I have worked as a professional Chef for over 20 years and have never had an urge to write about cooking in any serious way. The time and place of my humble beginnings and humbling existence in the business have not set me on the path of a rock star chef, and I never developed the killer instinct of an author who writes to intimidate readers with his arsenal of culinary expertise. I have however, almost from day one, wanted to write about the people and situations I have encountered. I sensed early on that the antics of the bearded ladies and double jointed hermaphrodites I worked with were not part of a normal person’s work life, and could provide entertaining material for those who were not themselves components of this bouillabaisse of humanity.

I am certainly not the first chef to seek fame and fortune by exposing the oddities of the restaurant industry to the general public. The trail was blazed by Anthony Bourdain with his brilliant expose, “Kitchen Confidential”. Although his book contains valuable food commentary such as the virtues of raw milk stilton, it mainly deals with the parallel universe of restaurants. His tales may seem unrealistic to anyone who has not worked in a professional kitchen; I assure you they are not. When he wrote about faking the grizzly death of a colleague to scare the restaurant’s unpopular manager into quitting, many chefs reading the book responded with an affirmative, “Been there”.

The main attraction of this show is the collection of miscreants and vagabonds who prepare and serve food to an unsuspecting and blissfully unaware public. The nature of the business is such that it attracts and maintains characters who would be, (and in some cases have been) rejected for carnival jobs. In what other business is it considered acceptable to call out sick because you haven’t come down from last night’s acid trip? How many employers in other businesses have to implement a policy that requires the employees to wear clean underwear to work?

Next we have the hall of ironies. This is an exhibit of attractions who not only provide entertainment to the rest of the freak show, they actually pay for the privilege. Customers are often unwilling participants in betting pools, the butt of cruel jokes, and recipients of barbed insults from chefs who refuse to serve steaks cooked more than medium-rare.

The final act, unseen by the general public but greatly enjoyed by the staff, is the collection of oddities that sells and delivers supplies to the restaurant. Vendor sales reps fall into three categories: Manipulators, Innovators, and Regurgitators. Manipulators are the stone in the shoe that chefs sometimes have to have removed. They are masters of the bait and switch, stealth pricing, and assorted misrepresentations. Innovators, the most desirable salesmen to the chef get the job done regardless of rules or company policy. They don’t last long in the business. Food service companies like to decapitate anyone that rises above the muck of mediocrity. Regurgitators are relatively harmless to the chef, but are much in demand by the food service vendor. Like a bacteria-laden sponge, they absorb company policy, features and benefits of their products, and thinly disguised schemes from their bosses, then ralph them up at the chef’s feet until he stops them with a menacing look or in extreme cases an unnecessary and spirited sharpening of his scimitar.

These featured attractions and a few minor ones will be the subjects of my tales of restaurant life. These tales are derived from memories; memories are not necessarily facts. To quote one of my favorite authors Phillip Gulley; quoting one of his, Gordon Livingston, “Memory is not, as many of us think, an accurate transcription of past experience. Rather it is a story we tell ourselves about the past, full of distortions, wishful thinking, and unfulfilled dreams.” Many of these stories will be recounted differently by readers who were actually there. It’s not a matter of integrity, its one of psychology, intellectual atrophy, and in many cases chemical influence that one person’s memories differ from another’s.

Bon appetit