Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / The Sacrifices of Being a Chef Ep. 18

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The Sacrifices of Being a Chef Ep. 18 · Chef's PSA Podcast

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  Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs, PSA
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  podcast. I'm your host Entre, nous.
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  Tara today's episode is going to be on the sacrifices of chefs
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  and cooks and people that work in the food and beverage
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  industry and the things that we give up and talk about some of
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  the challenges that we face. What does the future hold for
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  us? Anyway, we'll get into all of
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  that, in this episode, stay tuned.
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  So let me give you an update, what have I been up to this past
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  week? Actually, I've been super busy.
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  I just finished riding the line, cook survival manual, and I've
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  started going going through and rereading editing, correcting
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  sentences and grammar, Etc. I'm going to give it maybe one
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  or two more times to read it before, I send it to an editor.
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  Also, working on the audio book, I've heard a couple of samples
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  of the audiobook, I really like the guy that does the audiobooks
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  for me Gabriel, he has a good voice.
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  I when I talk I told him I wanted, I wanted to sound Young
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  on the audiobook. So I said, you know, use your
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  young voice. Anyway that's that's neither
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  here nor there, but audio books came along.
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  I think it's maybe a week, maybe two weeks out, most likely the
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  audiobook and the new paperback will also drop at the same time.
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  Additionally, I'm working on culinary leadership
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  fundamentals. Video course, that is almost
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  done. I've got to review one more
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  video and then just work on a couple of digital edit, sad
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  branding fonts it Etc. But all those things are pretty
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  close in a couple of weeks. I'm going to El Paso, Texas to
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  cook with some great chefs for a great cause El Paso family meal.
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  You've probably seen me posting on it posting about it on social
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  really amazing chefs. Great group of guys, the founder
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  Rico tours from easily restaurant, Gaber Alice fed mean
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  Nunez from suerte. Omar Flores from Dallas, Jake
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  Rojas, along, Delgado and respa the others.
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  A lot. There's a lot of really good
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  chefs that I'll come from, El Paso, Texas.
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  And we always said, we want to cook together, you know, as we
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  see each other at all these food festivals, whether it's, you
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  know, Austin food and wine or whatever.
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  I always say, I'll we need to get together and cook and so we
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  have an opportunity to give back and, you know, give back to a
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  good cause help future chefs, and culinary.
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  And so we all come together form.
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  Like, Voltron Rico happens to be the head and we get together.
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  And we cook and we have a good time.
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  We do meet and greets. And anyway if you're in the El
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  Paso area, you should definitely check that out.
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  That's on November 13th, El Paso, family meal.
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  Anyway that's what I'm coming up.
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  That's what I'm working on anyway.
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  So I want to talk about the sacrifices that we go through as
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  cooks and chefs in this industry and it's something that's been
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  on my mind a lot lately and I had a DM message with a chef the
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  other day and we were talking about changing careers and if
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  you listen to this podcast, That I've changed careers.
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  So, you know, I was a chef for 27 years, I'm still a chef, kind
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  of, I don't run a kitchen, but I'm still involved in the
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  industry and many different ways.
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  I said on a couple of different boards committees organize
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  events, I still do Chef Consulting, Chef mentor, and
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  stuff like that, and I bring you this podcast, but it's not
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  really running the kitchen. Anyway, I was back and forth
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  with this Chef in the DMS, we're talking about changing careers,
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  and he's a, he's a, he's in his 50s, we're talking about.
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  How it's difficult as you get older to still be a chef because
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  it is such a physical sport, right?
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  You're bending. You're crouching, you're moving,
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  you're twisting your hustling. You're on your feet all day and
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  when you're young, you don't realize the damage sometimes
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  that you're putting on your body until, you know, until Father
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  Time Creeps in and you're like, oh shit, my back's been hurting
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  for a number of years or my knees are starting to hurt.
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  I think what I feel most right now like if I think of You know,
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  the abuse that I put on my body in the kitchen, it's mostly my
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  knees. And my back.
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  I have a, I also used to wrestle and train MMA and fight amateur.
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  So my knees and my back or kind of messed up from that.
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  But it's also compounded by the fact that I've also been in
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  kitchens for so long. So, I can't, when I my house,
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  when I go up the stairs, I'm like, shit.
