You think you got what it takes?

Aside from cooking, another thing I also love to do is teaching. I love being able to educate people especially if they're really into it. Now I'm not talking about teaching math or science (I'm not that type of Asian) and I'm not talking about just cooking. I'm talking about the whole business.

Recently, I had a conversation with my friend's dad's friend. He's an older gentleman, about 50 years old. We had started a conversation about cooking and my career and he tells me his son is thinking about going to school for culinary arts. As gung ho as he was about his son going into culinary, I gave him my card and told him to tell his son to give me a call before he applies for school.

I've had this conversation with a lot of people and I've given the same speech over and over again. It's not that I don't want people to aspire to become chefs, I just want them to know what they're getting themselves into. A lot of people who go to culinary schools and such really don't know what the life of a chef is. I read an article about a group of culinary school students who are suing their school because they were "mislead" by statements made by the school. I also blame it on the media and these TV shows (though I love Top Chef). They see these TV chefs and they think they live these lavish lives with the traveling and white coats and nice aprons...and they do. But how do you think they got there? They didn't wake up one day and say, "Hey, I'm going to open up 4 restaurants and they're going to be successful!" That's not how it works. When you open up a restaurant it's a guarantee you won't see any kind of profit for the first 5 years. There's so much stress involved because of food waste, trusting employees, and just the job itself. But opening a restaurant is for another blog.

Quite frankly the life of a chef is really shitty. Our hours are shitty (70-80 hour weeks), we get paid shitty, we work weekends, we work holidays, your days off are when everybody else works, and if you're working in an a la carte restaurant, chances are you probably don't have any benefits. Sure they'll take care of you if you get hurt at work but what if you get into a car accident? Get outside insurance? How are you going to afford health insurance making $10/hour?

From the time you step into work till the time you leave, it's nonstop work. Starting with the trucks that come in the morning to deliver your food...you have to check for quality, date each item so you know when it came in, put all the food away properly. After that, you still have to prep your station for service. Most of the time you only have about 2 or 3 hours to prep which seems like a lot but it's really not when everything has to be made from scratch everyday. After that, it's time to get your ass kicked during service. That's about 5-6 hours of nonstop someone yelling at you, orders coming back because it's not what the customer wanted, potential running out of food, 100 degree heat from the ovens, grill, and stoves, and of course stress. AND THEN you have to clean up which is about another hour or two and by the time you know it, it's almost midnight. After a night of service all you want to do is go home and sleep. But when you go home you realize you did absolutely nothing all day except work because you wake up later in the day so you can be rested for service. So you get home and you feel like you have to do something because nobody wants a wasted day. You might drink a couple beers, order some take-out, pop in a movie. And finally you get to sleep about 3-4am. Next morning you wake up around 9-10am to do it ALL OVER AGAIN.

Why would ANYBODY want to become a chef then?

Some people just really love food, some like being creative, and there some sick people out there that like being on the line during the dinner rush. For me, it's about the customer's satisfaction and knowing someone loves your food. When I see a plate come back clean, that's a reward all in it's own. I believe that chefs are a different breed of people. I mean, just reading from above who wants to stress and get yelled at in that kind of heat every single day? WE DO. Though I knew I wanted to cook from a young age there are people out there that went through regular college and worked corporate America. I know people who've made over $100k/year sitting at a desk with a computer in a suit, traveling every other week and now they're not even making a fraction of what they used to make. And I ask all of them, why would you give up that life? They all give me the same answer, "I couldn't take it anymore, it just got boring." We need some sort of an adventure everyday and that's what you get in a kitchen. Some may be good some may be bad, but whatever the case may be it's still something different happening everyday. I could never become a "paper pusher"...sorry to all the paper pushers in the world hahaha.

I love what I do. I love cooking, I love food, but most importantly I love making people happy. I will always cook for someone else before I cook for myself. Though the job is very stressful and there are days when I want to just shut down, I do it for myself. This is me and this is what I love to do and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm one of the few people in this world that can say "I love my job."