Today we add another voice into the mix of writers. As you probably know, I’ve been wanting to get some insiders opinions on the restaurant industry; a view of what it’s like to be a line cook, a dishwasher, sous chef, etc. The following essay is from first person that stepped up. He has a different way of writing than most of our authors. I hope you enjoy it.
First a brief bio:
I am a food person. A professional. I’ve been paying dues since I dropped out of high school at fifteen. I’ve washed your dishes, and catered your weddings. I’ve cooked your breakfasts, lunches and dinners (plus that meal that you crave at two in morning for what ever reason). I’ve baked bread, and pastries. Made fine cakes, and peanut butter cookies. I’ve worked greasy spoons, supper clubs, fine dining, bars, bakeries and coffee shops. I’ve spent two years in school, done an internship and apprentice ship. But I have been in training since I learned to make Texas style chili when I was five. I love what I do, but you’ll have to excuse me as I am bit excitable.
Stress
By William T Campbell
Kitchens are stressful places.. Cooking at home can be hectic, what with the heat and the time restrictions. Maybe you’re trying a recipe for the first time, and your book is vague as to what a soft ball caramel should be. You’re hot, you’re multitasking, it’s messy, and you worked all day. All these things build up; add to the stress of your already hectic modern life.
Now pretend it’s your job. Assume that I have to feed two hundred people in a night, instead of four or something. Assume also that it’s twenty degrees hotter in the kitchen than it is outside, and that I don’t get to say “that’s close enough”. Plus if I don’t have at least five things going at once than I am not moving fast enough. This is what I do to pay my bills (most of my bills, some of the time).
Cooking has been slightly romanticized, and there is a certain romanticism to it. Food in and of itself is romantic, the sights, the sound, the smells. These things are beautiful, my collection scars, on the other hand, are not.
Cooking is a high energy job, with 99% of your shift on your feet. You have the demands of the customers, the wait staff, the chef, your coworkers, and yourself. Also, this isn’t mindless work. In order to be any good you have to think about what you’re doing, and reassess you day constantly. If you fall behind, it just gets worse. Panic sets in; the phrase “in the weeds” doesn’t do it justice. The French phrase from which it’s translated better sums it up but is no child-friendly enough to put down here. If you’re doing your job right you should go home both physically and mentally exhausted.
In my mind there are three main stress factors; the chef, the customer, and my desire to be perfect. Basically, you have three people who, in all likelihood, want different things. Two of these people are paying you, and one of them is you. Or, one person who can have you fired, one who can fire you, then your brain that will remind you of the mistakes you’ve made. Despite what it sounds like there is a balance.
Anyone who has worked in the industry or knows someone in the industry knows stories about demanding chefs and stupid customers, so I will try to keep mine to a minimum. However; I would like to discuss all three.
1. The chef. This is the man or woman I have to impress, or at least seem competent to. Hopefully they have been doing this longer than I have, and hopefully they really care about these dishes. If not, well then, I am probably not going to take the job unless I really need the money (this happens to even the most ethical cook). Ideally they are perfectionists, but are still able to adapt to a fluid environment.
These are their recipes, they have put a lot of time and energy into getting them exactly how they want them, and so help you if you think that they would be better if you just…
2. The customer. These are the people that make cooking unpleasant. The front staff says things like “the customer’s always right”. The front staff also makes tips for being accommodating. I do not. Therefore, when someone orders a prime rib well done with a side of steak sauce, I get cranky. To be perfectly honest I get mad, screaming-vulgarities mad, shouldn’t be in possession of a knife-mad. The outright destruction of good food should anger anyone with a soul. Plus, I am just going to put it in the microwave for ten minutes, because that is what they deserve.
Even people with legitimate reasons to want changes made to dishes (i.e. allergies and things) get under my skin. It’s not like they chose to be a culinary cripple, it’s god’s fault, but at the time it throws off my rhythm. Then we have the people on diets… If you’re going on a diet, fine, but do the research before going to a place that specializes in frying everything in butter.
3. Myself. Generally speaking, one of the nice things about this type of work is that you can tell when you screwed up. If you happen to be a well adjusted person then you learn from your mistakes and move on. Cooks however are not always well adjusted people, at the worst they can be criminally insane, at best, just at little odd. Either way, the best ones are obsessive and excitable. Sometimes the only way to express your frustration is by hitting something with a wooden spoon; because, damn it, I just want perfection.
