Paper Palate

There is a reason why I am neither a chef nor a chef-owner of a restaurant.

Washington Post staffer Korin Miller pegged it in her story, “Love on the Back Burner.”

Chefs work so hard, and so much, that they not only tend to have no social lives, but they are also often left lonely and without mates.

When people ask me why I don’t have my own restaurant, I always answer, some assume flippantly, “Because I love my husband and daughter and would like to see them.”

People laugh, but I think they don’t realize that the glamorous life that they see chefs living on Food TV is a fantasy. It is a lie. It is marketing. It is a romaticization of the reality that most chefs work up to 100 hours a week under gruelling conditions that are dangerous to life and limb, for very little pay. (Yeah, sure some of the celebrity superstar chefs are pulling in the big bucks, but they are a very small percentage of chefs in this country. The rest are usually not getting paid half of what they are worth.)

When I was in culinary school, I didn’t just listen to what chefs said officially about working in restaurants. I listened to what they said between the lines, or in one-on-one conversations with students, or to each other. And every one of them who taught at Johnson & Wales, while they did not regret their time in the restaurant industry (and most of these chef-instructors had worked in very upscale, very well-respected restaurants), they did not really miss it, either.

Being a chef is hard work, and the hours are killer. The physical demands of the job are enormous, and can lead to crippling debilities and many injuries. One chef had burn scars roping one forearm from when he had grease from a baking plaque pour over his arm when he was apprenticed in Europe. Another had nerve damage in his hand so bad that he had no feeling in most of that hand. They all tended to have problems with their feet, and many of them battled tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome in their forearms for years.

Some of them were married, ahd happily so, though they said it was easier to be married and have kids when they taught, rather than when they cooked. Some of them had missed thier kids growing up because they were in restaurants noon to night every day, including weekends and holidays, cooking for very little recompense.

So why do chefs do it?

It certainly isn’t for the money, or the fame. Very few chefs become household names in our society, unless they get picked up by Food TV.

They do it because they are passionate about food. They love food, they love cooking and they have a need to feed people. It is there way of loving others. It is their way of giving of themselves to the world.

I am passionate about food myself, and I give my love through feeding others, but I know one thing.

I love my family more.