Career Changers

[snousle]

Very interesting article in the Chronicle about people who switch to a culinary career late in life.

The comments are particularly interesting. I have to endorse just about everything the most severe naysayers say about this; the celebrity chef phenomenon has greatly distorted the perception of the trade. Long hours and low pay indeed. I had to laugh over comments about 14 hour days at a third the pay - sometimes I work 16 hours at one tenth the pay. LOL. There are paths to this that work - chefxh is a good example - but you have to be very committed.

Nothing in the article or the comments was anything I didn't know going into this. It's a real tough line of work no matter how you do it.

Comments

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

All the TV hype and the crap fed to people about being a chef skews the reality of what a cooking job is all about. The reality is that for every "chef" there are ten or more grunts doing the actual work and producing the actual food.

When service is on your on stage and there is no cigarette break, piss break, and not even time to break air... The stress is phenomenal. Its not surprising that so many workers in the field use drugs or alcohol.

But fortunately there are many facets to cooking and not all of it is high stress... one has to find the niche that suits one the best.

I could never do what Jeff does. I had one year of it in Chicago, and decided back then that I wanted a real life and not one where I worked and slept, worked and slept, etc. I decided that I never wanted my own restaurant after seeing what Varoujan went through... 15 hour days. 7 days a week. I often wondered if Varoujan worked like he did, not only to produce superb food, but to stay away from his bitch of a mother-in-law.

Had I gone into the field I probably would have done pastry rather than savory, without a doubt.

The Culinary school from which Jeff graduated is know for pushing the hype and signing the ignorant up for a $70K school debt in a world that starts out at minimum wage with few, if any benefits. They are telling prospective students that getting into the Food Network is a real possibility. What they are doing isn't exactly lying, but its far from the reality of truth.

Making a livelihood in the cooking world is a lot of back breaking labour whose only reward is the one that one perceives, and isn't often offered by the chef...

Its a job that you must love above all else.