Bourdain's So-Called "Ranks of the Damned"

This right here, is a very, very important chapter in a book otherwise devoid of advice. Advice, real and brutally honest, that a whole bunch of people sorely need and won't get anywhere else.

It's a phenomenon I've been slowly observing for three years, since the day I realized I wanted to be a cook. At first, I was only focused on myself, slowly learning how I could make this a real career. I was learning day by day that my initial expectations were being shattered at an alarming rate. But even as my preconceptions evaporated around me, I still felt compelled and driven, only further enticed by "The Life." So I kept going.

Then I began to notice those around me a bit more.

The phenomenon is growing, gaining mass, snowballing to dangerous sizes and it not only concerns me, but straight up pisses me off.

It seems like everyone and their fucking mother wants to be a chef.

Everyone I know has a friend somewhere either attending culinary school, or is working as a kitchen grunt, or has desires to be a cook, or (god forbid) watches a lot of Food Network and has been inspired. When I hear about what they're doing, I can assess immediately how serious they are in relation to me, and what kind of threat they represent.

Yes, assessing threats, assessing competition. "Hold your fire, there's no life forms on that escape pod." Well one mistake can cost you a lot apparently, as Grand Moff Tarkin learned the hard way.

Alright, to be honest, I'm not sure why it bothers me so much. It's not like the idea belongs to me. I'm not the only college grad allowed to veer off the beaten path to become a cook. And I didn't do this to be original anyway, I did this because I think it's the only way I won't end up drinking a bottle of bleach 20 years from now as I futilely pump the fumes from my 2030 hybrid through the driver's side window. Maybe it's just that, in some future retrospect, I don't want to be seen as part of a few hipster, free thinking years that saw a huge increase in culinary school enrollment. I don't wanna be seen as a reactionary statistic to the cultural impact of Food Network. I don't want to be lumped in with these tatted up, pierced up young guns who got in to cooking for the wrong reasons.

Granted, it's not that you can't be a serious cook if you happen to be an independent, "free-spirit" or whatever the fuck that means. If you "think outside the box, man" or if conforming to society is unacceptable to you (even though most of you "rebels" are directly conforming to a subculture, hence making you tiptoe a line between authenticity and hypocrisy), but you can still rock a Saturday night service like a boss, then fine. Your presence won't irritate me much. And if you're a cool person to boot, then yes we can get along.

But the problem is, there's another thin line. A thin line between just happening to be someone who is a bit quirkier than the majority of society (and consequently someone very fit for the life of a restaurant professional), and someone using this career as an outlet for their societal angst.

Here's what I expect to see.

Many years from now, some sociology major is going to write a thesis on the growing popularity of Food Network and how it has affected Millenials. They are going to find that four hours of Bobby Flay programming a day can brainwash any young boy in to thinking professional cooking is where it's at! Iron Chef and the adrenaline bomb it is, is what I gonna get to do every night!

No.

One hour of lightning fast prep, and a race to the finish to plate your hermaphroditic salmon, or whatever they like to use as main ingredients on that show, is not what professional cooking is about.

It's about slaving over a cantaloupe with a #12 melon baller, trying to extract a perfect sphere of fruit for a customer paying $25 a head in your party room.

It's about butchering forty chickens and treating every single one with respect. It's about carefully cleaning their bones, blanching them, roasting and simmering them ever so slowly for perfect stock, something ninety percent of this world couldn't identify anyway.

It's about looking at your food cost sheet and wondering if your chef of 18 years is worth the 3% increase in waste, because this recession hurts. Because things are getting tight, and though you've known him forever, he's been incapable of changing his habits.

It's about wondering where your kids are going to be safe because school is closed due to a freak tornado hitting Queens last weekend, and deciding between watching your kids and risking your job is an impossible choice to make.

It's not a pretty life. It's not over-saturated with colors, with smiling perfect mothers and witty male chefs like Food Network would have you believe. The previous generation of restaurant professionals did it mainly because they had no choice. They didn't have the education or skills to cut it in the 9-5 world.

But now that we can do this by choice, we run the risk of making a very poor one.

If you decided you wanted to do this because you love to cook at home, Warning: Professional cooking is absolutely nothing like home cooking. Be very wary. I would say you are more welcome in a restaurant kitchen if you like hauling garbage and sweeping floors (like me).

