Making the Chef

Thoughts for the Week

Hell's Kitchen

Finally, someone decides to fight dirty! To me the best part of any reality TV series comes out when people start trying to screw each other over. Michael's screwing over Christopher and having Ramsay 86 him was one of the best moments of the show so far. Watching him chew out Christopher about how his walk just didn't match up with his talk was in a way a fantastic validation of the way I view life in the kitchen. In the kitchen, you don't need to brag or say you're good, your food speaks for you. And if you're lying, then you're gonna get found out pretty soon.

I do have to say, though, that I believe now that Michael is not going to win the competition. His disregard for his team during service, when he hung back on the dessert station when his team was getting slammed, was shameful. For one, the dessert station wasn't going to get much business unless the entrees were served. He was nowhere near slammed, and that selfishness is going to come up and bite him in the ass big time.

Another Lack of Updates

So, last weekend I was up at the Vancouver Lindy Exchange, and this weekend are a bunch of things to do ... a blues party in Seattle, a blues festival in Portland and a blues party in Portland. And do I have a day off this weekend? Nope.

I am going to be neurotic come Monday morning. Updates maybe to come next Thursday? Maybe.

Reader Mail - Why this career?

I get mail from readers regularly asking about how I got started in this second career. Figured I might as well put it up in a post for all to know.

I have always loved cooking, ever since I was a little kid. I would do a lot of baking/cooking, when I was young, and with the rise of FoodTV when I was in college, I was always trying my hand at new things in the kitchen and trying out new restaurants.

One of my favorite places to eat at eventually became my third space (that space that's not home, not work, but still yours), a restaurant that, sadly, is no more, Cafe Mira. I got introduced to it via the GM at Emeril's Orlando, who mentioned that the chef there, Mike Johnson, had worked with Emeril and was putting out some good food. When I got back to St. Louis, I checked it out and I was hooked. Simple, good food, with the freedom to choose flavors from across the world. You might find an Indian themed appetizer, an Italian entree, and an all American dessert. I hung out there so often that I would come in, ask for my regular from the bartender, and then walk immediately into back of the house to hang out with the staff. Looking back on it, I am amazed at how much they must have liked me (or at least, respected Mike) because I was always welcome in the back of the house. One night, even, Mike asked me to work the dessert station because he had to press the flesh. Brilliant. I was so friendly with the staff that I ended up doing things like taping "Survivor" for them.

I think the best illustration, though, of how much this pace was my third space, was the day I found out I was going to be laid off by Accenture, the consulting firm. I was called by a partner's secretary as I was leaving the office that day and she wanted to see when I could come in to have a meeting with the partner the next afternoon. Word of layoffs had been coming down the grapevine, and the fact that my HR manager hadn't been able to get me on projects very often (or many of my friends ... a lot of dead weight in that office) and the fact that I had never met with him said, "You're fired." So I went straight to Cafe Mira, walked in, and started drinking. When Mike came in about half an hour later and asked what was going on, I told him, and he, like a good cook, made me another drink. Half an hour after that, I was passing out on the couch in the entryway. When I heard one of the staff ask Mike, "What are you going to do about Martin? Guests are coming in half an hour!" To which Mike replied, "He'll be fine." The staff eventually persuaded Mike to get me home somehow. He took me himself, and when I got home, I passed out.

I was living in a cook's world, and even then, I didn't know it.

But until that day that I got laid off by Accenture, it had never really occurred to me that I could make a career out of it. However, I was absolutely miserable being a consultant, kissing a lot of ass (both client and internal) and trying to be someone that I wasn't. After that, though, I realized that I liked food enough that I should just go ahead and give it a shot. I had hung out in Mike's kitchen enough to get a feel of what it was like and Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential only confirmed what I saw, so I decided to go forward. I had no experience, and everyone I knew in the industry tried to dissuade me from going forward, but I knew that this was where I wanted to be. I took a guaranteed job back in Houston and started working on the next part of my life.

I got sidetracked by the idea of going to culinary school in Australia, that I should be saving for that, but I found that dancing was much more fun and cool in the short term, to the point where I was going to a lindy hop (a vintage form of swing dancing) event in a different city practically every weekend. I got tired of trying to fill up the place in my heart where my career, my life's work, should have been with a hobby, and so I decided to bite the bullet, go into debt, and enroll in culinary school in Houston. It was the only way I was going to get my ass where it needed to be.

I went to a place called Alain and Marie LeNotre Culinary Institute. I didn't know it then, but it was a great school to go to. 100% hands on, with small classes (my largest class was about 9 students) and fantastic French instructors, I enrolled in a 14 month evening studies course. During the day, I worked as an IT worker. By night, I was in school. Those were long days, something to prep me for the months ahead, but in the end, it was worth it. School was fun, and about the only time I really questioned why I was there was, of course, during pastry classes, pastry being the bane of any chef's existence. When I graduated, I was $20K+ in debt, but I was on the right path. In a way, I had bought myself a happier life ... well, maybe not bought ... mortgaged, but still, it's happiness all the same.

posted by LindyChef @ 9:54 PM