When the chef Niki Nakayama opened her kaiseki restaurant n/naka in Los Angeles in 2011, she asked herself, “What does this work mean for me and for our staff? What do I want them to feel when we’re doing our work?” Then she wrote the following words on a piece of paper: “Every day, better in every way. Everything is done with focus, heart, gratitude, love, care, purpose, intention, faith.”
Ms. Nakayama placed the paper by her workstation, hoping she’d subliminally absorb the words’ intent. Over time it was printed on the menu and, in 2019, after n/naka was awarded two Michelin stars, a friend of Ms. Nakayama and her wife, the restaurant’s sous chef Carole Iida-Nakayama, reprinted the mantra as a permanent sign. It now hangs in two places in the kitchen.
“It’s everywhere we go,” Ms. Nakayama said.
Restaurant kitchens across the country, and especially those in the fine dining world, display inspirational quotes and slogans for their staffs to see and, hopefully, take to heart as they grind out service day after day. Some read like a meditation; others, a rousing locker room chant.
The popular TV show “The Bear” helped thrust this behind-the-scenes practice into the spotlight. The “Every Second Counts” sign that first appears in season 2 is directly inspired by the “Sense of Urgency” sign, meant to invoke focus, organization and expediency, that hangs in the restaurants of the chef Thomas Keller — not least because both hang near clocks. (The show’s creator, Christopher Storer, directed a short documentary film by the same name about Mr. Keller in 2013.)
Mr. Keller isn’t the only high-profile chef to post a mantra that might’ve caught on with generations of industry workers. When the chef Daniel Humm moved from Switzerland to San Francisco in 2003 to work as executive chef at Campton Place without knowing much English, he would say “make it nice” to connect with his team and to express what he needed, said a spokeswoman for his restaurant Eleven Madison Park in an email. It would become his mantra and the name of the company that operates the restaurant. More recently, Mr. Humm tacked on a second mantra: Make it matter.
Mr. Keller also inspired the chef Rob Rubba to display a plaque — “always be knolling” — near the pass at his award-winning restaurant, Oyster Oyster, in Washington, D.C. The phrase, popular in the world of art and design, refers to arranging objects so they are parallel or at 90-degree angles. At Oyster Oyster, it’s meant to encourage chefs to organize their work spaces, and, by extension, their minds, “like an opening yoga sequence or tuning a guitar,” Mr. Rubba said.
“As people in hospitality, we look to things to keep us inspired, to motivate us,” said William Bradley, the chef and director of the Michelin-starred San Diego restaurant Addison. Especially for a restaurant staff that is “performing at the highest level.”
After Addison earned its second star in 2021, Mr. Bradley huddled with his staff and agreed to install an engraved plaque in the kitchen with the Navy SEAL call and response, “All in, all the time.” Sean McGinness, the director of service at Addison, said the phrase serves as a reminder to put “my best self forward for the benefit of the team.”
Mr. Bradley said he’s often inspired by industries like sports and the military because they all depend on teamwork. Indeed, three chefs interviewed for this story mentioned the New England Patriots as a source of inspiration.
But inspiration doesn’t come only from sports. The comedian Steve Martin’s quote “Be so good they can’t ignore you,” appears in two different award-winning places whose owners connected with the underdog message.
Nacho Jimenez, the owner of the New York City bar Superbueno, inherited his sign from the bar’s previous occupants, but left it up because it resonated with him as a Mexican American opening a Mexican American bar. The chef Ryan Ratino placed the quote beneath his kitchen’s clock when he opened his Michelin-starred Washington, D.C., bistro Bresca in 2017.
At Bread & Butterfly the restaurant’s owner and executive chef, Demetrius Brown, employs the mantra, “Every detail matters,” which hangs above the kitchen door. He leads daily kitchen deep cleans and measures place settings from the edge of the table to the tip of the fork because he believes “minute details add up to lasting change,” he said, adding he wouldn’t ask anyone to do any job he wouldn’t do.
How chefs and staff members interpret these quotes is “open to the individual,” said Mr. Rubba of Oyster Oyster, “but the words chosen can have a positive impact or bring people down.” He thinks about the importance of Mr. Keller’s word choice back when few chefs were posting motivational words on the pass.
Sense of urgency is simply “an elegant way of saying, ‘Move your ass,’” Mr. Rubba said. “It’s nice; that’s where language matters.”