Get Outta My Kitchen, Gramps
It's probably a dream of many Serious Eaters out there—leaving the cubicle for the professional kitchen. But before you ditch the TPS Reports and smash the printer, one thing: Are you too old to stand the heat?
The food blog Grub Street fielded just that question from a 45-year-old reader last week. This week, a Seattle chef answers: "I don’t want you if you’re going to complain that your knees hurt, your feet hurt from the concrete floor, that you can’t move fast enough, can’t hear orders called. That you can’t stand to listen to the Mexican death metal that the dishwashers play or the gangsta rap the prep cooks listen to...."
Ouch.
Photograph from iStockPhoto.com
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4 Comments:
at 55, I went to pastry school, then into a professional kitchen at the now-closed Maison Robert in Boston. I was too unexperienced to know how odd that was, and too much in love with baking to care! I've worked with people 20 and 30 years younger than me, with worse physical problems, i.e. if your feet hurt so you can't stand after 2 hours on the job, it's probably time for a career change even if you are only 24 with school debts! Most chefs were very good to me, seeing me as more stable: I lasted a year on a job where the previous range had been in weeks, and very productive. The kitchens I've worked in didn't play music - but Mexican death metal would have been FUN!
The physical work does take it's toll, but what grates most is that pastry haslow pay for high skill levels. I could have made more, with less physical and mental stress, by peeling potatoes!
Pastrytroll at 8:58AM on 05/08/07
Pastrytroll: Sounds like you've proven the Seattle chef referenced above wrong. It's a sad state when your skilled work doesn't pay as much as peeling potatoes. There's a good story in today's New York Times about that — the high cost of culinary schooling.
Adam Kuban at 10:25AM on 05/08/07
you know i tried to post a question about his but the character limit inhibited me.
it seems that ms fornear seems to favor youth, who are, no doubt, riper for underpayment, for the back of the house, but i imagine she prefers a more, well-seasoned (ha), monied patron for the front.
when i read her response, which i can only characterize as "contemptuous", my initial response was to exhort anyone over, say 35, to boycott her restaurant. a few short years ago, ms fornear herself, owing to her gender, would not have the place she has in the kitchen. therefore, it is incumbent open her, and others like her, to repay that debt to others who forged a path for her with a more open-minded attitude. (see ed isn't the only hippie here).
i guess some of my ire derives from the fact that i am amost 50 (almost 50! jeez, that hurts) and expect to have a least one more career. nb: i didn't become a lawyer until i was 40 or so.
but you know what's funny? upon further reflection i remembered the baby boomers (my people) are all now midlife and beyond. we can just steamroller ms fornear and others as we have steamrollered everything else during the course of our generation. it may not be right, but it is. they were the youth culture then, and i know, that, even when there is only one 116 year old baby boomer left, she will think of herself as young.
Dish at 1:07PM on 05/08/07
actually, my answer email was paraphrased, and, yes, that part of the email does make me seem like a jerk.
I, in no way, feel that I am a "young" cook. I started cooking at 25, and I am now 30, and I know tons of younger cooks that could steamroll me. I can't imagine doing the work I did at 26 or 27, at 45.
i have hired cooks with less experience that are older than me, and, mostly, it has been a positive experience. i also run a small kitchen that is much easier for an older cook than some of the lines i have worked on. i've also had managerial-types that did not understand the brigade system, and would not listen to a younger chef, a younger FEMALE chef (as you pointed out).
The pastry kitchen, too, is much different than being on the line, and for most career changers, i think the pace is (slower) easier. Additionally, not all kitchens are fast-paced, 100 degree, 4-star dungeons, so maybe it's about picking one that works for you.
What really irks me is the way the media has turned chefs into rockstars, and the idea that everyone who can hold a skillet can be one. The whole romantic notion of leaving a desk job for something more simple and tangible, which appeals to all of us. I was a office drone before I become a cook, but the reality is: working in a kitchen will kick your ass twelve hours a day, and I don't think people realize how hard it is. Or how you won't have a good paycheck, a retirement or health insurance (for the most part) at a critical time in your life.
dmarina at 5:44PM on 05/11/07