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  Do I really do? I really want to go up the
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  stairs? Because my fucking knees hurt,
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  right? So, these are things that I have
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  to think about. Out like, or, you know, my back
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  if I'm standing up all day and, you know, I wear a bib apron
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  when I'm in the kitchen. It's like, I constantly have to
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  adjust and, you know, my back's a key and, you know, something
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  Falls, it's like, oh no. Who's going to pick it up,
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  right? You know, shout out to my, my
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  longtime friend and and sous-chef Eric Martin, you know,
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  I was like, no, no, no, I got it, you got a bad back, I know
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  you got a bad back. So, you know, it's an inside
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  joke, but I appreciate that. Some people would recognize that
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  I have a bad bad back. So if you know me in real life,
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  right? Some people say, I Talk funny
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  which I don't know what they're talking about, but like every
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  now and again, I'd catch some of my Sous chefs doing a walk and
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  be like, what was that? And they'd get really like, oh
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  shit, did he see us? And I'm like, what's so funny?
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  And then someone told me old, they're making fun of how you
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  walk. I was like, wait a minute, I
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  walk funny and they're like yeah, you don't know that.
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  I was like no of course. I don't know.
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  I walk funny. I'm a you know I don't walk in
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  front of a mirror often you guys see me walk.
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  I see you walk. I don't see me walk but they
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  make fun of the way I walk. I was like, oh it's yeah it's
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  because I have a bad back. So I like my posture is kind of,
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  you know, I'm always. Trying extra hard to make my
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  back straight anyway, we were talking about is as the years go
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  by and you're in the industry when you reach a certain point
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  as a chef, it's like what's next?
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  Because you no longer have the desire sometimes, you know, the
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  physicality to continue to do the job but you've been in the
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  industry, your entire career and you really don't know anything
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  else and you're kind of at a Crossroads.
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  It's a difficult thing. I don't know the answer for it.
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  I really don't know. Answer for everybody, you know,
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  Deuce do, what else you'd like to do in your free time?
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  What are your hobbies? What are your passions?
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  In my case? I like to write and I like to
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  talk, I guess that's why I have this podcast.
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  So like that's that's where I transition is.
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  Like okay, I could create content, I want to pass on my
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  knowledge from all the years of being a chef.
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  And I have a platform to do so. So let me take advantage of that
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  and turn that into my new business but not everyone has
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  that opportunity a lot of chefs, you know, do Like speaking to
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  people or don't like teaching but you know, they're great in
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  the kitchen. But when that time has come,
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  what do you do next? These are things that I think
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  when you're just starting out in the kitchen, you need to think
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  about or kind of when you're in the middle of your career, it's
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  like I'm going to be a chef forever.
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  I used to think to myself had a really hard time having
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  conversations with people. If it wasn't about kitchen life
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  or about food and this was probably up until my early 30s,
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  like you took me to a party it's like we're not going to talk
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  about food or cooking like Chef life all the way through.
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  I can't talk about anything else and it's like I had to start
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  understanding how to have conversations about things other
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  than food because food and being a chef was all-consuming.
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  And the reason I bring that up is because you have to find
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  other interests because you're going to get to a point where
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  you know, you're going to look at and be like, yeah, I don't
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  know if I want to stand on the pass for another 15-20 years
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  until I'm 60 years old because because it's physical and not
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  only that but When you seen a lot of Trends in food, Cycles,
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  come and go. You start to realize that it's
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  not as important to be trendy. You just want to make good food,
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  but you also understand that if you're not trendy, you're not
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  going to get the recognition from the local food, Media, or
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  influencers, or whatever. They're not going to come to
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  your restaurant. If they don't think it's, if
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  it's Cutting Edge but it could be delicious food but it's not
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  cutting edge. So you're not going to get the
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  attention. So you're going to sacrifice
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  what you think is good food? Because you're going to play the
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  game, you're going to want to stay involved in the top level
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  or you're not. Then you're going to not get the
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  recognition, one of my friends. That's a chef in California that
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  used to be my sous chef and he's a great guy.
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  We were talking about it and he said, you know, where the
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  problem and this was about 10 years ago, he says where the
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  problem because we were those young hungry chefs that were
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  willing to do it for less money, right?
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  So we'd take the head chef position for less money and push
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  out. These older chefs that had more
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  experience and more wisdom because we would, we would do it
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  for less and we Were more physical than we could, you
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  know, we could work longer out or hours and push harder.