This is the point in which I should offer some sort of solution. Sorry; I don’t have one. If I did I would be rich. Some people can shake it all off, some can’t. Some of the best cooks are raging drug addicts, some drive really fast and listen to loud music. Some are barely functioning alcoholics. Some raise kids and garden. Me; this is what I do; try to spit it all out onto a page in a semi-organized fashion.
I also smoke too many cigarettes and watch cartoons with the same reverence that most people reserve for church.
I am not about to judge anyone on what they do outside of work, but I only really need to know so much about someones drug habit, or the day they spent potty training the kid. I have friends in both categories. I worry about the ones that need help and respect the ones that deserve it, but I couldn’t tell you which one is right.
I think that I am just trying to make a point. I am really not trying to scare anyone off of it, and I don’t want you to think I’m unhappy. I love this. I don’t mean just playing with food, but the whole thing. The heat, the sounds, the frenzy, cleaning things. I’ve thought my day out by the time I get home. Found my errors and noted what I learned, glad it’s over. The next day think the same things again on the way there, wondering what will happen next.
Michelle says
As a culinary professional and writer as well, I can’t help but express remorse about your feelings towards customers. Although you count yourself as a perfectionist, you on the other hand admit that you microwave steaks ordered well done. Shame on you. Well done steak needn’t be black, dry, tough, or leathery. A true professional is able to cook a steak all the way through while maintaining as much tenderness and moisture as possible.
Having spent the last 12 years working in kitchens, and fully invested in spending the next 30 doing the same, I can honestly say that cooking for other people continues to give me the greatest of pleasures. I feel sorry for you, if customers make your work unpleasant. I highly recommend a change of careers.
Frankly, your article is embarassing. I would like to let readers know that not all culinary professionals share in the attitude of the author.
Twochefs says
I have to agree with Michelle.
As a chef and restaurateur for almost 20 years this article is an embarrassment to the profession. Those of us who truly are perfectionists relish in our ability to please the public, strive to have a symbiotic relationship with our coworkers and care about every DETAIL of what we do. Sounds like William T Campbell is a culinary student trying to find his way in the profession who read to many Anthony Bourdain books. Read what the people at http://www.tastingmenu.com recently wrote in several pieces entitled “Restaurant Love,” talking about what they’d like to see from chefs and restaurateurs. They concentrated one of their pieces on “focus”: “focusing on that one perfect piece of watermelon, or chicken, or ravioli means that there can be more time and attention spent on the details. Details like quality, timing, freshness, and flavor.”
I hear Tranco truck driving school has class starting every other week. Do me a favor and leave the profession to true professionals.
nagrom says
Dude, stop smoking. Smokers have no palate. Cooks who smoke are not serious about their food. Tony Bourdain be damned, if you want to really cook, don’t smoke.
vicki says
Thanks, William Campbell, for your words. I’m just a civilian who loves good food properly cooked. I eat out frequently and I pay attention to the service, the atmosphere and yes, especiallythe food when I eat out. I’ve become interested in what goes on behind the counter, the cooking and mechanics of running a restaurant. I’ve read just about all the recent books on the subject. You have my respect!
I should also mention that i was married for many years to a fabulous cook. I stayed married to him for at least 5 years past the time the marriage should have ended because I simply couldn’t bear to give up his excellent cooking and weekly bread baking, smile. (When we were first married he made me promise that I would let him do all the cooking. I did.)
Mostly Running. says
Michelle,
I wanted to agree with you from the start. I read your comment before I read the post. All I can say is get over yourself.
Bourdain he is not, but he breaks it down well. On the line you want to kill, and he explains well who he wants to kill and why. The customer, no matter how much happy smoke you want to blow into it, is always parked somewhere between where I pee and the area above where I poop. Sometimes you convince them that they are not. That is service.
Can you provide good food to a customer while hating? It is hard to provide anything good without hating. You have to be able to discern between flavors, you have to be a bigot about tomatoes to be good at this job. Any chef should learn to hate before they learn to cut their wrists open. Hate and let hate happen. Channel it into something productive. Like good food. Like food chosen wisely. Damn it feels good to be a critic.
