What I've Learned from Master Chef Rino Baglio

What I've Learned from Master Chef Rino Baglio 76

Posted by Dean Wampler Mon, 28 May 2007 02:39:00 GMT

If you want to learn Craftsmanship, you would be hard pressed to find a better mentor than Rino Baglio, the Executive Master Chef at Pazzaluna, in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had a chance to catch up with Rino this past weekend when I was in Minneapolis to teach a tutorial on Aspect-Oriented Design at ICSE 2007.

I have known Rino for over a decade, starting when Ann and I were loyal patrons of Il Bacio in Redmond, Washington, the restaurant he owned and operated with his wife Patsy until a few years ago. Through his cooking classes and many conversations about food and the restaurant business, I learned a lot about what it really means to be a chef and the long mentoring process that true chefs go through.

In the U.S., we think that passing a two-year culinary program qualifies you to be a chef. In Italy, an aspiring chef apprentices to a master at the age of 13 or so and spends the next 20-odd years mastering the craft before deserving the designation of “chef”. You can spend 7 years just working through the stations in a restaurant, cold dishes, salads, sauces, etc., just to become a “cook”.

Here are some of the characteristics of a true craftsman.

A craftsman is widely recognized by peers

Rino recently won an international competition in Italy, one of many times he’s been recognized nationally and internationally.

A craftsman is passionate about the craft

Rino says that if you are passionate about food, you will work on the presentation of even humble dishes. Pasta, as well as lobster, deserves an attractive presentation.

A craftsman delivers value to the customer while meeting business objectives

Rino keeps the kitchen lean and efficient. He keeps costs low by relying on high-quality ingredients, keeping waste to a minimum, and constantly improving the skills of his staff, all without ever compromising quality. In the year Rino has been at Pazzaluna, costs have dropped, while business and profits have increased.

A craftsman knows that quality is the number one priority

Rino knows that cutting quality today means less business tomorrow. He keeps quality high by keeping morale high. Morale is high because his staff is constantly learning new and better recipes. Also, as you watch him interact with his staff, you can see that he treats all of them, from his sous chefs to the dishwashers, with dignity and respect, while always holding them to high standards.

A craftsman never stops learning

You would think that he knows it all, by now. Yet, he has never forgotten a lesson his own mentor taught him, “you can learn something from even the worst cook, because he always knows something you don’t!” How many gurus do you know that think they have nothing left to learn?

What does all this have to do with software? Pretty much everything. Like cuisine, clean code is part art, part science. Clean code is created by passionate craftsman who are fanatical and fastidious about every detail. Clean code is the product of years of accumulated experience. The decisions a master makes moment-by-moment, whether test-driving the next feature or fighting a fire, reflect the wisdom and breadth of knowledge that produce high-quality results quickly and efficiently. Finally, a master leads by example, bringing the rest of the team up to his or her standards.

So, if you’re young and ambitious, latch onto the mentors around you. If you can’t find any, find another job. (Your organization is doomed anyway; so you might as well move on now.) If you’re older and wiser, seek out the promising junior people, teach them what you know, and learn from them as well! Oh, and if you want to taste real Italian food, make a pilgrimage to St. Paul. Tell Rino I sent you.

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Chris Khoo about 10 hours later:

Wow, thanks for that. I learnt some good leadership skills right there.

That’s the way I’d like to run a business someday – quality without compromise and leading by example.

Thanks again.

Chris
www.EdmundKirwan.com about 16 hours later:

That was an uplifting article, Dean; thank you.

I wouldn’t have written what I’m about to write if no one else had mentioned the specific area that I thought … commentable, but I see Chris has alluded to this very area.

“A craftsman knows that quality is the number one priority.”

It’s difficult to reduce software development to fewer than three dimensions: quality, productivity, and punctuality. (NASA’s admirable project goals of, “Bigger, better, faster,” word it differently, but the sentiment is, I believe, the same [as long as, “Bigger,” doesn’t mean, “Bloated”]).

I know you’re not advocating neglecting producivity and punctuality for the sake of quality, though Chris’s, “Quality without compromise,” left room for doubt.

I’m sure Rino knows that customers don’t want to wait too long for that high-quality dish: there’s an unspoken trade-off that they were willing to accept; and I’m sure Rino doesn’t serve just a single customer per night: he needs a minimum number to meet his margins.

It’d be nice to see a 3-D (well, mapped to 2-D, of course) graph of quality vs productivity vs punctuality.

For what it’s worth, if I had to prioritise them, I’d put productivity at number one (in software development).

I think of the three software company categories below, the first has the best chance of making a profit (and I fear that that such companies exists … in numerous guises):

i) A company that produces a huge amount of crappy products, all later than advertised. ii) A company that produces a tiny amount of brilliant products, all later than advertised. iii) A company that produces an average amount of crappy products, all on time.

It would be a pleasant exercise to undertake over a pint in a pub: scribble the three categories above onto a beer-mat, and map the top software companies to the nearest category.

Thanks again for the nice article,

Ed.
Dean Wampler about 21 hours later:

Chris and Ed, thanks for your comments.

