On a clear day…
Originally published at Cheryl Katz. Please leave any comments there.
In a situation not entirely foreign to my particular perspective, I found myself reeling with a case of deja-vu. Can Art Culinaire Magazine, issue #96 with a focus on London, have been written as a working epistle to YOURS TRULY as a primer on the next steps in my career?
I’ve decided that it’s in my best interests to read these that way. In another recent read, I was advised to always be grateful to those from whom I learn, no matter what shape the learning takes. So here are some bites I’ve taken away from the issue on London, which I received in San Diego while I was already working in London.
First, timely advice from Fergus Henderson:
Don’t sort of sleep under your stone. Try to breathe fresh air. Eat other people’s food. See your loved ones. Go to movies. That’s all-important. You can stay in the kitchen, but that insistence to stay and train with your master and not live a life is not the best thing for inspiration. I think it’s good to breathe fresh air. Inspiration is everywhere. It’s slightly strange advice because I think people think they need to work five doubles in a row and that way you’ll learn, which we do learn in this way, but there’s so much more to it than that.
This is timely in a somewhat misdirected way because at the time that this issue landed on my doorstep, I was busy pulling voluntary doubles in the kitchen in London, exercising the very lack of balance that Mr. Henderson is recommending against. But beyond addressing my improbable tendency to workaholism, it speaks directly to a largely unsubstantiated fear that I am a creative failure. (It’ll be substantiated if and when I have years of experience and no creative successes; and was thus far disproven by things I tried in and out of school, in my own kitchen at home, and in discussions with many chefs I know.)
And in the opposite corner is Claude Bosi, chef proprietor of Hibiscus in London, who relates this message to his own staff:
Understand that when you start this job you’ve left your family on the side. You sacrifice everything. I remember when I started, one of the chefs told me, “You know, your best friend is going to be out on a Saturday night and you will be working. When they are having Christmas, you will be working. It’s a tough life. You have to love it.”
In one fell quote, my fears and what I know to be reality about my commitment to this work.
One of my favorites, probably the most controversial in this time of celebrity chefs and TV-reality-cooking-competition circuses, from Marcus Wareing of The Berkeley in London:
I see these young cooks on television in America and it’s amazing that they ever get anywhere. It’s hype. My message is to shut your mouth, get on with your job and let your cooking do the talking for you. Food isn’t about how big your mouth is, it’s about the food you put on the plate. I think sometimes people talk too much and it should be about being a solid, well grounded, well educated cook whose [sic] took the advice, grown a very broad pair of shoulders and become strong but loyal to the person that they’re working for.
I think as a recent culinary graduate, the number one question I hear is, “So, am I going to see you on [Top Chef/Iron Chef/Food Network/etc]?”
I always answer no, because I know that I am not competitive in that way. I also don’t think that performance is ability, and the hoopla is what I regard as a waste of my effort and focus. I want to keep my head down, do my job and never stop absorbing every drop of knowledge that surrounds me. When I reach success, I hope that I’ll always be able to find one more goal to reach for. But the flash and fleeting fame of television isn’t it, as far as I can see, for me. I found an open expression of this viewpoint bracing.
Nic Watt, of ROKA in London, on hirability:
I hire someone based off their character. We can take the most junior person - who has zero skills - and train them up if they’ve got the attitude, the character and the willingness - they can go miles, absolutely miles. The foundation of culinary school is really good but it doesn’t control whether you employ someone or not. It probably gives you a head start, but it’s up to each individual to eventually make it in this industry. You’ve got to love this industry. You can’t work day and night for something that you don’t love.
I’m an educated cook, if not an experienced one. In fact, it stands to reason that I’m an over-educated cook, but I aim to use my academic background as a path within, rather than an obstacle to, my career in food. Something I have going for me is that I never have to be trained in how to behave professionally. I’m willing to be trained and I’m not insulted to learn to do things “someone else’s way.” Methods can be integral to a culinary philosophy and to the final product, and I never imagine that I am more important then the goals of the chef I support. This is an idea that was repeated by every chef-instructor who taught me and the few working chefs I’ve had the privilege to work for.
I will, however, hold on to the things that I think work best for me, and when it’s my turn to lead a kitchen, I’ll remember the things I’ve been culling into my personal arsenal. That (not to mention at home) is when my preferences will be freely expressed.
Jennifer Yee, Executive Pastry Chef at Aureole, calmed some of my anxiety when she used M-words!
Don’t let mistakes and mishaps get to you because it will happen. Don’t let that stop you. There were plenty of times when I had to throw out a lot of chocolates because they broke or it wasn’t tempered right. You’re always going to have problems with chocolate, but keep moving forward.
I think her advice about chocolate applies to nearly anything, and it’s frankly a relief to me to hear a successful chef acknowledge that they have made mistakes in the past. “It will happen,” did you hear the certain comfort in those words? It’s easy for me, as a new chef, to get stumbled and frustrated when I make a mistake. So far I haven’t let any mistake tank an entire day, and most mistakes, I’ve learned, are either opportunities to turn theory into practical knowledge or salvageable in some way.
Creativity, in my limited experience, largely comes to play in the arena of problem solving. Yet it’s nice to read that mistakes are a native part of the landscape.
Finally, Missy Robbins of A Voce in New York told me to have:
Patience. You can never go back to those times when you are learning the positions. You can never go back to being a line cook. Enjoy it and learn all you can because when you become a sous chef, your responsibilities change and when you’re an executive chef, they change again. Take the time to really learn the techniques and really focus on it. At the end of the day, people find this very glamorous, but it’s not that glamorous. It’s challenging and hard. There are days when I think, “Man, I wish I could just sit back and roll pasta all day. How great would that be?” But I have different responsibilities now.
It reminds me of the way the conventional wisdom told me to hold on to those early days, weeks, months and years with Sami after she was born, and to really learn that kid inside and out, because they don’t last forever. Being new to the industry also doesn’t last forever, and these may be the hours, weeks and months that count the most in building my abilities and my career.
Chef Robbins recommends “the slow road,” and that was the title of the article about her. This appeals to me because I have always loved to immerse in learning and soak it up. It also appeals because I am old for this industry, and the fast track doesn’t necessarily apply.
All of this may seem self-effacing, or maybe self-aggrandizing, but I’d hate to let any undeserved ego get in the way of something I could learn. I’m frequently admonished by friends to stop being so critical of myself, but I should point out that I feel I’m just being realistic. I also note that I don’t have a tremendous frame of reference for self-evaluation, and even as I become familiar with the landscape the familiarity changes my perception of things. I find it more useful to measure myself in glasses yet to be filled (against the next goal to be attained) rather than glasses already full (the things I’ve already mastered.)
I don’t think that my constant introspection gets in the way of any job I’m called upon to do; rather it allows me to categorize and neatly assemble all the knowledge I am acquiring.