I think I already made my case for food on TV, but if you decided you wanted to do this because of anything you saw on TV, Warning: Big. Fucking. Warning sign. Really stop to reevaluate where you are with your life, and make sure it's not the lack of a dog or girlfriend that's making you bored or something. As legitimate as Top Chef is, don't let the glamor fool you. They are only 18 chefs out of hundreds of thousands, and they are just as much selected for their TV faces and propensity to yell at each other, as for their culinary prowess.

If you decided you wanted to do this because Bourdain made it sound like you can do drugs, drink whenever you want, get laid, be tatted up and nonconforming to all the suit-and-tie stiffs around the world, Warning: You may just be a 17-year-old who doesn't like learning anything in high school and can't get girls. You know, something really uncommon. In the words of Ruhlman, "I can't think of a worse role model for young cooks."

If you are doing it anyway, and you are working at a restaurant like Bottega, or Jean-Georges, or you're just slaving away at two stages while getting a business degree, then mad props. I'll see you on the battlefield.

If you decided you wanted to do this for any reason other than passion, passion so strong that it doesn't bother you you're never going to be rich or have a 401k, or any reason other than the fact that nowhere else in society would have you, then maybe you're on the money. But know that it's going to be a long, merciless path to the top, and the price of failure is greater than most industries. For every chef with an eponymous cookbook at Barnes & Noble, there are ten who lost their fortunes and dreams putting everything in to one restaurant that failed. That number will only increase as the competition grows. And having closed the doors on a few restaurants in my life, I know how devastating that can be.

I speak so menacingly about being a cook, and where you draw your influences from, because I myself have a deep, dark secret. I am most likely, a Food Network baby.

Yes, I admit it. It hurts my soul to admit it, but it's true.

Months of watching Giada and her freakishly large head, and lavishly accentuated cleavage slice parsley, entranced me. Tyler Florence and his "Ultimate" renditions of dishes had me watching and recording every day. Alton Brown and his quirky food science helps me to understand how we cook more and more even now.

I no longer watch, and I don't deserve a perch above you to judge, but I do give words of caution.

So when I say I'm angry, and I deter you, I'm being honest, but only because I know how dangerous it is.

My first few weeks at Oceanique were hard. I wasn't expecting to have to communicate with my remedial Spanish, clean organic dandelion greens one by one, and vaccum pack cobia filets all day in a basement. I had this image of a smiling, fat, white chef (which Mark kind of is) standing over my shoulder and instructing me on how to properly clean a roasted beet.

Not the case. And the entirety of this blog will show you how long it's taken me to get here, and frankly, I'm still nowhere. I've learned a lot, and it's only because I grew up in restaurants that I didn't fall off the wagon. I had a childhood molded by the industry to ground me in a sense of reality when TV and celebrity threatened to pull me off course.

So I welcome the competition.

I imagine it will soon become much like any professional sport. Millions of passionate, hard-working people vying for very few spots to rise to the top. Some, of undeniable talent and genius will get there almost regardless, few as they are. And most others will have to fight, claw and work their asses off to reach the higher echelons of professional cookery. You may have to suck a few dicks and lose a few girlfriends in the process (funny how those go together), and you'll definitely need a healthy dosage of luck.

But not quite yet. I'm still suspecting many of these Food Network babies will wash out. Someone who didn't grow up knowing the sacrifice and complete fuck-job restaurants do to your personal life may not be able to handle it. The idea of 80 hour weeks, no weekends to get together with your friends to watch Eat.Pray.Love (or some bullshit like that), and living at your restaurant while the whole world ticks away without you is not appealing to most.

So for those of you thinking this is a good idea, well best of luck to you. If you find out cleaning grease traps isn't your cup of tea, then alright, see ya. We don't want you here anyway, amongst Bourdain's so called "ranks of the damned," if you're not willing to get a little dirty. And as for the rest of you, like me, who are going to doggedly pursue greatness, well... I'll need a sous chef at some point.

EP6








KIDDING! Remembering my own rules, #4: be humble, and don't be that guy.

Oh and PS - I'll take a hipster over a bro, any day.