Top Chef

Aservant writes:

I have gone through a profound awakening in recent years, changing from a knee-jerk liberal to a conservative Christian, even a “fundamental” conservative Christian. I add the “fundamental” to differentiate myself from mainstream conservatives, whom  for the most part I have nothing in common with. 

I state the above to provide some context for the following account of my experience in professional kitchens and my views regarding women chefs and the current phenomenon of “celebrity chefs.”

In the beginning of my career almost 25 years ago, many of the European instructors in my native Canada expressed their disgust of  the current workforce and its inclusion of homosexuals and women in its ranks. At that time, I was a liberal, although I didn’t label myself as such. I wasn’t that way by choice so much as by merely breathing in my environment.

Although I respected many of these seasoned instructors for their abilities, I was very uncomfortable hearing their “non-PC” views. Now I could be one of them. Starting about 10 to 15 years ago, I began to notice that my fellow cooks and chefs had become sissies overnight.

For the first 10 years of my career, multiple burns on the forearms were battle scars worn with pride. Stitches as well. In the case of stitches, it was a matter of how quickly one could return from the ER to get back on the line. The mere suggestion that you might need time off invited ridicule so harsh it would probably force you to leave the job. Multiple 16-hour shifts in a row earned awe among my peers; at times you would just pull them to outdo the next guy and show the “pair” that you had. In the kitchen where I passed my apprenticeship, the executive chef was one of a dying breed, now a completely extinct breed. He was an old Swiss Jew who ran our operation like a boot camp.

After graduating from the “boot camp” stage , the apprentice entered a military hierarchy, with all the respect and privileges that went with it if one could prove one’s value. This man was world famous and as talented as they get. He spoke four languages and was at the top of his profession in pastry, ice carving, garde mange, butchery, you name it. The best compliment one could expect from him was, “Not f—king bad. I’ll let you live,” in his thick Swiss accent.

The main difference between his breed and the “so-called” judges and “executive chefs” that you see today is that anything you could do, he could do better, and he did it on a daily basis. Although he had accomplishments that stretched from repeated grand gold medals at the Culinary Olympics (culminating in the world championship in 1992), to being a decorated corporate chef and consultant, he was there everyday dishing the lunch and dinner banquets with us. With his success, he had no obligation to do this at all, and today, you will be lucky to see a corporate chef of his level even touch a plate. After my apprenticeship, I went to work on the coast for a couple of years, and then returned to be a sous chef for him in his last year before his retirement. One day, as we discussed the politics of the large hotel whose kitchen we ran, he said to me, “If I would have wanted to be a f–king suit, I would have been a suit.” 

Most may not feel the gravity of that statement in the way I do. It said everything about integrity and what it means to be a man. With these words the “old man,” as we called him, became ten times the man to me my own father had ever been. 

In the North America of today, the white collar, high earning, emasculated male has supreme value. But his statement said, “We chose the hard road because few can do it. This is who you are. Your scars, your triumphs, and your defeats are yours and yours alone, paid in your sweat and blood, everyday. No one can take that from you. We are proud of what we are. We don’t dirty our hands because we were too dumb to do something else; to the contrary. They earn from what we produce, we don’t earn from them.”

As a cook for this man, you often suffered. But no one, no one, in the hotel messed with you. When you were out in public, and you mentioned where you worked, people might look at you different. But in the kitchen there was prestige. If you wanted to eat, you ate what you wanted every night, day and morning, but the plate must be finished or there was hell to pay. The fine dining room crew, the highest ranking positions in the kitchen, got their obligatory choice of drink at the end of each night brought to them. When the president of the company came to see our operation, he came to the kitchen to see the “Chef.” The chef didn’t take time out of his day to see the president. If the president would have asked him to come to him, I am sure he would have answered, “Doesn’t he know I am cooking?” 

My Swiss boss wasn’t an easy man. As I came into my own as a professional, we butted heads more than once. But he gave respect and was to be respected. He made us into men. I still get emotional, something between sadness and rage, as I think about what our current empty, PC, “diversity-and-profit-rules-all” society did to him and his kind.

In 1995, in the space of a year, I saw his whole operation, an apprenticeship system built over 30 years of sacrifice, gutted by Wall Street corporate raiders. And he was one of many. The replacement system? It was one ran by individuals who would be stars on Top Chef and spoiled, hateful, self-indulgent females and sissies, company flunkies who would tow the line, take the crumbs left over and grovel at the feet of their new masters. 

As I experienced this upheaval, I didn’t have the cultural and political awareness I have today. I saw my workmates turn into the sort of people who would have to stop and gaze at the single burn on a co-worker’s arm and then strategize on what to do about it. They repulsed me. It happened so quickly and dramatically, and I was so ignorant as to the politics of it all, that all I could feel was that there was something wrong with me as my new-found comrades became these alien beings. It has only been as of late that I have appreciated how much the entry of women into the kitchen contributed to this degradation.

I didn’t realize how important male cohesion was and is to what we did and should still be doing. Much of this has come to my attention by material posted on The Thinking Housewife. I now know there has been nothing wrong with me, but the vindication is hollow, as I fear the damage to my industry has become irreparable. 

