I used to think that chefs were egotistical maniacs. Some of them are. But the vast majority of chefs are hardworking individuals coping with enough stress to send a beta-blocker into cardiac arrest. I spent more years than I care to admit moonlighting as a bartender and waiter. I worked with dozens of chefs. Some were brilliant, some had trouble frying an egg. Others spent more time with cocaine than flour. One tried to drunkenly glass me in the face with a bottle of Moretti, another became a very good friend.
I learnt a lot from chefs: how to shuck an oyster, how to tastefully plate a dish, how to chain-smoke a pack of Marlboro Reds without throwing up. I also learned that a chef is the pacemaker of any good establishment. Chefs are rarely the problem: it’s the people around them. It’s the beady-eyed general manager who insists on keeping the kitchen open for an extra hour because Doris arrived late for her 89th birthday. It’s the 18-year-old part-timer who vapes all over the food and starts fights with the prep chef. It’s the ignorant yet domineering owner who doesn’t know the difference between a colander and a sieve saying, ‘Let’s turn this place into a tiki bar. I know you were trained by Pierre Koffmann, but how do you feel about bottomless hot wings?’
I also learnt that a chef needs to be handled properly. They may be the scariest figures in hospitality, but once you understand how to approach a kitchen and what not to do, a previously tumultuous relationship can blossom into a fruitful one. I just wish someone had explained the ground rules before I’d dipped my toe into the furnace.
First of all, never disrupt a chef’s flow. A chef may be convivial outside of work, but once they’re inside of a kitchen they are tapped into a frequency that the front of house staff will never understand. Do not loiter by the service bell and ask the head chef if she knows Marco Pierre White and if he really is as smelly as he looks. Do not ask the kitchen porter if he wants to go to the casino after work (he does). Do not ask the chef de partie for a Rizla at any point during the service.
If you do get in a chef’s way, they’ll have you up against the wall faster than you can squeal, ‘I’m telling HR!’ I was 19 when I first experienced a chef’s wrath. One moment I was lounging by the pass, cracking one-liners and gurning like an idiot, the next I was ducking a knife that the sous-chef had launched at my forehead.
‘What was that for?’ I asked, still in the brace position.
‘The [expletive] cream is falling off the [expletive] pancake you curtain-haired cretin. Hurry up!’
It’s best not to answer back in these situations. Instead, crawl onto the floor like the lickspittle you are and play possum; they might take pity on you.
I don’t blame that particular chef. I was a cocky university student, ignorant to the ways of the kitchen and the working world. He was a dedicated chef in what was then one of London’s busiest brunch chains. I was a part-time goon on the interminable conveyor belt of hospitality. He was a professional. I’d have done the same if I were him, only I wouldn’t have missed.
Over the years, I’ve come to feel sorry for chefs
The brunch restaurant taught me a lot about ‘kitchen respect’. The team was an aggressive and well-oiled machine. The chefs had a Cosa Nostra hierarchy, having worked together for years; if you upset one of them, you upset all of them.
There’s only one thing that really – and quite rightly – upsets a chef: simple mistakes. Returning to the kitchen with a customer’s plate of uneaten food is a bit like handing a gun to a madman:
‘What’s wrong?’ asks the chef.
‘Uh, well, the customer – the customer says they don’t like pesto,’ you say, trying not to quiver.
‘It’s a pesto dish. It literally says pesto gnocchi on the menu. Can they not read or are they stupid?’
I — I don’t know.’
‘Did they order it without pesto?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who took the order?’
‘I did.’
The chef takes a deep breath and rubs their eyes. They’ve been at work for 14 hours already. ‘And did you write “no pesto” on the ticket?’
‘I think so,’ you mumble. You pray to God that you did as you rifle through the stamped tickets. You find it: one nocchi pesto + side of buratta. You didn’t write it on the ticket. You also spelt gnocchi and burrata wrong.
Over the years, I’ve come to feel sorry for chefs. They spend their lives in a pressure chamber and, unless they’re on Instagram, their work often goes unnoticed. You can ask them why they do it, but it’s a bit like asking a soldier why they want to be in the military, or a penniless artist why they keep painting after years of ungratifying work. Unlike most people in hospitality, a chef’s career isn’t transitory. I think that’s partly why they get a bad rap – everyone else is just passing through with a vague notion of ‘something better’. For chefs, this is the ‘better’. This is the dream. That’s why they take it so seriously. Without great chefs, there would be no hospitality — I think the industry has forgotten that. Hospitality is a hot, sticky mess, and I wouldn’t wish it as a career on my worst enemy, but if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be this: Listen to chefs, stay out of their way, never take them from granted and if you see a job advertisement for a bottomless brunch bar, run.
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