For many, cooking for money was never part of a grand scheme. Ask any cook how they ended up in clogs and you’ll hear “I just fell into it” far more often than “I always wanted to be a chef”. The designation of perchance profession leads most people to believe that the average cook wears clogs because he or she lacks the mental capacity to deal with laces. I no longer believe in laces (velcro, bitches), but if I remember correctly, tying a pair of shoes isn’t so different from trussing a chicken, no? In these strangest of days, intelligence seems to be metered if not by one’s ability to harvest money, then at least by one’s attempts to do so. Strangely, cooking at a high level is a terrible way to bring home the bacon. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there isn’t any bacon, there isn’t any brains. I have two things to say to people who subscribe to this idea: I’ve seen Frasier, and I understood it.
Sometimes telling people that I cook for a living elicits the same sort of response as telling them that the animatronic Jaws at Universal Studios ate my baby: there’s sadness, pity, and usually some version of “How did that happen!?”. They’ll poke and prod for indications that it’s only a temporary thing, and that perhaps it’s just a way of putting myself through med school. When they find out that cooking is both the journey and the destination, they offer directions. At conversation’s end, they tell you that they’ll pray for you. The concept of serendipity seems to be lost on most people, and the lack of a plan when it comes to one’s career path seems to lead people to believe that there was no other choice.
There is evidence that suggests that they’re right, and I am indeed a moron: fried chicken sandwiches built on maple dip donuts, and smiley faces drawn on second degree burns come to mind. Stuff like that happens every single day in every single kitchen worth mentioning, yet I’m not ready to admit that we’re in a remedial state. What we are is comfortable within our own haggard skin, something the rest of the world could use a loving spoonful of. The kitchen is a haven for people who consider a tie an awkwardly fitted noose, and the liberal cursing, casual drinking, and conservative eating of healthy food is only natural.
Kitchen Confidential’s exponential sales figures prove that people think we’re most interesting when we’re fucking around, and it seems that’s all people want to hear about anymore. To reference sharks twice in the same article, I’ll compare Anthony Bourdain’s version of a chef to the airborne great white. Those beasts spend most of their time in the water, but every now and then one of them breaches the water with a million teeth and a seal in its mouth. That image resides next to the image of the well tattooed, and recklessly hungover chef in that they’re both real, but neither is really real: what they are is really sensational. The truth is that our days are relatively monotonous, mostly serious, and totally focused. The only interesting thing that comes from those things ends up in your bellies, and eventually some poor toilet. It’s hard to put a spin on that stuff, and it’s considerably easier to peddle the idea previously mentioned delinquent chef, who inevitably casts a big stupid shadow over the entire industry. So while we drink, smoke, swear and all of that other stuff, it isn’t because we’re stupid, it’s because we’re allowed to, and you’re not.
