
It really takes a special someone to become a chef, we have quite unique personalities, no doubt influenced by hours, days, weeks and years spent in hot, poorly ventilated rooms deprived of natural light!
A basic vocabulary of yes, Chef, fuck, behind and hot will more than suffice, not necessarily in that order but you probably could get through a 4 hour service on those 4 words alone?
When I started I would travel to work in darkness before sunrise and would leave the kitchen in darkness, go to the pub get hammered, get up and do it again 6 days a week, not sure normal folks could imagine that, not seeing daylight for an entire week let alone a month or 2.
I say normal because I think even after just 2 paragraphs it has clearly been established that chefs are far from normal, but do you know what the most abnormal thing about it is......
We fucking love it !
I first started working in kitchens at 14, through necessity really, I come from a one parent family, 2 brothers, council estate home, life was tough, working part time on weekends earning £50 a week, I am not exaggerating it, I felt rich!
I really loved it, the camaraderie, the satisfaction of a hard day's graft, the no nonsense straight talking, this was new to me, I was part of a team, I had money!
It very quickly became my life, my mates were my colleagues and I wanted to spend all my free time with them working! I felt at home immediately and on top of all that I was pretty good at it!
My colleagues, the people I looked up to and respected looking back on it were most definitely not the most positive role models and led me to do things I would never in a million years consider doing now and certainly would not consider introducing to teenage cooks, but despite what people think about chefs they were always kind to me and looked out for me, I believe they respected my hard working attitude and I stand by that to this day, hard work, graft and effort will always earn you more respect than talent!
I love my career, I am thankful for all I have done and achieved but I do recognize that I am not normal, my lifestyle has at times been fucking mental but I would not change it 1 little bit !
I would love to hear other people's take on this!
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