What the general public sees being paraded in front of it as “highly trained professionals doing what they do best” on Top Chef (as reader Jim B. stated) is a sham. This is mere entertainment, nothing else. With all due respect to Jim, I don’t fault him, but he doesn’t know what he is looking at. I may know what kind of carpentry I would like to buy, but I could never distinguish between a poor carpenter, a skilled one or a master. I don’t have the training. I was amazed by the abilities of my instructors when I enrolled in the culinary program when I knew nothing. Two years after graduating, I wouldn’t hire half of them. The novice is easily impressed. 

The United States is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t have a standardized training program for professional cooks. It is not a recognized trade. You can get a certificate from a private institute for an outrageous fee, but that doesn’t make you a chef. Since returning to this country 13 years ago after residing here as a boy, the incompetence that I have witnessed is outrageous. All talk, lots of book knowledge and money, designer whites, knives and kitchens, but total lack of discipline and execution.

For me, it exemplifies much of the business and education structure as a whole in our society. It is why we are bankrupt. Unfortunately, since the passage and incremental implementation of the Free Trade Deal in Canada, it is now worse in many aspects there. There is no doubt that twenty years ago it was vastly superior. I lived it. The one saving grace in the States today, and it is huge and why I am here, is that there are subcultures like the one exemplified on this site that are aware of this state of affairs and are attempting to do something about it. They are non-existent in the country of my birth. It enrages me that my so-called “fellow countrymen” allowed this to take place. I will never return there. 

Idealistic success stories are being sold to the unsuspecting public on Top Chef. They mask a complete social disaster. There is no difference between Top Chef and the lie of feminism and multiculturalism as a whole. Don’t be fooled. I have tried to watch a whole episode and can’t stomach more than five minutes. The speed, efficency, knife skills, organization and maturity exemplified by these supposed chefs are at about the first-year apprentice level of a 17 year old in any other developed nation. We would have thrown them out in a day working for the “old man.”

Also don’t be fooled because someone says they have their own restaurant and it is busy or successful. The vast majority of freestanding restaurants in this country that stand the test of time have monied owners who use them as tax shelters or business write-offs or playthings. The ones that truly make a profit on their own would never have some pierced-up, spike-haired, spoiled youngster taking time off to go on Top Chef. The demands of a professional kitchen are too intense to allow it.

Besides if you did last on your own merit in this business over time, you would be a genuine, real producer with self respect, someone who would never expose himself to the arrogant, know-nothing, do-nothing, ego-maniac judges on that program. None of those fakes would last 5 minutes working for me. They are similar to the feminazi professor with lots of multi-syllabic words in her progressive psychobabble who fools many into believing she is erudite and knows what she is talking about. 

What makes a professional cook or chef is only partly represented by the edibility of the dish. If that were all it took, many housewives would be far superior chefs to most professionals. It is about strategy, timing, performing under pressure and stamina. Can you communicate with the Spanish speaking dishwasher? Can you cook ten things at once with the same quality hours at a time, day after day, year after year, in intense heat? Can you get your order in on time from 6 different suppliers? Do you know like the back of your hand the thousands of specifications of different products? Can you train your people effectively when you can’t offer much more than $11 an hour? Do you consistently make your budget? Is the kitchen clean and labor cost on line? Can you do all this and still have time for your family without becoming a dope fiend or alcoholic? Can you do all this and still keep your cool? This is the very short list of what must be done. How much of that do you see on Top Chef. None. Just like, how much of what it is to be a real woman, wife and homemaker do you see realistically portrayed by the media? Same answer. None.

                                          — Comments —

Jake Jacobsen (also a chef) writes:

Wow!

Aservant covers so much here it is hard to know where to start. But here are some brief reactions.

For me, I came up in a very different way, I actually started in a local fast food chain (which was arguably the best-run restaurant I ever worked for) and made my way up through all the various types of restaurants ultimately ending up in hotels and fine dining.

Yet what is amazing is I relate completely to what Aservant writes. Growing up in the business there was a savage joy to accomplishing the impossible, in taking the hit and finishing the shift. It was battle, pure and simple, and the prize went to him who not merely persevered but could offer the most convincing grin as his blood dripped off the end of his hand.

This is the thing I can never explain to forty-year-old bank executives of either sex, now that I am domesticated and attend dinner parties with my wife. The level of brutality that we not only endured, but loved, was just part of the deal.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked a benefit function with a “celebrity” chef, agog at his lack of skills, and stories like these are legend in the professional kitchen because the only way to acquire these skills is talent, yes, but also practice and experience. Which begs the question: how experienced can a twenty two year old actually be?

As in so many fields, once you elevate youth and inexperience you invariably denigrate age and experience, and this doesn’t typically end well.

Jim B. writes:

I appreciate Aservant’s taking me to task, and I’m glad that a throwaway comment by me was able to elicit such a thoughtful and
heartfelt reaction, even if it was to point out my ignorance. I plead guilty on all counts.

What can I say?  I like cooking, and I like watching people who do it better than I can.  I am fully aware that “Top Chef” is larded with PC (even more than normal, being on Bravo, the “gay network”), but in between the dainty princesses and the histrionic queens and the surly lesbians (including one who actually made a big scene about one
challenge that involved catering a wedding because “Gay people can’t get married yet”!!), there are actual chefs who just do their job without whining about it.  This just-past season had a few, including the Voltaggio brothers referred to in my previous response.  While I’m sure they wouldn’t come up to the standards of aservant, they seemed
impressive to me, all the more so because they so clearly (and quietly) showed their superiority over said princesses, queens, and lesbians.  I guess if you want to interact at all with what passes for entertainment in the modern world, you take what you can get and ignore the rest.

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