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  But we didn't have the knowledge, right?
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  And he says, and, you know, these are the consequences of
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  our actions. It's like this vicious cycle.
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  You know, the older chefs move on to newer chefs come in and we
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  go through the same, the same challenges that everyone faces.
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  It's a difficult thing. There is another book that I
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  wrote it was. Yeah, I wrote it about 2008, and
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  I never published it, and I'll share a little story with you.
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  I wrote this book. It was called the Dow of Chef,
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  and if you like to read a lot, I love to read, I read tons of
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  books. There's books, like the Dao de
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  Jing or the Chuan Sue or the analects of Confucius, like I
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  really like that style of Eastern philosophy, the style of
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  riding you know the book of five rings by Miyamoto Musashi or Sun
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  Tzu's Art of War, Art of War. I really liked that sort of, you
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  know, deep contemplation style of writing but you got to really
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  think about the meaning of this and what is the author trying to
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  get across? So, anyway, long story short, I
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  wrote a book called The Dow of Chef and I wanted it to be like
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  like an allegory of life and the allegory being like, you start
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  out as a young cook and culinary school.
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  You don't know anything and you go through life.
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  So you start to gain knowledge, you you know, nothing your green
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  but you're super confident when you're young and then you know,
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  you start to push back on the Chef and then you become a sous
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  chef, and then you start to really gain knowledge and then
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  you become a chef and you're successful.
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  And then when you get really good as a chef, you start to
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  realize, you don't know anything.
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  And you look back on your career is like, whoa, all those years
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  that I had so much pride and hubris and what I was doing and
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  I really didn't know anything and then you get to the point
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  where you're kind of the dinosaur in the kitchen, right,
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  people. Look at you and say, oh, you
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  know, times passed you by and And I close to the book where
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  the chef that I was writing about your the character in the
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  story, he finishes his career as the head chef and a retirement,
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  hold home. Meaning not only is he cooking
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  for old folks, but he was also an older Chef who had achieved
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  great Fame and success but he didn't know anything else.
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  So it started like with this birth and it ended with you
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  know, the death cycle of a chef, right?
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  Because you know your career Here is going to have a birth
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  and death cycle. Like, you start out in culinary
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  school or your first job, and then you end with, you know,
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  leaving the career. And there's highs and lows in
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  between. When I look back on a career as
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  a chef, you think about all the things that you exchange for
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  your time, right? You exchange your your time, for
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  money, or for energy, right? It's usually an exchange of
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  energy. I give my energy to you, right?
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  And I'm going to give you my time and you're going to give me
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  money or you're going to give me satisfaction of what I'm doing.
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  And when you really want to push to high levels as a chef and you
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  want greatness, and you're chasing that dream to become the
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  head chef or you want to make a name for yourself, you give up a
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  lot, you give up the holidays, you give up the weekends, you
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  give up your friend's wedding, sometimes you give up friends,
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  right? You give up having a social
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  life, many chefs, give up their marriage, they lose their
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  families, they lose themselves to their vices right and you
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  give so much to this industry and at the end of it, right?
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  I often joke around. Around.
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  I say it's at the end of it. The industry that you are in
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  love with replaces you with a new younger lover.
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  Right? That's that's what ended up
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  happening, right? You climb the ladder.
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  You spend your whole time there and then it's like, okay, the
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  game has passed you by, let's replace you with someone newer
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  younger and hungrier and that's the reality of it right now.
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  Of course, there's exceptions to the rules some chefs, their
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  legacies are cemented, right? You know, this coffee, a Paul
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  Bocuse, you know, they're, they're going to be Legends
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  forever, they are The Mount Rushmore of chefs but not
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  everyone has that opportunity right?
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  You trade so much. Few years back, I was on the
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  board of a culinary school and I would talk to students and I
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  would ask them and this is like, maybe 10 years ago.
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  So, you know the priorities were a little bit different than they
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  are. Now, I would talk to culinary
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  students and I'd say, what do you want to do when you
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  graduate? Why are you going to culinary
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  school is like I want to be on TV, I want to go on Hell's
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  Kitchen, want to be the next Food Network star.