Concerning the “time to market” vs. quality pressures, I put “A craftsman delivers value to the customer while meeting business objectives” before the quality bit to emphasize how good craftsmen like Rino never forgot that their art is not an excuse to undermine the business. He uses high-quality, but not extravagantly-expensive ingredients. He knows that American diners don’t realize that risotto takes 16 minutes to cook from scratch, so rather than make them impatient, he has to partially cook the risotto in advance, then finish the preparation when ordered. (Most Italian restaurants in America do this. We waited for our risotto Saturday and it was worth the wait ;)

So, maybe saying that quality is the top priority is not completely correct, but I think we all understand how quality is an investment in job security!
Tim Ottinger about 21 hours later:

I think that we should be careful about the decision to link celebrity with craftmanship. If there was one item to drop on this list, I would say it is the requirement of celebrity.

I would agree that it is important to be recognized among ones coworkers, because good work is often recognized and sometimes even appreciated.

The things one does to craft programs well is different from the set of things one does to become famous. In fact, I know poeple whose drive to get their name out actually undermines their craftmanship. They want to only do the important and visible work in the world. OTOH, I know some true craftsmen who are almost totally obscure.

How many of you know who Joel Erdwinn is?
Dean Wampler 1 day later:

I never used the words “celebrity” or “famous”. For a chef, winning competitions and getting great reviews are ways of achieving recognition. Indeed, you don’t see Rino all over the “Food Channel”. You’re right that many people strive for celebrity and their craftsmanship suffers.

We’re a practical enough industry that our “celebrities” are pretty quickly forgotten unless they keep “delivering the goods.” Recognition is possible through writing, speaking, inventing, or just earning the respect of your coworkers, as you said.
tim 1 day later:

Well, perhaps I (over)reacted to the term “widely recognized”, which to me is the definition of “famous” or “celebrity”. I consider Kent Beck to be “widely recognized” but not so much you and I (especially I).

But I can’t disagree very strongly when your picture has you holding a cute little kitty. It makes me say “awwww…”. Now I realize that I need something cute to pose with.

Cheers.
Chris Khoo 2 days later:

Hmm, good point Ed.

I think in the general software development industry (especially enterprise), not enough thought is put on quality, especially from the productivity & architecture point of view.

I still meet many developers who don’t know how to use SQL Profiler, refactoring tools (i.e. Resharper) or know what Inversion of Control or AOP is (BTW, I’m in Australia… America and other places might be a different story). You can probably tell from the last sentence that I’m a Microsoft bitch :-).

And the one benefit about having quality coders and writing quality code with good agile processes is that over time, you gain many dividends from having a good base.

To me, quality is synonymous with productivity, hence my affinity with the statement “quality without compromise”. Faster and cheaper to me spells trouble for the long term.
Rino Baglio 3 days later:

A sincere Hello, to all of You. I’ve learned a lot in all these years, and still have a lot of space for that. If you work with honesty, integrity, dedication and passion, you will achieve your goals. Success doesn’t come from nothing. It requires time and sacrifice, contrary to what some may think. Quality and presentation of food require study and a lot of training. Glory and success are not a destination, they are a point of origin. Rino
www.EdmundKirwan.com 6 days later:

Absolutely marvellous to see Rino himself repond!

It’s almost as though we had been discussing a fictional character – say, Superman – and then see that Superman himself joined the discussion. Fabulous.

Rino, sincere thanks. If ever I’m in Metropolis … erh, I mean, Minneapolis … I must drop by your fine restaurant for a meal.

.ed
Ajay Odedra 7 months later:

Stumbled across your blog whilst looking up “quality without compromise” (think it was the slogan for a beer at some point)

Glad I did, this is a great article and has concreted the concept of a true craftsman in my mind (which is much better than the beer I was looking for)

Thanks for taking the time to write this
Jim Billington/incarnation32@hotmail.com 9 months later:

I have to agree that Master Chef Baglio is one of my all time most inspirational people. I learned my motto from life from him. He said he put two secret ingredients into every dish, which is why no one can copy him even if they have the recipe those ingredients are: The Passion and the Love
Jim Billington/incarnation32@hotmail.com 9 months later:

I have to agree that Master Chef Baglio is one of my all time most inspirational people. I learned my motto from life from him. He said he put two secret ingredients into every dish, which is why no one can copy him even if they have the recipe those ingredients are: The Passion and the Love
J.Shaffer 12 months later:

I used to work with Rino a few years ago when he was in Seattle. He made the best food I have ever eaten. I learned alot from just watching him in the kitchen. I regret that we could not have worked together longer and I had learned more from him. He did have secret ingredients. He would sneak them in when you were not looking. Alot was flavor and cooking technique.
FrOstinG ReCipEs over 2 years later:

Very interesting article, it’s beautiful to see people put passion in what they do. Often chefs forget that to eat out is an experience and the customer will not only come back if the food is good but more if he had a good time! Thanks for sharing this, i learned a lot!
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Chef Rino is the best Chef I know!! does anybody knows how to contact him??? I would love to say hi to him.

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