken just for that one tasting. To align everything in the proper way, I had to make sure I started the process about a week before,” he said.
He did all the math and created production sheets for the team, so they would know exactly what to do. The meatballs were marinated, then went to the breading station, then each tray was placed in the blast freezer as it was finished. The final step: Frying the meatballs. The communication went smoothly, but nonetheless, “fault tolerance” came into play.
“One of the staff kept the meatball trays on a rack as he was prepping instead of putting them in the blast freezer as they were done. By the time he went to put the rack in the freezer, the meatballs were in the temperature danger zone and we had to throw out about 30 pounds,” said Shetty.
There were no more mishaps and the Bloomberg employees were thrilled with the Butter Chicken Bites. “No one knew there was an Indian chef in the house, and people wanted more,” said Shetty. “It made me so happy that I could showcase my skills.”
But he also realizes that being an executive chef is not just about cooking — it’s about making sure that your staff is well prepared and trained, he added. Shetty’s engineering background has helped him put systems in place to make that happen.
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