And you have to love. You have to love what you are doing enough that you want to write about it. You have to love it enough that you remember your day rather than using your shift-drinks to help you forget where and how you woke up. Being a line cook means a lot of forgetting. It means, as I am sure you know, wanting something else of your life. But when it clicks, when you turn 200 in a space meant for 125 on a busy night, then it turns into something else. Then it is a muse. Then it is a reason for being. Then it is a microwaved steak that no one noticed.
MR
hunter says
I hae to agree with the last post. If you’ve worked on the line in a busy kitchen and not harbored ill will you are far too well adjusted. I have worked in a perpetually slammed line and I have worked in a well paced kitchen, there’s a difference especially in the attitude of the boh staff. The post is hardly an “embarrasment”, it’s realistic and pragmatic. However just because your “en la merde” and angry doesn’t mean you don’t like what you’re doing. No need to slam Mr. Campbell for telling the truth, a universal truth of just about anyone who has truly worked on the line. And “two chefs” request that he leave the profession and take up truck driving was….well….just ridiculous.
mup says
nice work
Jilted By Spoon and Dish says
Wow… this is a really interesting point of view: the passion that can recklessly tilt into both blind adoration and wordless rage are quite evident. I also like that the author can appreciate how simple cleaning can restore order out of all the chaos of the day. Well done, and well done.
Advice to those reading: cull what you may from what the author is saying, but try to keep your glass walls and glass roof in mind when you are aiming those rocks. Sheesh. Better yet, write your own submission that engenders your point… positively.
pork cop says
I must say that Mr.Campbell sounds like the real deal to me. I also agree with MR/Hunter. If you’re not angry sometimes you’d better check your pulse or see the doctor. It’s the nature of the biz. Maybe if William wrote this from a bunker in Lebanon people would think it was “edgyier” and more “street”.
Betsy says
The first two comments to this post honestly sound to me like the answers those beauty pageant contestants give during the Q & A session (I haven’t watched a beauty pageant in years; maybe they don’t do that any more…?)
“I wish more than anything for world peace, I hope to spend my life volunteering to feed a small third world nation, and – does anyone want to sing a rousing round of Kumbayah with me here?”
It’s a given that most people are in the business because they love it (it sure isn’t for the money, cushy benefits, perks, or cake schedule.) Why not be honest about the parts that grind you down?
In a world of spin and polish and image and gloss, I find Mr. Campbell’s candor bracingly refreshing.
cuisinebonnefemme says
I loved this post. I like the rhythm of the writing, the rawness, and the honesty of it. Brought me back to some of those steamy kitchens in my restaurant days, equally admiring and terrified of the chefs I worked for and the smokey, whiskey back bars where we would all meet up for drinks and pool after our shifts.
Good stuff William.
Kim Nyland says
WIlliam hits the nail on the head as far as i’m concerned……good read indeed….
I have to laugh…”A true professional is able to cook a steak all the way through while maintaining as much tenderness and moisture as possible.” I read his point as …a customer who appreciates a great steak would never order it well done & it’s nothing but frustrating having customers who won’t/can’t appreciate quality of a great cut of meat & effort it takes to make it even tastier
kim @ apizza
pork cop says
My friend cooked at Genoa from 1997-2000-ish. I would often go to their kitchen and wait for him to get off work. It was the only kitchen I have ever been in where it was serene to the point of being boring. Japanese Garden serene! None of the stress, anger, yelling, swearing that I was so used to in every other restaurant kitchen. I remember (falsely?) really mellow classical music playing and hushed conversations between the staff.I have never been to another kitchen like it. Of course this was largely due to the multi-course advanced set menu reservations system that they had. It opened my eyes to a different restaurant working experience. The “nice” restaurant work place does exist but very, very few places operate that way.
Pork Cop says
One more thing, If you order a Steak Well Done I will attempt to get you to order it closer to Medium Rare if not I will smile and get you your Steak prepared Well Done. I will usually type the order into the computer with a “Sorry!!, I tried” added to pacify the cooks. However,every person in the restaurant who cares about good food thinks it’s an absolute shame. You are only right because you’re paying for it. Business makes whores of us all.
Food Dude says
I think a few people read half way through, and reacted without really reading the rest. There is a lot of love and passion for cooking in that piece. I look forward to more from William.
We still have several more writers to premier, and I’d guess Nancy will be back with more interviews in the next month or so.
Djonn says
Both sides in the Great Well-Done War make valid points.
Passion for one’s chosen profession — cooking, writing, plumbing, codewrangling — is a Good Thing. Mr. Campbell appears to have that passion. I can’t tell how well he cooks from the post, but he writes reasonably well.
