what is a chef? part 2- uncool kids

on being (happily) out of the in-crowd

Hey hi hello! This is part 2 in a series- if you’re looking for part 1, you can find it here! xx

Happy spring, one and all! Here in NYC we have officially left what’s affectionately known as “third winter”, and entered what we like to call “The Pollening”. I wish everyone lovely trips to the farmer’s market in cute blazers, an abundance of ramps/ peas/herbs, and plenty of Benadryl- may the lord have mercy on your nasal passages.

When I last saw you, I was beginning to meditate on the messages we get about what it means to be a chef- from media, from society, from the existing culinary establishment. Even those of us who haven’t worked in kitchens have all seen shows like The Bear or Hell’s Kitchen, and doubtlessly absorb the images of chefs that tend to dominate our cultural consciousness. Prototypical chefs are chronically stressed men in white coats behaving like they’re in a war zone, drizzling spoonfuls of béarnaise over dry aged ribeyes or tweezing micros with the laser focus of someone disassembling a bomb, while underlings shout “behind” and “corner” in the background. They suffer in the name of excellence. They keep ungodly working hours, both terrify and thrill subordinates, and are forgiven their shortcomings because of how gifted and hard-working they are.

So many of chefs in the public eye (and even some in my personal network) revel in this “chef culture”, even seem eager or proud to emulate it. Chef culture is edgy and exciting- it oozes glamor and an “in-crowd” aesthetic. It’s also all but defined by perfectionism, ego, aggression and self-denial. As my Welsh colleague Leo Niehorster of @queer.flavors writes in a truly fantastic article, when they were still in the restaurant industry, they were working with chefs who “were proud of working 80 and 90 hour weeks, as if they deserved an award for martyring themselves. Because the working conditions are so normalized, those who question it or struggle with it are seen as people who don’t belong in hospitality. They are seen as not caring enough or not being tough enough for this life.” Careers are made or broken depending on how well one can withstand and embrace the brutality of chef culture- you either initiate yourself into the cool kids’ club, or you’re out.

At the risk of being completely dismissive of chef culture, there’s an interesting element of working class solidarity embedded within it. Chef Leo and I recently had a great conversation about how restaurant kitchens have historically been a sort of haven for downtrodden, blue collar white men- a subset of society that often feels “forgotten”. Leo told me how so many of the men they met in fine dining kitchens had similar stories- difficult pasts, often marred by things like drug use, broken homes and homelessness- and that they felt cooking “saved” them or helped them turn their lives around. Kitchens gave these men a very real, invaluable sense of belonging. The problem, however, this is that in male-dominated environments like these, a sort of “boy’s club” pack mentality can very easily take over. “I do feel like (the working class male) demographic needs places like that, but I also think unmoderated places which are all men tend to end up really harmful,” says Leo. “Cause they just perpetuate loads of toxic masculinity without being critical about it. There needs to be someone in there who is questioning them and (who) they actually listen to.”

me in 2019, with a legit wheel of cambozola, at the sorority. was just finishing up my sixth (!!) year there. I moved to NYC four months later and the rest is history

When I embarked on a full-time professional career in 2013, I knew I didn’t belong in the “club”- and if that’s where I’d started my career, I doubt I’d still be cooking today. I was a highly sensitive, neurodivergent little queer. I knew what many kitchens were like, and I just wasn’t built for the machismo of them- for the workplace trauma, the way women, bipoc and queer folks are often treated, the way that environment can break you down and build you back up in its own image. No, I was fully content to take this strange offbeat path- to be a lowly, self-taught chef at a sorority of all places, cooking my way through books, YouTube tutorials and creative grit. I didn’t want to make beef Wellington or créme brulee- I’d never even eaten those things. I wanted to make the foods I grew up eating in the rich melting pot of the SF Bay Area: Mexican, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, seasonal pizzas with fresh ingredients, creative sandwiches with flavors from across the world. So that’s what I did.

After five years holding the title of chef, I still felt like a beginner- even though I had actually learned a ton. I was making my own curry pastes for khao soi, all my own sauces from harissa to seasonal chutneys to béchamels. I was making Caribbean food, North African food, Levantine food- learning the subtleties of northern vs southern Italian food, Goan vs Himalayan Indian cuisines. I managed my staff with a kind, calm head and a non-yelling, non-berating leadership style that I like to call “aggressively positive”. I was regularly cooking three-course family style dinners for 100 or more people; I worked every station every day.

