I think maybe I should read more & save myself some irritation...

Well 2 days back to work. The first was 13.5 hours...today was 12. I really do feel like vacations are some times not worth the pain in the ass catch up I have to do when I get back. Granted I'm loving having the time to get some stuff done around the house, but 15.5 hours in 2 days, hours in meetings with my managers and problems galore.... ilovemyjobilovemyjobilovemyjob. Hopefully by the time I get to the Steel City Big Pour 4 portion of my weekend I will have sorted out some bullshit and be able to enjoy it as opposed to be on the phone dealing with crap all day. *fingers & toes crossed*

So anywho I got home from The Great Day of Meetings Hell Part 2 and my DVR was kind enough to record Master Chef for me. So I made myself breakfast (yeah...I was totally up at 7am today and literally the first piece of food that touched my lips today was at 10pm) and sat down to watch.

Now I avoided the first half of the season because it was some epic level stupid. I've never watched American Idol, but the concept for getting to the final 16 was kind of like the AI auditions & I had no interest, so I picked it up once they were down to the actual competition. Tonight's episode was getting down to the final four. Overall the show is less than stellar. The winner gets a cookbook deal and some cash I think. So I've watched the last few episodes and this one tonight has made me stabby.

I am a chef. I went to school & have the degree...but in all honestly that doesnt mean shit. Im a chef because I love food, because I have worked a lot of hours in a lot of kitchens. I have cooked fine dining in some of the best restaurants in this city, I have cooked upscale fast casual, I have cooked in a pool snack bar, I have catered, done banquets, worked with one of the best pastry chefs in the country & done full scale commercial from scratch baking. I can make you a batch of chocolate chip cookies off the top of my head that will make your mouth sing just as easily as I can make you sauteed halibut cheeks dusted in fennel pollen served over sauteed fiddle head ferns with a meyer lemon vinaigrette that will make your eyes roll into the back of your head. I havent met a protein yet that I havent been able to butcher or break down and I dont mind getting dirty. I am a chef because I EARNED that title through a lot of blood (work with knives a lot & youll bleed eventually), sweat and definitely tears. I am a chef because that is what I am. I am one of the fortunate few who figured out early that not only do I love being in a kitchen but I'm good at it and I can make a living doing it. Cooking for me is an instinct. I am one of the most klutzy people I know. I drop everything, trip over my own 2 feet constantly and am just generally a danger to myself....right until I walk up to that stove. I can make up recipes with a 90% success rate off the top of my head.  Food makes sense to me the way science & math make sense to other people. I hope I'm not coming off as egotistical...I am not. The greatest thing about what I do is I always get to learn, meet people who have so much to teach and constantly explore the food around me. I do not think I know everything and I hope I never will...but that doesnt change the fact that I am good at what I do & for the most part love it. Even now when most of my job entails managing my managers & orchestrating the operations of 5 restaurants I can still step on that line and out cook anyone who works for me....I kinda have to, thats my job.

Now the Master Chef bullshit is all non-professional cooks. They are home cooks. I give them mad credit for their passion and ability but it NOT the same as being a chef. Being a chef doesnt mean standing in front of a small stove making some intricate delicate dish for you & your nearest and dearest or cooking the food for your cousins bridal shower or making a holiday feast for the family. It is also NOT the crap they sling on Food Network. They make it look so fun & ideal...and some days it is...more often than not it isnt.

Being a chef means researching ingredients & methods, tasting, sampling and trying out new things. Its getting up at the ass crack of dawn to hit your line early. Its balancing your food cost, labor cost, budgets & staffing needs. Its hiring, firing, training and leading a team of not always so dedicated cooks. Its standing on a line over a saute stove in 120 degree heat sweating your ass off while perfectly crisping the bacon on a wrapped filet before searing and getting it in the oven to finish while a stock simmers on a back burner and you're cooking 3 other dishes and their sides. Its hefting heavy cases of all kindsa shit and rotating them into coolers, its educating waitstaff about your food so they can sell it. Its dealing with retarded dishwashers that dont get that they need to give you CLEAN plates and that all pots & pans have outsides, too. Its dealing with irrational customers that think you should be able to do whatever it is that they want you to just because they are customers & why cant you hurry up and make me that olive tapenade you had as an amuse bouche a week ago in the middle of a friday diner rush and then bitching out your staff when they are told that isnt possible. Its working 12-14 hours a day until the wee hours of the morning cleaning up a wrecked line after service. Its drinking way too much, smoking far too much pot to maintain your sanity, chain smoking cigarettes and mainlining caffeine to make it through the hangover. Its dirty, sweaty & rewarding work. Being a chef means that inevitably no one will ever tell you you're LOW on anything, just that you're out of it and stopping yourself from launching yourself through a window to ring that idiots neck for not watching the station stocking levels & telling you before you had 4 orders hanging on the board and only 3 left to cook. Its working with many purveyors, watching all your products and foods for freshness & going nutso when they drop the ball so that they know not to do that again. Its stress, its love, its passion, its frustrating.....its fucking awesome & I wouldnt change a thing even if I could.