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  I want to open up my own restaurant and they had a lot of
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  these Grand ideas. Is of going to school and
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  becoming, you know, the exception to the rule of the
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  Bobby Flay, the Gordon Ramsey, or whatever the case may be.
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  And I'm not saying that those dreams cannot be achieved
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  because clearly, there's people that are examples of those
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  dreams, but the reality is for every successful Chef that you
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  see on TV, there's hundreds of thousands of them that you've
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  never heard of right Millions, maybe billions for sure.
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  Not even maybe, right millions of chefs that you've never heard
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  of for every Chef that you have. Oven is a household name and how
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  difficult that is, and how many cooks?
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  Never even make it to become chef.
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  And I thought, you know, I'd like to make a documentary, so
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  I'll play out how the documentary would would be.
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  So it would start out with the documentary starts out.
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  You're interviewing young students, and you're asking
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  them, why do you want to go to culinary school?
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  I want to be a chef. I want to be the next Bobby
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  Flay. I want to do this that the other
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  one own my own restaurant, right?
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  And then it skips to a real Chef, right?
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  That's been in the industry. The and the alarms going off at
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  four in the morning and they're eating cereal in their apartment
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  by themselves. Right?
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  And then they're on the treadmill for a couple of hours
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  and then it goes back to the student today.
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  You know, all these ideas of what they want to do and then
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  back to the chef and he's going in.
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  To work in a dark parking lot and he's cooking breakfast or
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  whatever, right? And then back to the students
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  with all these Ambitions and then back to the chef who you're
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  interviewing, and you say, what have you given up for this
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  career and they talk about, you know, the divorce and losing
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  their kids, and being addicted to substance, and this, that and
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  the other. And then, back to the eager
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  students, and just to show that the job isn't as glamorous as
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  people may think. There's a lot that you have to
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  give to this business strictly for the passion.
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  Strictly For the Love of Cooking strictly because you thrive in
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  that environment and there's a certain energy amongst the chaos
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  in the kitchen which it's a beautiful thing.
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  I miss that chaos I was watching the bear.
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  There's two movies, I should say, two things that I've seen
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  that make me feel in the moment ever.
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  One is the bear. The other one is the movie
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  sicario. There's a, there's a scene in
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  sicario the first one where they're driving through
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  neighborhoods that I used to hang out in and like, there's
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  like, oh, it's giving me anxiety.
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  It's a, that's a rough movie and it like, took me back to the
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  took me back to the hood growing up.
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  But anyway, the other, the other one is the bear and I remember I
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  was watching the Barons, the scene where the ticket printer
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  Stop sprinting tickets for some reason, they do whatever and
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  then it starts printing, all these tickets and then
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  everyone's screaming and yelling and there's chaos and your
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  hearts beating fast. And I know that feeling and I'm
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  there with them as I'm watching that and I stood up and I'm
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  pacing back and forth as I'm watching them in my living room
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  and like, oh, you know, I feel like, I feel like I have to jump
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  in and, and, you know, call the tickets myself and it's the only
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  time or the second time that I've liked felt.
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  I was in that moment because there is a certain Adrenaline
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  Rush that Chef's get when they're working in the kitchen
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  and chefs will also work in the top end of kitchens.
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  They want to be the best, you know.
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  They want that three-michelin-star.
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  World's 50 best environment and they're tough.
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  They get there and it's like, hmm.
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  It's tougher than I thought. Right?
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  The hours are longer, right? The pay is a little less
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  sometimes, or maybe you're not even getting paid.
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  I don't know. Depending on where you are.
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  Maybe you're working as a free stosh, it's a hole that's
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  conversation for a whole other episode, but maybe your maybe
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  you're on a stage and then you get hired, and then you're
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  starting out. Out in the Comey kitchen and
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  then you're moving up to the line and you know, the sous-chef
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  is pushing you hard, and you go home and you take some of your
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  prep home because there's no way you could finish it at work.
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  It's too much. But yet you can't say you're
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  taking it home because you're not supposed to take your work
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  home. Don't take the food, right?
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  But you don't want to let the team down.
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  You don't want to be seen as someone that can't handle it and
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  so it creates this pressure cooker environment and people
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  want to be the best so they push themselves and they go through
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  this. And some people say, this is not
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  for me and they boom there. They bounce, their out, other
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  people, say 100%, you're not going to break me and they
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  continue on down the path of this to become a chef to become
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  a great. Chef, the thing is, is that
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  everyone has a choice. When you're in those kitchens,
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  you could not be there, you could always choose to leave.
