Plain talks with Ramses Manneck, formerly Industry Standard, Berlin
“There are a lot of people who keep racking up with knives and shit. While in reality it’s more like an ego thing.”
When I first meet Ramses it’s just before lunch. I arrive a little early, yet he appears suddenly out of nowhere from inside the restaurant, as if he has just woken up. I later learn he actually loves sleeping on the couch. His couch. Long nights require clever tactics to make the restaurant life bearable. Make no mistake, this is more about efficiency (more on that later) than it is about laziness. He immediately starts talking, while prepping his morning caffeine using a Chemex, with a routine that has obviously been perfectly optimized.
My planned introduction about what Plain aims to be, and why I’m here, is kind of lost in an pressing discussion about knife skills and his latest venture in Mexico. “I opened a restaurant yesterday in Mexico called “Can Can”. It’s mainly classic stuff: burger, fish, chips. We didn’t wanna do something that’s technically too advanced, without us being there. We left one of our chefs over there. Industry Standard has a lot to do with me, so if I’m not here it’s kind of fucking pointless. It’s a stress factor I don’t need. I can trust my people to make a good burger.”
“I always liked to cook. It’s a very easy way to make cash.”
If you’ve had any good Mexican food in Berlin, it was probably at one of Ramses’ many restaurants. Maria Bonita, Maria Peligro and Santa Maria. It was only ten years ago that Berlin began having a food culture that extended beyond cheap Vietnamese food, Currywurst and Döner Kebap. As a student from Mexico it was the perfect environment for Ramses to get started. “I always liked to cook. It’s a very easy way to make cash. Especially if you’re a student and you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing in life. It just catches your life and I liked it more than anything else that I’ve done. I like the vibe of restaurants. It’s an environment that I find really attractive to be in. It’s a little bit like sports, it’s a team effort and you’re always, like, shooting the shit and then it’s game time and you kick some ass. It’s good.”
Ramses clearly loves what he does. While I’m musing over what kitchen tool to make, (read more here) Ramses contemplates his next project. In each of his projects, he seems to inevitably hit on the sweet spot with an optimal mix of sophistication and approachability. “It’s not easy, because it’s a very self-deprecating profession. It’s really masochistic shit. Maybe I have a personality for this. I don’t know. A lot of drinking. A lot of drugs. Everyone knows about that. It’s a highly stressful profession. The motivation comes from a lot of different places.” While we’re talking he’s on the phone planning his next venture. A cocktail bar and bistro hybrid. At the helm will be the former chef of Pierre Gagnaire’s Berlin outlet, which closed last year. If he can attract this kind of talent he must be doing something right.
The Tools
In this series, I use each interview to find out which tools chefs are actually using and consider essential in the kitchen.
Three Knives
Ramses immediately pulls out 3 knives. It seems like he has given this topic a lot of thought. Laying them on the table he says, “I think you need 3 knives. You need a paring knife for the tiny stuff. You need, like, a heavy duty knife. I use an ice carving knife from Japan to go through bread and root vegetables. Anything thats really hard. This one has a saw and it goes both ways. And I have one for regular shit. I like Japanese knifes, they are just easier.”
“Ok, well, see they go up. It’s the kind of traditional German style. And this Japanese one goes down. It’s called a santoku cut. It’s just more versatile. You have more impact surface. I’m a big guy, so if I have to use this German knife, I can always tell because my back hurts. Of course it’s a personal thing. I’m not saying German knives are bad.”
“There are spoons and there are spoons.”
Fucking Spoons
A spoon is a spoon. Not. Ramses is convinced spoons are so important he would take them to a desert island. Only if he had a restaurant there, of course. “I think the most important tool is a proper spoon.”
“There is this really famous guy. Gray Kunz. He invented a spoon that is of course called the ‘Gray Kunz Spoon’. This guy is a chef, like a really fucking retro chef. His contribution to this whole thing is that he made this fucking spoon that is perfect for saucing. It fits like one serving of sauce and it’s really good to trace anything. He gave every employee their personal spoon and if you lost it you were fired. Everyone was really particular about this spoon. It’s just the best application of a spoon and it does make a fucking difference, believe it or not. When you hold it it’s, like, really nicely balanced.” If you’re really excited right now about owning one read, The Silver Spoon: Gray Kunz’s Perfect Tasting Spoon.
“I lost, like, 20, I stopped buying the damn thing.”
