Last week I sat down late one evening to write my final post as a culinary student for food2. It was the night before the deadline – since I always work so well under pressure – and I was tired and slightly disheveled from the busy week. At first I had a tough time deciding what to write about. It isn’t easy to conveniently wrap up any significant experience into one condensed blog post, let alone the experience that changed the course of my career. My anxiety about the coming weeks when I move from the office to the kitchen certainly had a lot of influence in my topic. The following post was my most personal and honest, an account of what the past couple of months have been like for me.
This post is part of the Food 2 series. I am writing this series about my experience in the culinary school kitchen for the food2.com blog.
It’s official: In two weeks, I’ll be a cook. I will be removing my student hat and moving on to a professional kitchen, where I will be joining the subculture of people behind closed doors, working to create composed and delicious plates of food to the hungry and eager customers of New York City.
The business of food is popular. That is why there are countless food blogs, countless celebrity chefs, why most everyone knows the phrase “Please, pack your knives and go,” and why restaurant clientele have higher standards than ever before. Since starting culinary school, I have received many questions from people looking for some insight into a world that has been somewhat idealized and sensationalized.
Countless chefs have given us the same warning: Working in a professional kitchen is hard work. I can’t speak for every culinary student or amateur cook about to enter the field, of course, but I can speak for myself. My 5’ 2” frame can attest to the difficulty of lifting heavy pans and large containers filled with congealed veal stock. In the beginning of your career, you will be expected to “pay your dues” (as you should), which means you better get used to dicing onions, picking spinach, or peeling potatoes for hours. Learn to do these tasks quickly and without complaints, and you may get offered a job. This job, however, will most likely pay very little, especially if you decide to work in fine dining or at a popular restaurant where many other cooks are vying for a position. You will most likely work during the most inopportune times — while your friends are at happy hour, or when your spouse comes home from work, or when your family sits down for Thanksgiving dinner. At some point, you will be on the receiving end of a chef’s wrath against haughty and inexperienced culinary students. If you mess up, you will get yelled at and, despite your best efforts to convince yourself otherwise, you probably will deserve it.
In my experience, I did my part to perpetuate the “cook” stereotype. I frequently grabbed a drink after service, most often when I needed the camaraderie of my fellow classmates paired with a good laugh and a cold beer. I flirted with the frowned upon practice of kitchen romance that often makes work uncomfortable and difficult. I’ve been yelled at by chefs twice my size and with ten times my experience — sometimes because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but mostly because I was wrong. There were times when I felt like throwing a decent-sized saucepan across the room in honor of the many hotheaded chefs I’ve heard so much about. During a less than proud moment, I had to sneak out of the kitchen so no one could see the tears welling up in my eyes as I struggled to cope with the drama detailed above, combined with only a few hours of sleep and a small amount of patience.
I have also felt the high after a night of successfully pulling myself out of the weeds and filling the orders barked by the expediting chef, all the while keeping track of the temperature of every piece of lamb sitting in my oven. I get to be around interesting ingredients, and I am constantly learning new flavor profiles and techniques. I have been lucky enough to work side by side with respected chefs who I previously had only known about through the media. During a trail at a Michelin-star restaurant, I was thrown into service and trusted to help plate dishes. After service, I sat in front of the chef and politely asked him, “Are you sure?” when he offered me a job working in his kitchen.
But as difficult and demanding as this career may be, there is a reason why people stick with it: We love it. I love it. Kitchen life attracts passionate and determined overachievers who enjoy — or at least can handle — high-stress situations. It requires focus and composure to put out food you care about. In a way, being a cook is just as much about being a team player and working with a team as it is about challenging yourself. It can be a selfish career choice, too. As cooks, we may not always be aware of how self-centered and one-track minded we may sound after talking for hours about food and cooking with our colleagues. Just the same, I consider myself lucky to care about something so intensely.
Great chefs at school encourage students and the cooks that work under them to push harder. They force us to get out of our comfort zones, and for that I am grateful. I am also grateful to my classmates whose creativity and competitive natures have inspired me to become a better cook. In the kitchen, they kept me laughing despite how tired I was or how discouraged I felt. We all work hard for that small moment of satisfaction when after all the hours and the sacrifice, the burns and the bruised egos, the failures (and successes), we put out a truly great plate of food. And then, it is all worth it.
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