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  No one's this isn't, you know, this isn't a situation where
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  they have forced you to be there.
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  You always have the opportunity to leave.
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  Quitting is the easiest available option to you, right?
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  Because it's very easy to say, I'm out of here.
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  This is not for me, it's very difficult to decide to stay,
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  right? People think it's the opposite,
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  people think? Oh, it's, you know, it's you're
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  scared to quits, like, no quitting quitting is easy.
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  Staying is difficult. It's the opposite from my point
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  of view, right? Doing the difficult things that
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  you don't want to do, but, you know, they're good for you.
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  That's that's tough, right? Sometimes, quitting when things
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  get hard. That's that's super easy.
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  Everyone. One loves to quit when things
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  are hard. That's sometimes what separates
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  the greats. When you look at some of the
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  great chefs in the world, are some of the great people in the
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  world. They had it hard, they went
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  through those harder things. A lot of people have opinions on
• 18:16
  things, but have no skin in the game, the people who put
• 18:19
  everything on the line, the restaurant owner, the head.
• 18:22
  Chef. It's difficult to be in those
• 18:24
  positions, but it also takes a lot from you.
• 18:28
  And when I look back through the course of my career and I think
• 18:31
  of all the Christmases that I missed or Days, holidays,
• 18:35
  weddings. Whatever the case may be, And I
• 18:39
  look at all the successes that I had and I have to ask myself a
• 18:42
  very difficult question and that is what I trade Christmas at
• 18:48
  home for that award but I give that award back to have spent
• 18:52
  one more Christmas at home, right?
• 18:55
  And in retrospect the answer is yes of course, right?
• 18:58
  When you when you're able to step back and look at it's like
• 19:00
  yeah I would give back any success that I've had in the
• 19:02
  kitchen to have had more time, you know?
• 19:04
  And it's a balance, right? So obviously I know what I
• 19:07
  signed up for but it's It's tough.
• 19:09
  It's a very tough industry. This was this was a big Grant,
• 19:14
  right? I didn't really offer any
• 19:16
  solutions because I'm not sure if I've fully thought this
• 19:21
  through. This was really fresh on my mind
• 19:22
  and it's something that's kind of been playing out.
• 19:25
  I'm not sure what the answer is, but I do know.
• 19:31
  That we need to do better as an industry as a group of chefs and
• 19:36
  we need to do better with two things.
• 19:37
  Specifically, we need to do better at explaining what the
• 19:41
  reality is, what the compromise is in the kitchen because a lot
• 19:45
  of restaurants as much as as much as people want to change.
• 19:49
  What restaurants? Are you still have a bottom line
• 19:52
  that you need to meet right? You still, have you still have
• 19:55
  to open for service? You still have to serve food,
• 19:57
  you still have to make food cost, you still have to make
• 19:58
  labor costs. And you're running on a very
• 20:00
  Small margin. The recipe for chaos is still
• 20:04
  there. You're still working in a
• 20:06
  pressure cooker, environment, the restaurant still wants to be
• 20:08
  busy and we got to walk the razor's edge of the amount of
• 20:12
  staff that we need and the amount of menu items that we
• 20:14
  need and how much prep there is and how much do we want to push
• 20:17
  and all these things, create a stressful environment and then
• 20:21
  you have a person at the top who is barely making margin if
• 20:25
  they're making anything, which they're stressed and they're
• 20:28
  passing that stress down to the rest of their team.
• 20:31
  We have to be more transparent about what the industry is to
• 20:35
  people that are new to the industry or thinking of going
• 20:38
  into the industry, we glamorize it a lot and there's a lot of
• 20:41
  really amazing things about this industry, but there's also some
• 20:46
  really difficult things that can be like a shock to the system.
• 20:49
  If you don't know what to expect, we need to do better
• 20:52
  with that. The other thing we need to do
• 20:54
  better with is we need to take care of our chefs because there
• 20:58
  comes a point when they no longer can be Successful due to
• 21:02
  the physicality of it. How do we take care of our Chef
• 21:05
  so that they don't all wind up working in the retirement home
• 21:09
  feeding the elderly? Not that there's anything wrong
• 21:11
  with that but you understand the analogy?