“If you talk to pastry chefs they fucking murder you if you loose your quenelle spoon. If someone looses my quenelle spoon I go fucking crazy.”
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Not sure what a quenelle is? Have a look at the video below from Saveur, before we jump right into the next topic with Ramses.
To Teflon or not to Teflon?
All of my idealistic expectations of what makes a cool kitchen fade away when I see the eclectic mix of pans and pots. There are all kinds, including some from IKEA. And Teflon. Teflon? Really?
”If you have an option between teflon and no teflon which one do you pick? I don’t think cast iron affects the flavour, so we don’t use it. Material rarely affects the flavour, except if it’s copper. Copper will affect the flavour. But you know I’ve worked in fine-dining restaurants and you cook in those (stainless) and have those for presentation purposes. Copper impacts the flavour and cast iron you use for retaining the heat. But it’s also fucking heavy and it costs a lot of money.”
Ordnung ist das halbe Leben
Germans are often thought of as the world’s most organized people. Rest assured, we aren’t. But if there were some sort of German organization gene, most cooks would probably need it to be successful, at least according to Ramses. “I don’t give a fuck how good of a cook you are, but if you’re not organised you’re fucked.”
“These boxes here, they are brilliant. They are one shape and they are stackable. So you just pick the depth. Like nowadays how kitchens have evolved you need this. For instance Dylan Watson from “ernst” basically cried when he saw my boxes. He’s like “I really need your boxes!”. Because this makes your kitchen less bulky and everything is perfectly streamlined.”
Running in circles!
“I mean this kitchen is designed from the back to the front. A lot of kitchens are in a line. I just think this is really impractical, because it doesn’t allow for circularity. I believe shit is working better if you can run around, as opposed to being behind people. This is why it’s so important to have such a big space for the kitchen.”
Walking by Industry Standard, the kitchen is way more visible than the actual guests. A shop window into cooking. Still, it’s not just for the show, it’s what the space affords.
“The guests are only here for 2 to 3 hours max. We’re here fucking 16 hours. I could give a fuck about them.”
“We’re the ones who need to be running around, so that’s why we have this space. This way we can all go around in circles and work at different stations. We’re all one step away. Cooking these days is a lot about efficiency. Before it was all about manpower, you had all these brigade systems. Not everyone is Noma and has 50 people around. For me, as a business, payroll makes up almost 40 percent of what I make. It’s fucking expensive. You need to be able to pull big services with as little people as you can. We can go, like, 90 covers in 4 hours. Between 3 people it’s a lot. So we’re prepping, prepping and prepping. So it’s really efficient.”
Plastic all the way
As I quickly discovered, all restaurants use plastic cutting boards for hygiene. Even though the research is not clear on the subject, most countries’ regulators require restaurants to use plastic chopping boards. “We use color coded cutting boards: green for vegetables, red for meat, blue for fish and yellow for poultry. You do this to avoid cross-contamination. It makes shit simpler. It’s illegal to use wooden boards. You can use wood for cutting bread and stuff. Also, at home, the big fucking wooden one works, here we would go through plenty of those. Again, it’s more of a show thing. You can have your cool wooden chopping board at the bar.”
Of Machines and Automation
Although Ramses constantly emphasizes how simple their kitchen is, he gets very excited talking about one particular machine, made by a company that German’s know very well: Vorwerk. Vorwerk makes vacuum cleaners and only sells them through dealers who visit your home, similar in concept to Tupperware. In 1961, the company came up with a kitchen appliance geared toward aspiring perfect housewives: the Thermomix.
“Thermomix is a good machine. I mean one machine everyone should have is a Thermomix. I can set a temperature and it cooks. It makes like really beautiful purees. If you’re making a Hollandaise just put the shit in there and it’s good. It’s nothing I couldn’t live without. You could just have a normal blender and do a Hollandaise by hand. On the other hand the Thermomix is really precise and you can build recipes around it. With a blender you can not program it. Also, a Thermomix is a universal thing. It’s the same in Japan. You know you won’t fuck up the recipe.”
When I leave the restaurant around lunch time a crazy rain has started and Berlin is being flooded. I’m debating what tools to focus on and I am starting to think all the basic ones are not as important as I had hoped. Maybe the focus should be on machines, if chefs like Ramses are willing to use consumer grade devices like the Thermomix. Maybe.
This story is part of a series of interviews where we at Plain try to find out how chefs use tools in their kitchens. Follow the Plain Talks collections or check our Instagram feed.
