Asking Google Questions, or, "Why is Being a Chef Interesting?"

On Monday I saw that people asked questions of Google and ended up at Eggbeater.

1. "why is being a chef interesting?"
2. "what is papaya made out of?"
3. "what is a eggbeater?"
4. "how to cook a quince?"
5. "how mechanical leverage works"

2 is my favorite. I want to know the answer to that too. It's so existential. Let me know if you get the answer to that one.

And then there's 1. Being a chef is interesting because- o the answers are vast. But should I tell you? Maybe you'll just run out and go to culinary school. And then graduate and call yourself a chef. Or maybe you'll call yourself a chef and then make disparaging comments on TV about others in your profession. Even ones that aren't true, just so you can get ratings.

Real chefs are toiling away day after day, night after night, with little compensation and high falutin' press. Chefs are a strange clan. As is with the Pogues, few of us are pretty enough to make appearances on TV. We have industry scars and haven't ever made enough money to take care of the fucked-up things that happen to our bodies after using them for all they're worth. Like spider veins, and permanent burn marks, bad teeth, alcoholism or drug addiction depending on your fancy, athlete's foot, dry cracking hands, pale skin and dirty pores, and poor social skills.

Why is being a chef interesting? It's a good question.

Some industries need a line to get people hooked in. Once you're in, there's no going back. To normalcy. To enjoying a 9-5 job. To working every day the same way, experiencing co-worker's similarly. To wearing regular clothes and commuting with other normals. Look at the military. Really think about what those jobs must be like. Harrowing, boring, physically challenging, terrifying, strengthening. Hard core. Imagine what it takes to write those ad campaigns. They have to make the military seem interesting to get people to join. Voluntarily.

Cooking and the military have a lot in common. How we work is compared to basic training. Of course they are not the same, no disrespect to those in the military. Soldiers have an impossible life.

We both wear uniforms that are, for the most part, unflattering. We're both veritably hidden from the public. Cooks use the service entrance, are considered servants, and our field is still considered working class. Yes, that's right. Because we work with our hands. We both use our physicality as much as our intellect. {Well that's the hope, at any rate.} We both have a hard time feeling normal when we're not doing our work. Our work is us, our food is our heart. And yes, that means that we take criticism personally. We do the best we can every service, and we have to go in the next day and do it all over again, and we might fail miserably, even though the kitchen courses through our veins.

And we both get a lot of slack from regular citizens. Even though we break our backs trying to do the best job we can. Waking and sleeping. Or not sleeping, as is the case for many of us.

Who needs sleep? You can sleep when you're dead.

{was it Sid Vicious who coined this phrase? Or John Lydon aka Johnney Rotten?}

Why is being a chef interesting? Because when you're a chef life is never dull. Someone is always calling in sick from jail. The dishwasher is constantly breaking. Customers fight in the dining room. Or pass out. New fruits and vegetables are always arriving at the farmer's markets. Ovens catch on fire. Managers have sex in walk-ins. People misunderstand each other in broken Spanglish. Cooks stab each other. Cooks cut off bodily parts in meat saws. People dine with their mistresses. Tempers run hot. No body has a life. General managers are constantly being sent to detox centers. Chefs line up for knee and hip replacements. Pastry chefs arrive at work with guns, threatening anyone with cocoa on their collar. Freezers always break down in the summer. Purveyors hire ex-cons as delivery men. The mafia picks up your garbage. Vermin of all shapes and sizes run into the dining room and/or die in the walls. The post office destroys honey sent through the mail for Homeland Security reasons. Or you find your wife/husband having sex with someone besides you in the kitchen, during service. Because people quit in the middle of a Saturday night with everyone on the books.

Because no matter how many hours you stay at work every day, every month & year, no matter who you work for or with--

YOU WILL NEVER LEARN ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT FOOD*

Being a chef is interesting. Being a chef is punk rock. Those bobbing heads on TV? They are not us.

Our music will never be played on the radio. Like Vegas, what goes on the kitchen, stays there. We work behind closed doors. We speak a secret language, wear our scars proudly, take oaths and share blood, read invisible ink, hear voices, follow an education that will never end*

and that's all pretty interesting, if you ask me.

I don't know who typed in those 6 simple words strung together, but here's the start to answer your big question.

Does anyone else think it odd to ask Google a question? What did we do before Google?

Comments

[kudzu]

You hit this one right out of the park. Brava, Shuna!

[Krista]

I swear, every time I read your blog I weep. And I'm at work, for the love of god! I'm not sure what it is, but your words constantly break me wide open. Thank you. Beautiful.

[Alto2]

I like to cook, and I'm a pretty good home cook. But, there's no way I'd want to be a professional chef. I admire the sheer lunacy and fortitude of you professional cooks. Your inventiveness inspires me at home.

Do what you do? Never! Read about? All the time! BTW, thanks for that post about book recs. I'm now reading Bill Buford's "Heat". Madhur Jaffrey is next.

[Katz]

ps: I find chef coats to be hawt.

[Dave]

Shuna,
What makes a chef a 'chef'? I cook, I create. I slave away in the kitchen one night a week, but I do it for love, not money. Actually I do it for TWO loves: my wife and the cooking.

