Adventures of a programmer turned food critic

We were at one my favorite restaurants barrafina (best tapas bar ever anywhere, including Barcelona) the other day. Between gobbling up the octopus and tucking into the tortilla, I have been watching the lovely master chef running her kitchen under military discipline right in front of us. The food preparation process must be similar in all fine restaurants but I never paid attention as it is usually behind closed doors. But being a tapas bar, it was happening right in front of us this time, very inspiring.

The preparation of various types of food is delegated to less senior chefs, where the more senior (guessing by the looks) ones were tasked with harder jobs. There is a certain area of responsibility for everyone. When an order arrives, it is put to a place where everyone can see, everyone picks up his part, prepares it and the prepared food ingredients are brought in front of the master chef. They are ingredients tho not the finished dish. If it is pork belly with a certain type of sauce, the sauce and the meat arrive separately. The master chef does the final mixing, seasoning and tasting? and prepares the final dish to be presented to the customer. Fantastic.

The very last bit of the process is of crucial importance. By putting the final touches, chef makes sure the the final product is always of great quality.

Here is a task for team leads in software teams. The team lead is responsible for what comes of the team, so why not review all the code, line by line with the programmer, before production? I realize it may be a little frustrating, given the quality of code I have seen through out the years, but a crucial step for producing systems of similar quality to the legendary tapas in barrafina.