Object Mentor Blog: What I've Learned from Master Chef Rino Baglio

What I've Learned from Master Chef Rino Baglio

Dean Wampler — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:39:00 -0500

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.

"What I've Learned from Master Chef Rino Baglio" by Helikopterflüge

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:46:58 -0600

well, I heard about Rino Baglio and he is Master Chef at Pazzaluna, in St. Paul, Minnesota like you said but i never had a chance to visit his restaurant, that’s in top of the to do list.

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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.