So am I a chef or a cook? ;-)

[Laurie]

It's refreshing to hear someone in the industry say it like it is. I can't tell you how many times people tell me: "Oh, you're so lucky to be a chef. That must be so much FUN!" Well, it IS fun, but it is also everything else that you mentioned above.
I've worked in lots of kitchens with externs straight from culinary school coming to work with us. I always know they are doomed once I hear the words come out of their mouths: "This is so much FUN!" Yes, it's fun the first day on the job, when you're still learning the ropes and your chef isn't expecting anything from you. But once that stops, you are expected to perform - exellently and consistently - every day at work. Those people who claim that "It's fun" inevitably end up in tears and/or collecting unemployment from the restaurant.
I don't mean to discourage anyone from persuing this line of work. It is very rewarding in its own ways, but please, please, PLEASE give professional chefs/cooks the respect they deserve by recognizing that this is an extremely stressful and low-paying industry.
TV celebrity chefs have given the public a twisted, completely false sense of what this industry is truly about. This is HARD WORK, and a lot of people do not realize this.

[Raspil]

damn hell ass well said!

you're so right on about this:

"We both have a hard time feeling normal when we're not doing our work."

i resigned from my job last week (i'm about to move to Las Vegas) and i called my chef and he asked how i was doing and i said "this feels weird" and he said "yeah, i expected you'd say that." aside from packing, i don't know what to do with myself and i am very anxious to get on with my life when i get to the desert.

as long as the FN is polluting the idiot box, the fantasy will continue and the Average Joe 9-5 on the street will never understand what we do. but is that such a big deal? i don't think so. i dig this tribal element of this industry. the ignorance of the outsiders entertains me to no end. doing something that a "regular" person can't handle is hot to me. yeah, it's fun but that isn't why i'm into this and it's not why i got into it. so why did i? it seemed like what i should be doing and i was going to do it no matter what. nothing else had worked out for me and this at least seemed rewarding to me on an elemental level.

i remember a phrase from one of the actors during the show Kitchen Confidential (pity about that show): "we do this for the food, money and sex and if you screw up the first one, the other two vanish." at this moment in my career (and i fully live in the moment), that phrase exemplifies this field for me. as i get older and more experienced, that feeling will change. but for now, it's dead on. it's been two years. the honeymoon is over for me and i'm still here.

gotta go deal with my sciatica pain.

[stine]

thank you.

[Kate]

I gave up cooking for a living once I could no longer deny that my knees were completely shot and wouldn't support me through another season... I don't always miss it, the early mornings, the late nights, second degree burns and lacerations from chicken bones... But there are days when I would sell my soul to be back in a cramped and steaming kitchen, whipping egg whites and stirring soup while the kitchen fills with delicious smells... So I come here, to live vicariously through your lovely photos and eloquent descriptions of what it means to love food as much as you love your own life's blood...

[sam]

I am surprised given your recent assault on bad grammar, that you chose not to correct the google referrals before publishing them ;)

I would be interested to see you make the same arguments about art. Do you consider yourself an artist, for example? Would those artists who dedicate their lives to and struggle to make a living from art agree that anyone artistic should be allowed to call themseves an artist too?

[shuna fish lydon]

Sam,

In the grammarian post I merely copy and pasted varioys "Style Guide" suggestions. I would not call that an assault. Style Guides are used by all publications-- and every publication has a different take on how the written word should flow.

In the case of blogs I have not told anyone how to do things, I stated that "un-edited" blog writing is sometimes incredibly hard to read, but I did not attack anyone.

In the case of the word artist I can barely comment. My upbringing made it veritably impossible to own the word writer, and even with 20 years of applied art background, I find artist a difficult word to own as well.

But, as many know, I am harder on myself than most.

I say that a cook is not a chef because they are not. I am addressing the professional world only-- and that is all I can speak to-- because it is a term I proudly own: cook/pastry chef. A word I worked hard for. I have earned the stripes.

But, like all art, the journey is life long. I'll die before I know all I want to, all I'd like to.

And my hope? Is that I'll leave behind some of what I've learned and have been given.

The above paragraphs say that I tip my hat to this profession, not that I am the g-d or despot of it. I'm sorry you are taking it this way, it is not who I am, nor is it my intention.

[nick flores]

the Pogue reference alone in this one did it for me
you rule!

[lee]

Someone got to my blog by asking Google "How do I write my own will?" Huh?

I agree that working in restaurants is seldom boring (except, unfortunately, my current job) but I think you have worked in much more interesting places!

[Stephanie]

If readers believe that, they'll believe anything.

As a chef, I agree - there are bad days, interesting days, bloody good days but 90% of what you describe you have probably read in a Bourdain book because having been in this line of work for 16 years, what I'm reading in this post is the stuff of fantasy.

Or only in America.

[shuna fish lydon]

Stephanie,

I work hard to insure that my posts are truthful. I have been working for 14+ years in NYC, Yountville and SF-- I do not steal words from Bourdain, I have merely lived them to tell my own tale.

I also know cooks who have been hit, spit on, burned on purpose etc. who have worked in England and Italy-- so my experiences, and the experiences of my colleagues in America can, in all honesty, be shared with my non-American comrades.

Just because you haven't seen or experienced these things, doesn't mean no one has & therefore it's fantasy.

[Kurt]

Finally, someone is out there in neverland to gather real-life experiences on 'the cooking profession'. First of all, it aint like medicine or law. Anyone can make a nice pate aux choux, or creme anglaise, or chili. It only takes a bit of guidance and practicefor those who don't know what it means to sautee something. You don't need a license to sell your expertice on sorbet making! So for God's sake, stop with the suggestions that chefs are like teachers or dentists! Anyone can make a brownie. Not all can do surgery.

Kurt
Orange, CA

[Charlotte]

Thank god!Tell it as it is.Straight in your face!Im another Chef..(a woman as well.)and its so well said.
Talking bout scars..so many to count on my arms/hands from fryer/steamer etc.Chopped my left tip of thumb off-continued to finish my shift.
:)This isnt a place for fluffy bunnies and dainty butterflies!
Thanks girl!

[brandon Kennedy, british columbia]

All of that is how we feel and why we do it. We will always take the abuse and keep coming back