What it's like to be a chef ( not safe for YOUR work)

All chefs understand the untold theory that we all have something clearly wrong with us.

For reasons that we do not intend to look further into, out of fear of depression and complete loss of sense and purpose.,

We enjoy working in what we call the back of house. Where all decency and political correctness goes out the window.

A professional kitchen is one of the only work environments where you talk to your co-workers the way you actually want to.

Do you have any idea how satisfying it is to walk into work and be able to shout out “Morning cunts!” And it's perfectly acceptable.

We do not have the time, patience and certainly not courtesy to deal with our coworkers in a professional manner.

How many times have you had a conversation with a coworker while thinking, "Someone needs to tell this guy he's a prick"? Well as a chef you walk up to him and say, "Chef, you're being a prick, and out of all the tragedies the human race has suffered throughout the years, the night your daddy was too drunk to avoid the mistake of ploughing your mother was by far the worst." And the response can be a genuine, "You know what chef, I needed that, good morning."

If you’re being a useless twat, you’re going to find out. Too slow at your job? You’re going to be mocked into being better. Am I being a judgmental asshole all because that steak didn’t rest long enough? Probably…

Shout at me, tell me off, throw at me whatever verbal abuse it takes for you to not need to have the day off to go to therapy next week. It’s all part of the job.

We indulge in the chaos. The heat, the shouting, the pressure, the long hours… But we indulge even more in the right to complain about it!

Our food is our art, created through the hatred we feel towards those who don’t know how to appreciate it.

A professional kitchen is for the outsiders, the people who don’t belong in the bureaucratic world, the ones who have nowhere else to go, the lost, the confused, the mavericks, and the misplaced who hate the general public and yet have a deep need to please them.

It’s amazing how you can please others when you have no idea how to please yourself.

We love the sense of control we have in a kitchen. The responsibility of knowing that what we do in that moment matters.

We have a lack of control within our personal lives, the world is fucked, society doesn’t make sense to us, we’re never where we want to be, we have no idea where we’re going and most of the time can’t figure out how we got here in the first place.

Which is why that present moment means everything to us. It’s the only thing we can actually do. Forget about the fact that you have no idea how you’ll pay the rent next month, about how your mum seems more tired than usual these days, or that strange pain you’ve been having in your chest lately… none of that matters.

The only thing that matters is if that chicken leg is to perfect texture, if that mackerel has had long enough to cure and for the love of Christ where’s that kp with my bloody bowls?

You may be working for a major company, a Michelin-star restaurant, or the shittiest pub in town that for some reason your grandparents swear by, either way, you’re in control of what you do.

It may not be your food, your menu or even your decision to be there at that moment. But the way that sauce gets dressed on the plate, the way that puff pastry crackles, the smile of satisfaction on the customer’s face, those are the things we have control over.

In most other jobs if you screw up, the consequences come much later. The mistake gets reported, which then gets filed, which then gets monitored, then discussed, then reported again… and before you know it, you get a slap on the wrist for something that has become a distant memory and by that time nobody cares.

In a kitchen, the consequences are immediate.

You can’t leave the problem to the next day when you have a hungry paying customer, your passive-aggressive manager and menacing head chef breathing down your throat.

This is all down to the fact that restaurants are terrible at making money and the entire business rests on reputation. So you can’t afford to have an unhappy customer that will potentially leave a bad review.

Restaurants hang on by a thread, so you do not want to be the one cutting through that thread!

We are under constant pressure! And we’ll complain about it as much as we damn like, but may I make myself clear when I say, we will take that pressure over boredom any day!

Is it the environment that makes us or us that creates the environment? Personally, I like to think it’s a balance of the two, a yin-yang between chaos and order. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself to keep myself sane. Who knows?

It’s a difficult job meddled in confused organised anarchy that makes very little sense. It may be unhealthy, but I guarantee that it’s saved more than a few. And for that, I’m proud to be a part of it.