In a fit of frustration, I wrote a scathing and inappropriate piece for the short-lived L’Ecole Culinaire monthly newsletter back in 2012. Fed up with student apathy, the excuses, the rampant absenteeism, the moans and groans during “Pig Week”—a week’s long exploration into the glories of butchery, bacon, sausage and ham—I fired off a harsh assessment of what it takes to consider oneself a “proper chef”. Encouraged by my equally jaded colleagues—some of whom wanted me to suicidally make existing students cry—I didn’t hold back. “Did you change your Facebook name to Chef Leroy just because you graduated cooking school? You, fine sir, are NOT a chef. You are a graduate. When asked, do you tell people that you’re the garde manger chef at the local Panera? You’re certainly also NOT a chef. You, my lying friend, drown pre-cut lettuce with pre-made salad dressing and tear bread. You are a pantry cook—at best. Do you think Rachel Ray is a chef? Paul Deen? That annoying free-range, biscuit-making, outdoor dinner party throwing, camera-ready, Pioneer Woman? Please! You’ll never have your own show. Most of you aren’t pretty enough.” The piece was titled, “So, You Think You’re a Chef.”
In my defense, I see how horrible all of this was now.
At the time, I also felt complicit in perpetuating the diploma mill reputation for-profit schools were (rightly) achieving. Perhaps out of guilt—that at the time I called integrity—I poured myself into turning those human lumps of culinary coal into beautiful white truffles by any means necessary. I knew the horrors and feelings of being deceived graduates would experience after walking across the stage and I took it upon myself not to sugar coat my point of view as a lifer chef. I saw the piece I wrote as a mouthful of tough love aimed at jarring the collective zombie mindset awake.
When L’Ecole Culinaire opened in 2008, it quickly became the new street corner for anyone who was poor enough to get a Stafford loan or believe the shuck and jive that the well-intentioned admission director was spouting off. “Have you ever dreamed of owning your own restaurant? Do you think the goal of becoming a chef is beyond your grasp?” With the sincerity of a car salesman sensing an eager, city-transit weary rube, he tied his overpromising pitch into a neat bundle with, “It’s what we do here. We make dreams happen.” Twelve years later, I still shudder and grin at how good let’s call him Don was at reeling the reluctant and skeptical into his web of deceit.
The reality was, most students dropped out before they got out of the first ten-week phase. And those who waited 20-30 weeks to ditch for good were saddled with more debt than most state college students accrue—even considering scholarships—their entire four years. At the time of opening, if you wanted to go to L’Ecole Culinaire, you were signing a forty-thousand-dollar tab for the seventy-week program. With the average wage for cooks coming out of school at twelve dollar an hour, one doesn’t need to break out a calculator to realize we were fucking them over six ways till Sunday. That’s one of the reasons why I gave everything I had to the students in my charge (and expected them to give it back) and was the main reason the newsletter piece was so mean spirited. Still, there is no excuse for discouraging people who have the crazy chef dream. I’m just trying to provide context for what I’m about to throw down because it still may come off as a self-serving cheap shot.
I’m softer now. I’m no longer a fighter. My sharp edges have been dulled by a near decade’s long period of receiving industry respect and a profound appreciation for the few badass cooks and chefs who made it out of the cooking school crucible to go on to culinary greatness. In Memphis, and in other far-flung reaches, there are former students of mine who metamorphosed into reputable cooks and chefs after navigating the highs, lows, lies and half-truths told at cooking school and after having squeezed a damn good education out of the for-profit lemon. And it brings me great personal satisfaction to know that I had a hand in their professional development.
For example, seeing the egotistical stoner who repeatedly informed me, half-asleep in the front row of my butchery lecture, that “girls think I look like Bradley Cooper”, now posting about hydration ratios for his latest bread experiments from his fancy bakery in Dubai is almost more than I can handle without tearing up. I’m so proud of let’s call him Taylor. He either said, ‘I’ll show that chef-asshole’ or ‘damn, I am a wasteoid’. Either way, he has far surpassed any gastro-traveling life I could ever hope for, and he did it because he harnessed the lessons from culinary school.
So, in an attempt to set the record straight, I’d like to rewrite my own personal history while still giving readers a sense of the kind of slalom course, hard knock life that is the life of the professional chef. I will still assert that if you get into this career for glory—maybe you think James Beard awards and tv shows are handed out like Halloween candy—then you will find your own personal hell after working a couple shifts in a busy kitchen. But I hope to do so in a humorous manner that takes people’s feeling into account as well.
Much has been written about this subject recently but most accounts on those made up websites posted to Facebook are boilerplate. In the next installment of So You Think You’re a Chef, I will paint a more realistic picture of the joys and hardships of running a professional kitchen, at least those from my view in my long career behind the stove.
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