However, treating customers’ orders disrespectfully because of their taste in food is indeed unprofessional. Were I a chef supervising Mr. Campbell, and were I to catch him over-microwaving a steak/prime rib ordered “well done” . . . the first time, he’d be redoing the order correctly and eating the microkilled meat. The second time, he’d be out of my kitchen in ten seconds flat.
Notice there that I didn’t refer to treating customers disrespectfully — I referred to treating the food disrespectfully. This is the distinction that I think most of Mr. Campbell’s defenders miss; it’s morally inconsistent of Mr. Campbell to rail against the “outright destruction of good food” in one sentence and to admit in the next that he will willfully commit that destruction at the drop of a chef’s knife. If one truly respects good food, one does not commit culinary overkill.
That said, I think the article as a whole suggests — if a bit obliquely — that Mr. Campbell recognizes the inconsistency and his own struggle with it. For the sake of his culinary career, I hope he can restrain his impulses toward taking revenge on customers via his cooking — if not, it may be necessary for someone to throw Mr. Campbell on the grenade of his own bad food in order to save us.
////
In closing, an aside: we’re all assuming, in the “well done” discussion, that the beef in question is of sufficiently high quality for the moral argument to arise. I’ve found, over many years of dining, that the better the beef, the rarer I can enjoy it — but with average-to-mediocre meat, I prefer it more thoroughly cooked. (I don’t order “well done” myself — but when ordering steak at a place I haven’t visited often, I am likely to order “medium well” with the full expectation that what I may well get, and be happy with, is “medium”.)
Pork Cop says
What if the person ordering their steak well done is from a culture that never eats pink meat? My wife, for example, is Chinese. When we dine out I encourage her to try everything “American” she can. She really does attempt to have an open mind. I’ve ordered steak for her medium rare and when it comes to the table she almost pukes. She just cannot eat it! Having seen the conditions of meat markets in many developing countries I understand why.
Food Dude says
Pork Cop: I hate to change the subject, but somebody married you?! I have a renewed zest for life ;)
Pork Cop says
Not only that but she claims to be happy ! Don’t get too excited even Chairman Mao was married.Although he had charisma to burn…..(insert winky, wink,wink)
Pork Cop says
Not only that but she claims to be happy ! Don’t get too excited even Chairman Mao was married.Although he had charisma to burn…..(insert winky, wink,wink) “Pork Cop, I knew Mao Zedong and you Mr. Pork are no Great Helmsman”
Only A Customer says
I have read the entry and subsequent discussion with great interest as neither a chef nor an owner, but only as a lowly customer.
The one thing that perturbs me a bit runs from the infamous ‘cooking exposes’ to this article and discussion is the de riguer boho, anti-society, cartoon-watching, man/child of being a cook that requires somewhat mindless aggression towards the food, the customer, the employer, and in this case, themselves.
Maturity is a b****, but it sure makes life easier at times.
Chambolle says
I say whatever it takes to keep you sane in a relatively insane job, especially considering the pay. These people are part of the machine that fuels our leisure pursuits. Let’s remember that we are extremely f’ing lucky to be even discussing food on this level. If all the cooks of the world were really ‘mature’ they probably wouldn’t be cooking in a restaurant – they might, say, do something profitable and upstanding. And then what?
Vapid1 says
Nail hit on head Chambolle.
Pb says
Too true, we are fortunate, if a little spoiled. I’m glad someone brought up the well-done issue – most of the world CAN’T eat rare meat for safety and sanitation issues, this includes many of our immigrant grandparents. The “I hate well-done” arguments from cooks is just like that I hate vegetarians and vegans argument – it means you suck as a cook and can only produce a narrow range of preordained foodstuffs. You can’t create on the fly and you can’t think technically. I am a cook too, and unlike most I realize that there is a big huge world outside of our little modern culinary bubble that we inevitably end up trapped in. There are things that can be done with well done meat, or anything else for that matter, and if you can figure them out, you rise above rank and file cooks and start moving up the creative ladder. Also, I appreciate the alleged passion and vitriol (yawn), but if Bourdain can use spellcheck, so can you. As a cook and a chef, I find this piece frankly embarrasing.
Athens says
So this is very belated compared to all the others, but i just had to add my two cents.. even if unread. Loved this post and look forward to your others!