Because being a chef is also creating the perfectly balanced bernaise sauce that is thick yet fluffy with that divine tarragon white wine tang. Its taking a perfectly seared steak off the grill, its seeing that gorgeous rich purple of sashimi grade ahi as you remove the skin, its getting all a flutter when you get word the Copper River salmon is coming in...or Dover Sole is out & about. Its the smell of toasting almonds and crispy bacon...its the pop of a perfectly heated pan when you slide a filet of Chilean sea bass into it or the crackle of the oil as you drop in something delicious. Its the clanking of plates, the chatter of a busy staff, fast paced-angry & sometimes violent. Its getting the perfect sear on a seasoned pork tenderloin, or the golden brown of a caramelized shallot reduction, the snap of a fresh pea, the ripe richness of perfect tomatoes & the earthy delicateness of wild mushrooms and the sweet crunch of an in season apple. Being a chef is having a vocabulary of curse words that is almost unequaled & using those words daily, speaking a secret restaurant language civilians dont understand & being extra raunchy - seriously I have worked on lines with cooks that would make Richard Pryor blush and that was just the idle chit chat going on between the service & kitchen staff during service. There are about eleventybillion more reason I could give you for why I love what I do and all is better than the next while I am thinking about it.

And now back to my original point...I swear to great fictional dieties if I heard this toolbag on this show call himself a great chef one more fucking time I was going to hunt down his over testosteroned egotistical ass where ever it was in California and drag him to the nearest restaurant and throw this "chef" on a hot line and watch him cry like a little girl who lost her dolly. Watch him get burnt by the guy on saute slinging pans like a mad man putting out 4 dishes while cooking 5 more & setting 3 more up for firing while listing to an expo holler out orders that you have to keep in your memory and telling the guy on fry what sides & garnishes he needs to plate. See if he can call himself a chef when the host comes back to tell you that we just had a walk in 20 top off the menu that was just sat & needs to be out the door in an hour for a show they are going to or having the Skippy the Wonder Server (every restaurant has one I guarantee it) come back while you're 20 checks deep with a pasta dish that was supposed to be the dinner special and he got confused when taking the order and you now have to fly the right item out because the guest was pissed or my personal favorite the steak/burger/fish that is cooked to a PERFECT medium rare that is sent back because "its too bloody, I just wanted it pink" was the reaction of the lady who ordered it that makes you want to go out onto the floor, find her and inform her with great anger then order it MEDIUM you fucking twatball!!! I wonder if he could call himself a chef when he finds out half way through service that Jackass the Prep Cook (every restaurant has one of these as well) SAID he made the minoinette sauce only to find out mid service he didnt and you are chopping shallots like a mother fucker while cooking checks because 86ing that item isnt an option with ingredients in house & orders on the board.

I doubt it. I am willing to bet that these "chefs" would no more be able to handle the pressure that your average line cook does every shift than I would be able to pilot a rocket ship to the moon.  It pisses me off to hear the term "chef" used so loosely.  Chef is a title that is earned, it is a title that you work for...and Master Chef - fuck me. There are chefs that work their entire careers to actually attain that level through certification programs, and it offends me that it is used so cavalierly. Not one of those people, regardless of their skill level, would last more than an hour on any of my lines & its a bunch of bullshit they are being proclaimed as Chefs by anyone. I cant throw a bandaid on a cut and call myself a surgeon - how the fuck can you saute off a piece of salmon butchered by your fish monger and call yourself a chef? Any asshole can put a pan on a stove - it takes love & talent to make that pan give you a dish that will make your mouth smile & belly happy.

I'd like to take a minute to thank Food Network for making every idiot with cable think they can cook and that being a chef is this picture perfect overly romanticised delusion of grand cuisine- its not - sometimes its tearing apart a clogged dish machine drain & scrubbing pots. And shows like Master Chef for equating really good home cooks to real chefs who would eat those people alive in the real world of chefdom. There is so much more to being a chef than reading a recipe and cooking. Its a hard job, a demanding job and for me, an amazingly rewarding one some days and a frustratingly irritating one on others...and I wouldnt change a thing about it. I do love what I do.

I have worked with some amazing chefs & cooks and for all of them and myself I finish with this - you want to be called a chef then earn that right with the blood, sweat and tears we did - not by winning some reality TV show that brings you 15 minutes of fame followed by a career of mediocrity that embarrasses us all. Real chefs dont need to tell you how great they are...they show you that on their plates every freaking night. Reading a cookbook or getting on a reality cooking tv series doesnt make you a chef any more than driving a car makes you a mechanic. Know that.

Side note - the jackass that inspired this post (Sharone for any who watch the show) was eliminated tonight and I did the happy girl dance while reveling in his embarrassment. Perhaps if he talked himself up a little less & learned to combine flavors & textures a little more he would have been a chef....after about 10 years working in a real kitchen.