Last month I turned 26 years old. That’s 20 years as a normal human being, plus 6 spent in front of the stoves. In the sun with the rest of the world, I’m still a young man with plenty of time to figure things out. The florescent lights of the kitchen, however, shine less favourably on folks like me. We’re not old, but we are most certainly not young anymore. I’m staring at age 30 with a mixture of contempt and fear; it’s the universal expiry date for the fine dining line-cook, and disintegration can be avoided only by advancement. At 26, I stand at a big old fork in my career: get really good in a goddamned hurry, or start an anti-aging regime (which begins daily with Oil of Olay). In this young man’s game, I’m officially closer to being dead than being born.
For me, years 20-23 were spent learning how to cut an onion and how to make my elders feel like human garbage (primarily by referring to them as “my elders”). I was fresh, and they weren’t. Basically, I knew 1984 as the year I was born, and they knew it as a) a book they were forced to read in high school, and b) their favourite Van Halen album (Panama!). Bitter was only a flavour, hangovers were fictional, and my knees weren’t even close to sore. I, my friends, was a real piece of work. Now I’m getting mine, and it tastes like shit. The kids are coming in waves. They party all night and still look better than I do on 10 hours sleep. What’s worse? They were born in the fucking 1990s.
I sucked on the 8 bit tit of an NES, and they were raised by Halo. Here I am, on my porch in my rocking chair, yelling at kids to keep off my lawn, while spraying them with a garden hose.
Alas, the kids won’t kill you, but when your time comes they’ll be the ones to drop you off at a nice farm with plenty of space for you to run around. They’re just tiny little pieces of a terribly large puzzle that spells “Fuck you!” if you last long enough to put it all together. I’m not talking about weakness, by the way, I’m talking about the universal human capacity for line cooking. We’ve each got a limited number of Saturday nights in us, and if we reach that number before we’re fortunate enough to start giving the orders instead of cooking them, then we turn into food reps. If that isn’t incentive to succeed, then I don’t know what is.
I’d love to see the stats, even though I have a pretty good idea that they’re not dissimilar to showing up in a raft on D-Day. I like to think that people drop out not because they no longer love cooking, but because they love it too much to keep going. A day in the life of a cook is 10% cooking, and 90% untimely interruptions. The cooking part is lovely, and that’s where all of the magic lies. The rest of it is chaos, and it’s not unusual to develop a fondness towards it. The same kind of fondness a junky feels towards heroin. Hardcore fondness, an addiction, if you will. The various glories outweigh the tragedies for a while, but eventually the heat gets too hot. The kids have been nipping at your heels for a while, and lets face it, they know all of your tricks and have learned some of their own. Maybe it was circumstance, or you never seized the carpe, but you didn’t make the jump. You came in as a dishwasher, and you’ll leave as a line cook, and there isn’t any shame in that; it’s better than being the Keith Richards of the kitchen.
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Line Cook,
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
i thought that your career as a pretend writer was part of your anti aging routine. also i think that experience in the kitchen tends to offset the passing of time. there was an interview with paul bocuse about twenty or thirty years ago (he was about fifty) and when asked why he was still the chef, even though he was getting on in age, he said that he was the chef because he could do the same jobs that his young cooks did. only he does it better and twice as fast. now get off my lawn.
Ha ha ha ha ha. Game on Jake.
Yeah No Kidding Young Mans Game I left the restaurant back in July, was called this week to help out for a couple of days during Dine Out, only 3 days, but Man i can feel it in my back, I realize my body just cant handle that type of work load. But i love to Cook~
“…it’s all in the mind…”
-Thierry Busset
Or maybe the line drop outs start teaching…
I’m helping out at CinCin right now and find it inspiring to watch Thierry Busset lay a beat down to Dine Out and make it his bitch. He just laughs at the kids as they flounder their days (and lives) away. I’m eating a lot of dessert this week.
Vic 20. Atari 2600. Cassette drives. 300 baud modems. :)
Oh snap. Sorry Jacob, but you are still a youngster. 26? Six years at the stoves? You are still too young to be a sales rep, but old you ain’t. You sure are too young to be bitter about restaurants. I think I asked myself the same question when I was 25 – get in, or get out. I wonder if I made the right decision? Now of course, some old geezer’s going to come along and say the same thing to me, and that’s fine – it’s how the game is played.
I have always found the kitchen to be leveling, a place where adrenaline junkies go to get high and feel young again. But you want to know what *really* makes you feel young, when all the signs are telling you that you are getting old?
Having a kid.
Or two.
And playing in the park in the sun during the day while everyone else is at work, because you are a cook and you work the night line. Go on, I dare you.
Yeah, Jake. I agree, you can’t call yourself “old” until you procreate.
However, for those of us who don’t/won’t procreate, getting old is all a state of mind.
People still don’t believe me when I tell them that I am pushing 40. Keeping fit, taking care of yourself in general, and having a good sounding board (friends, spouse, etc) goes a long way.
Those things will also help you keep the perspective and mind set that will allow you to advance. One of the things that a lot of cooks forget when they want to advance, is that advancement is more than about just cooking ability; it is about being able to motivate and manage a staff.
Some cooks have the ability to do that early in their careers, but a lot don’t reach that point until later, or never at all. Usually those are the ones that get out.
Don’t think about expiry dates. Think about what you can do to get to your goals.