• 21:14
  I don't know which other way to put it right there has to be an
• 21:18
  exit plan for four chefs so that they could go and be successful.
• 21:23
  Once they feel accomplished in their career and they're ready
• 21:27
  to walk away, they need to have options, right?
• 21:30
  Very very difficult conversations that I haven't
• 21:32
  fully flushed out the idea but in a perfect world.
• 21:36
  Like again I'm King for the day. This is what I would do for
• 21:40
  chefs and and people that are listening.
• 21:42
  If you're in a position where you could do this, this is what
• 21:46
  chefs need to do. Is we need to be like NASCAR
• 21:48
  drivers, right? Like we need to be sponsored by
• 21:51
  clothing companies. We need to be sponsored by.
• 21:55
  Food brands Farmers that we work with equipment that we purchase.
• 22:01
  You know, it should be, you know, chefs PSA podcast by Polly
• 22:05
  science or maiden or Crystal or whoever the case may be, right?
• 22:10
  Because chefs need to be able to make more income and their a
• 22:13
  branch chefs are a brand now. Right?
• 22:15
  The way that everything is moving towards social media and
• 22:17
  branding chefs are also a brand and if I'm a chef, I should be
• 22:21
  able to go to a go to an employer and say Hey you you're
• 22:24
  going to pay me x amount of Of dollars.
• 22:26
  But these are my sponsors that to supplement for my by salary
• 22:31
  because clearly, you know, I want to make more money every
• 22:33
  Chef wants, everyone wants to make more money if they can
• 22:35
  write. Anyway, I don't know why I'm
• 22:38
  ranting all this. I don't have any solutions.
• 22:40
  It's just a rant today. So I hope if anything that this
• 22:45
  rant has just piqued your curiosity and got your wheels
• 22:48
  turning and maybe you'll find the solution.
• 22:51
  Maybe you're listening to this and it'll spark a great idea for
• 22:54
  you and maybe you'll be able Help those young chefs that are
• 22:57
  coming into the industry and be more honest with them of what
• 23:00
  some of the challenges are in this industry.
• 23:02
  I talk about this in another podcast to maybe say no to the
• 23:06
  Friday night drinks sometimes, you know, go home and get some
• 23:08
  sleep, take care of your body, take care of your physical, take
• 23:11
  care of your mental emotional well-being.
• 23:13
  All that's important. Meditate read books have other
• 23:17
  Hobbies other than cooking. So, you could not be all
• 23:19
  consumed in this anyway rant over for the day.
• 23:23
  If you want to continue to support the show, please give us
• 23:27
  five stars on whatever platform you're listening.
• 23:30
  So Apple Spotify, whatever the case may be five stars, really
• 23:33
  helps the show. There's a donate button if
• 23:35
  you're listening on Spotify, how you can support the show.
• 23:37
  Buying all the books. Not only helps with the chef
• 23:42
  space a podcast, but they're designed to also help you and
• 23:46
  the people in your kitchen. So culinary leadership
• 23:48
  fundamentals is really, you know, the management book how
• 23:52
  not to be the biggest. In the kitchen, is the good
• 23:55
  habits in the kitchen book, right?
• 23:57
  You know, the unwritten rules so to speak.
• 24:00
  We have merch. You could get it at the chef's.
• 24:03
  PSA.com, you could also find the links in all my social channels
• 24:07
  to take you to the store. The chef's pass a store.
• 24:10
  I just released a new shirt and it's, you know, bowl of noodles
• 24:14
  and it says, ask me about my Alfredo and that's a call back
• 24:17
  to one of my chefs psa's where I say when someone asks is your
• 24:20
  specialty, tell them, tell them chicken alfredo Normal.
• 24:24
  People, love chicken alfredo and it's a win-win.
• 24:27
  They'll leave you alone and they'll be impressed that you
• 24:28
  said chicken alfredo. So anyway, chefs PSA.
• 24:32
  Thank you so much, everyone. We'll see you next week at the
• 24:35
  porno music. Normal.
• 24:24
  People, love chicken alfredo and it's a win-win.
• 24:27
  They'll leave you alone and they'll be impressed that you
• 24:28
  said chicken alfredo. So anyway, chefs PSA.
• 24:32
  Thank you so much, everyone. We'll see you next week at the
• 24:35
  porno music.