And yet, I was constantly reminded of the unorthodox path I’d taken, by people both in and out of the industry who subtly attempted to take me down a peg or question my credentials. A date who took me to a wine bar once (I don’t really care about wine) remarked with a completely straight face, “what do you mean you’re not a wine expert, aren’t you a chef?” My first freelance job in New York, a catering company in the Hamptons, had no idea what to make of my resume (notably bereft of long tenures at famous restaurants), and largely kept me at a “kitchen assistant” level for two years, despite me having run my own catering-style kitchen for the previous six. When I didn’t know who Tom Colicchio was (I don’t watch cooking TV, and I’d never been to one of his restaurants), a male friend condescendingly asked me “are you even a chef?”

I’ve encountered this kind of narrow-mindedness at virtually every turn- reminded again and again that in the eyes of the world, I didn’t quite measure up. But the reality of what makes a good chef great just isn’t that cut and dry. I have seen plenty of trained restaurant chefs with great knife skills but poor instincts; they can confidently break down a lobster in a minute flat but they can’t write a balanced, appealing menu or even tell you what’s in season. I worked alongside one young classically-trained and Michelin-tenured chef who kept being heralded as a “genius”- but when I asked him to cover a simple, straightforward meal prep job for me (for a woman fighting cancer who wanted simple, good, seasonal fare), the client later begged me to never send him again. In her words, the food was “oily, heavy, just not very thoughtful”. Chef culture is great at producing wildly efficient kitchen cogs who thrive in the chaos of restaurants, what happens when these chefs are left to their own devices? Who are they as chefs without the veneer of industry cool, the fraternity of the other club members?

There’s a truly fantastic video that you may have seen of Gordon Ramsay making pad Thai for the chef of The Blue Elephant, a renowned Thai restaurant in the UK (the tasting takes place at the 3:00 mark). The chef takes one bite and looks blankly back at Ramsay. “How is it?” Ramsay asks eagerly. “This is not pad thai at all,” the chef replies. “Pad Thai should be sweet, sour and salty.” A sheepish Ramsay takes a bite himself. “I don’t think it tastes half bad!” he insists. The chef shakes his head firmly. “For you, but not for me.” This interaction, to me, is actually deeply significant (and delivers a healthy dose of delightful schadenfreude) . Ole Gordon- with his global, multi-million dollar media and restaurant empire- may have built his career by mastering classical Western cooking, but there is an entire culinary language and anthropology that he fundamentally does not understand. In that world, he’s a complete novice.

Much of the bravado and enormous ego that we allow white male chefs is derived simply from the extremely limited ideas we’ve historically had have about what constitutes fine cuisine. Naturally, in an ecosystem where classically-trained white men make the rules, classically-trained white men- and those who seek to emulate them- will succeed, and can congratulate themselves and each other ad infinitum. Western flavors, European dining sensibilities, French techniques were the only culinary goalposts that mattered for well over a century; rich and complex cuisines such as Mexican, West African, Indian and Southeast Asian (which were more likely to be cooked by women with no formal training) were long considered cheap immigrant food, virtually ignored by the culinary establishment until the last 30 years or so. In days gone by, a great French chef had reached the one and only pinnacle culinary world- there was simply no more to learn, no other knowledge base or skill set that “mattered”. Now, the world has changed; proximity to white Western cuisine is no longer the gold standard defining culinary excellence, and I believe that even the most celebrated “classical” chefs must operate with some humility. Because the truth is that culinary knowledge has virtually no limits. Like any great art form, the more we study, the more we realize we have to learn.

me in 2008, dancing with a sandwich, at my very first cooking job ever: in a summer camp kitchen. a career in food wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye at this point.

I used to be embarrassed about my non-traditional career path. Now, I’m grateful for it. Being self-taught has been an amazing gift- it has allowed me to develop my own culinary vocabulary and voice, to excel at the things that truly interest me. I’m glad that I sidestepped the indoctrination of chef culture, that I didn’t learn to tie my professional worth to my ability to produce under toxic working conditions, but instead to how much intention and love I’m able to put in my food. My unorthodox path instilled in me not only a desire and unquenchable thirst to learn, but confidence in my ability to learn anything.

When I was new to New York, I was discussing the weekly dinner menu with some clients and they requested crème brulee. I’d still never eaten it myself, but I didn’t hesitate for one second before saying “of course” with a smile. I went home and read a couple different recipes, taking note of the methods involved, and ordered a torch on Amazon. I came back later that week and confidently made crème brulee for the whole family- I liked Ina Garten’s recipe best for her addition of Grand Marnier. And now, I know how to make créme brulee.