When I was younger I cooked out of interest, out of a compelling sense that this was something fun, they were bonding moments between mother and I on the stove or my father and I on the grill (not to be too clichéd). Those were moments of love – unbridled, unequivocal, unequaled love. At the age of three I cooked my first dish in my memory (mac’n’cheese) and it was phenomenal. It was the beginning of a lifelong love, obsession really, that has permeated everything I do to this day. I travel with food at the apex of my thoughts – “where should I eat,” “what’s unique in this city,” “whose opinion can I depend on for my food queries.”
It, all of it, is built on a basis of love. Love for my parents, the love I see on my family’s and friend’s faces when they are truly happy with something I put before them; no one can mimic being able to parlay happiness with a well-cooked piece of meat glistening on a plate, with a sauce that took hours of constant temperament circumambulating the centerpiece; a few pieces of accoutrement just to set off additional notes of sour, sweet, starch, astringency or bite necessary to complete that singular dish. Executed, all of it, with the utmost care and devotion one would reserve for gems.
It is love and the catharsis therein that keeps me doing this, keeps me going. No one wants to open up in a kitchen – one filled with as much machismo as a high school locker room, or enough internal walls to start paying rent on. But, still, that is not a necessity of love is there. And if there is no love you, as a diner, can tell.
The difference between a good meal and a meal remembered for its depravity and off-taste is the emotional state of the person who cooks the meal. I must admit that I am a fan of music that does not necessarily condone happiness and sound thought while I cook, but still, even with that said, there is surprising differences in how effective I am depending on mood. You are the last table, the large one being boisterous and loud in the dining room, loud enough so I can hear you, as the minute hand ticks ever so close to marking midnight my ability to stay fervent in my love will wane. I know there are those out there who like to push those bounds: “I’m paying good money for you to feed me”; I get that, in fact I am probably more livid towards the matre d’ who sat you at 10pm in the first place. Still, it is hard for me to stay happy and love the food I put out at that hour. Those are the tables where I remember why I started smoking, and why I miss it so much now.
In my quest to become a better cook, to learn from those who have ‘made it,’ a loving kitchen and environment has become a must. Learning comes from two places: a place of vinegar or honey. The very old school logic is to belittle, to demean until your point sticks, or the way of the new school logic where a worker is not a slave – they are a logical cog in a greater machine that cannot run without their input.
That is what I want to instill. When one loves the food, their employees, their co-workers, and their front of house the food jump by leaps and bounds in quality. Everyone works better, every wants to improve, the impetus to grow is not out of fear, it is out of a sense of community: if you mess up you are not letting yourself down, you’re letting down your community, your family.
I currently work in a restaurant where I am an intern, yet I can give my input to our menu whenever I might be able to help out. That is the restaurant I want to work in the rest of my life, that is the restaurant I want to create. So often a restaurant is a place for the disheveled, the disgruntled, and the burnt out; this fosters an environment of pain and suffering, where respect is earned by home much torture you can take. This is not, by any means, an exaggeration.
As the times progress more and more restaurants will become ingrained in fostering an environment that is conducive to learning without extreme repercussions for a mistake. Belittlement does nothing other than make someone timid and afraid that they do not even want to take a risk and left to never learn, one never learns from mistakes rather they are accustomed to a set standard of experience that will never condone creativity or expansion of self.
With the ideology of love seeping into every facet of the cooking industry we are closing in on the pinnacle of what we, as cooks, want to do. Imagine a world where cooks and chefs and bakers have two days off a week, where monetary gain is usurped by quality and a constant eye on the relative happiness of their workers, and it is a world that can finally break free of the shackles of drug, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine abuse and the rampant increase in suicide rates. Stress is literally a killer.
I got into this industry for my love of food, love of the comradeship, love of the pace, and yet here I am a veteran of loveless kitchens, knowing that I will never go back into that segment of my industry. This too will change, this too will end.
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