As you know, I get a lot of questions from cooks or future cooks from all over the world. When I started eggbeater I didn't really understand the internet, and I didn't know people from everywhere would be reading it, or even that they would get to it from someplace other than the exact location I was writing it from. You could say I was naive. You'd be correct, and diplomatic.
People want to know how they can become a chef, pastry chef, or even start cooking professionally. People want to know what to do when the kitchens they work in suck. Female cooks want to know exactly how much harassment they should take. Everyone wants me to tell them which is the best culinary school. A lot of people want to know what the pay scale is. Many people ask Google how many hours they should expect to work as a chef/cook.
But the question I get most is how to land the very first job, stagiere, apprenticeship.
How do I get my first cooking job?
What will the interview be like?
How long does it take to become a pastry chef?
Can I work for you?
I write, and have written, the same email response over and over and over. You'd think by now I'd have a form-letter, but I'm still a little naive, so I don't.
And because I have recently started pounding the pavement again, I can say that my own advice, after 17 years, still works.
Here are my standard tips for getting into your first kitchen, and maybe some more, if you so choose to make kitchens your life, love and home.
- Eat out as much as you can afford. Bring a little notebook and pen with you wherever you go. Take notes. When you find a menu you love, ask your waiter for the full name of the chef and pastry chef. Ask what the hours of said restaurant are.
- Print out your resume/CV and bring it, in person, to this restaurant and ask for the chef/pastry chef by full name. Only go to a restaurant before services. If a place is open for lunch and dinner it's best to show up between 3-4 pm. Never ever ever ever call or go to a restaurant and ask for anyone managerial while service is going on.
- Flattery will get you everywhere. Tell said chef you loved her/his food when you ate there and that you would love to work in their kitchen. Questions to come out of your mouth sound something like this: 'Are there any entry level positions open?' 'Do you have room for a stagiere?' 'Can I come in for a stagiere?' You are humble. You will take any position. You know little. But you are firm and have conviction. You go to that back door every day and ask for the person you need to speak with if it's the place you want to work.
- Do not wait for a phone call back.
- Do not email your resume/CV as an attachment.
- Do not take rejection as such until you have exhausted all your options.
- Do not take rejection personally. Do not take acceptance personally either. Most chefs love free labour and if you land an entry level position, you will still have to work hard to earn respect in the kitchen.
- Read as much as you can about said chef/restaurant. If you make it into the kitchen spend all your waking hours reading local papers, food magazines, blogs, and cookbooks covering said cuisine.
- IMMERSE YOURSELF. In all things food, cooking, baking, ingredients, agriculture, butchery.
- Take notes.
- Buy these things for every job and never go to work without them:
- Thick Sharpie, A little notebook that fits in your back pocket and 1 indelible pen that is not a thick sharpie.
- Always leave a little time before you enter the kitchen for Mental Mis en Place. This is as important as your physical tools like knives, off-set spatulas and shoes you can stand for 16 hours in.
- When you are in the kitchen, learn everyone's {full} names and histories. Get their information and keep in touch with them long after you leave said job. It is from my relationships to other cooks that I have gotten 98% of my jobs.
- Your knives should always be sharp. You do not need a lot of them.
- Get to work early and stay late. Watch and learn from the best people in the kitchen. Fellow cooks don't talk or give advice a lot in the kitchen but their movements, set-up, and how they fare during service will tell you more than they could.
- Stay humble. People who have been cooking for decades and decades will die knowing less than most people think they know in their first few years cooking/baking. Cooking is a craft, not an acquisition.
- Stay in every kitchen for at least 1 year in your first 5 years.
No matter your age, gender, sexual preference, religion, and class, when you are at the bottom of the brigade/totem pole, you are truly at the bottom. Learn how to wash dishes even if it's not your job title. Be available for anything.
Even if you are a stagiere, act like the job is a job. If all the chef has available is a stage, make a serious intentional arrangement about time. Just going in when it suits you will not build enough of a rhythm to learn from, at least not in the beginning.
If you really want to cook professionally, and all the restaurants in your area are chains or run by Shoemakers, you will have to move.
People keep writing to me about their horrible kitchens. Chefs with little to no integrity. Dirty disgusting kitchens. Kitchens putting their workers and diners at risk with food and safety issues.
If you work in a kitchen that is not safe for anyone working or dining there, leave. If you want to make a difference, access your local authorities. You can not make an anonymous claim, though. If you're going to advocate, you have to be brave.
I took Whole Foods to the National Labor Relations Board {NLRB} and filed a claim with OSHA when I was about 22, so I don't want to hear you're too young or scared of your job or whatever when it comes to reporting the kitchen you show up every day to.
If you want to cook professionally you may want to stop watching kitchen reality shows.
If you want to cook professionally you should have money in the bank or very cheap rent or a spouse to support you.
If you want to cook professionally you immediately give up having a 'normal' life with 'normal' working hours.
If you want to cook professionally you will have to really want it. Above all else.
If you want to cook professionally go after it like nothing else. Stop at nothing.
If you want to cook professionally you will, if it's all you can think about. If you can afford to do so. If you set your mind to it.
When will you be a chef?
That I can't say. For that there is no bullet point list, no advice, no recipe.
I didn't start cooking profdessionally to become a chef or be a chef or arrive as a chef. I started cooking professionally because it was all I wanted to do at a very particular time in my life. I didn't go to culinary school, I did not own a single knife, I did not know what an 'all-day' was.
I learned everything on the job. And so can you. Or you can go to school. Or take all that money you would sign over to a school, put it in the bank, and go work for someone whose food you love for free and live on that bank account.
I'm here to say that flattery is the best way to get your foot in a seemingly solid steel door. I recently took a CV to a restaurant I like a lot. I said these words,
"Hello. I've only been here to eat a few times but I love it. I'm in the industry-- I'm a cook, and I happen to have my CV with me. But I want you to know this: even if you never call me, I am going to come back. I have recommended __________ to many people and I will continue to do so. Just in case the chef needs any help, I'm available for any position."
And I got a phone call. And a trail/day stage.
While I have no idea what will happen, a lot has happened already because I was able to work for 12 hours inside one of the most inspirational kitchens I have ever had the priveledge to be in.
When the chef asked me why I had given the restaurant my CV even though no position was being advertised, I said, "Where I come from, if a resume comes to me and I can not utilize said person, I pass it along to someone I respect who can. If I gave you my CV, and I love your food, and you did the same, I would trust that my name would be passed along to someone else I would want to work for."
Rule of thumb: the more people who see your resume/CV, the more likelihood of getting a job. And if you never burn any bridges it's great because the cooking world is small. I recently traveled 8,000 miles only to work with a pastry chef who had gone to school with and worked for some of the very same people I had, in the exact same kitchens!
And now I'm in a completely foreign city, connecting with cooks and bakers, following the same advice I'm giving you.
Be brave. Be bold.
This industry isn't for the faint of heart. It's for the passionate, the crazy, the driven, the competitive.
This industry is a knitted series of networks of people who are like tiny cities/families unto themselves.
This industry is my home, my heart, my love, my people, brethren.
But it's not a part time job. And it's not impossible to enter.
Perhaps I have now finally created my form-letter response...
I do hope this helps.
Fellow cooks/chefs/bakers/pastry chefs-- any more advice to add to the list?
People entering the industry-- what has worked for you? What hasn't?
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