I often reflect on the winding path of my cooking career because I seem to regularly ask myself, for better or worse, “How did I get here?”.
You see, I didn’t really choose to be a chef, it sort of just happened. It was never a dream of mine, an aspiration as a child, to cook for a living. I didn’t grow up in a household of always-cooking matriarchs, with aromas of freshly baked bread and soups and sauces simmering away on the stove top, recipes handed down like family heirlooms from one generation to the next. I do not come from a history of restaurateurs, in fact, as far as I know, no one in my family has ever chosen the hospitality industry for a career. Granted, I’ve always liked to eat and have never been fussy about it, willing to try anything once. My stay-at-home mom was a respectable cook who fed her family well and my father was a passionate though indiscriminate eater. So where did my motivation to cook for a living come from? I believe there are several factors from simple economics to my love of food, and along the way, a few important and influential people.
The beginning of my journey in the hospitality industry started while in high school at a fast food joint, as is true with many teenagers. I didn’t really do much cooking, per se, but here I caught my first glimpse of what the restaurant world is like, albeit fast food. Brutally fast paced, hot, messy and all the while the required 'service with a smile' grin plastered to my greasy adolescent face — that is, if I didn’t want to be publicly berated by the manager. It sucked, but it was a paycheck.
The next phase was five years of waiting tables at casual family restaurants while I attended college. As much as I disliked it, it paid the bills. I recognize what a valuable asset it is to have in-depth knowledge, now as a chef, of front-of-the-house procedures and protocol. Many chefs have never worked in a restaurant from this angle, and I consider this to be a disadvantage. When a server FUBARs an order on a busy Friday night, I have been known to scream at him or her, savagely and unhypocritically announce, “I’ve done your job. Have you done mine?!”
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.