The Fall of the Angry Chef

Chefs in America are getting softer. The typical image of a tall-hatted, stout, and angry chef is becoming less applicable by the day. Sure, there is definitely an origin to this type of tronie, dating back to the 20th century when the Michelin star system was first picking up speed and chefs were all dressed the way we know from Ratatouille. The Auguste Gusteau types still linger, but the ways they direct the commercial kitchen have changed—at least in America, they have.

A majority of industry chefs nowadays actually care about the people they hire. Apart from the occasional throwing of pots and spatulas, the kitchen environment outside of service hours has been tamed. It’s become fathomable that spoon-burning and coke-fueling your line cooks won’t produce a quality worker as efficiently as a listening ear will. “Resentment” is a word I never thought I’d hear in a kitchen, but it gets tossed around quite a bit. After all, it’s about the last thing you want anyone on your line to hold toward you as an executive.

Of course, there are the cases where a chef’s niceties go a bit far and they sacrifice the work ethic of everyone on their line. The second a cook is given the easy way out, they’ll start to feel good about themselves. They’ll no longer pick up the mop or the steel wool or offer to pick through the shitty onions at the bottom of the bus tub. Instead, they’ll start walking around with a clipboard like they own the place and, if you’re extra unlucky, start telling people what to do. They’ll garner a roll of ten santoku knives, a pair of tweezers for every day of the week, and an ego that only a mother could love. If a restaurant’s executive can’t confront problems with an assertiveness that really whips their cooks into submission, they’re soon to be running a culinary school, not a kitchen.

We, as a society of eaters, have in the past dumped on the culinary lifestyle, then glorified it, and now find ourselves somewhere in the middle. As much as I hate being asked five times a day if I’ve seen The Bear, it’s a portrayal that encapsulates the kitchen lifestyle pretty well (I tapped out after three episodes when I began to feel like I was at work). At the very least, the series is a decent reference to make when explaining what it is I do for most of my week. The show lends itself to this middle ground that the industry currently steeps in. Chef de Cuisines are finding the right zone where they can be both mad, just not narcissistically, psychotically mad, and kind, but only until that halibut filet flakes apart on your spatula. There are certainly still those instances where low-boy fridges get kicked and “cooks” become “fuckers”, but they are few and far less abusive than they might have been overseas half a century ago.

This “middle ground” makes for a sustainable kitchen. It becomes just slightly more tolerable to stand in front of a thousand-degree grill for twelve hours a day, and a bit less haunting to ask for hands. Most importantly, the line cooks, even after they’ve milked all the knowledge and technique they can from the place, might stick around to see what the chef and their menu have got in store. Still, the last thing you want to be is a pussy. The true badassery of the line can only be fully understood by those who burn themselves on the range six times a day and work service fueled by just two sips of water and a slice of sourdough. The kitchen isn’t getting any easier. But it’s becoming a tighter knit, more emotionally intact community.

Sustainability aside, there are times I miss getting my carefully crafted dishes chucked into the pot sink, told I’m not shit, showing up to work to find my knife wrapped in tape, twine and plastic wrap, and to be told, “I’ll need you to take my spot on grill this Saturday night—your mother’s in town.” Every chef I’ve ever loved was once my least favorite person in the world.