So You Want to be a Chef

Think standing on your feet for hours on end filling raviolis, cleaning artichokes, peeling boxes of asparagus, gutting 50 lobsters, etc., and being expected to perform these monotonous, mechanistic chores with assembly line speed and accuracy.

Next you'll probably move up to the garde manger, (guard mann-ZHAY), i.e., composing appetizers, soups, salads, shrimp cocktails and other cold preparations. How long you remain here depends on the restaurant and your skills.

Eventually, if all goes well, you will be groomed for working the line, i.e., cooking the main items. Some restaurants divvy up the line positions by the type of cooking, (the sauté cook, the grill cook, etc.), or by the type of food, (the meat cook, the fish cook, etc.)

Even though being a line cook is more prestigious, the hours remain grueling and you are under even more pressure to get the food out. Line cooks can work non-stop for hours during the height of service with no chance for even a bathroom break.

If you're good you'll eventually become a sous chef. This is the second in command, right under the executive chef. The hours are still long, you'll still sweat your you-know-what off working the line, and now you have the added responsibility of policing everyone else in the kitchen. Of course this position brings more prestige and money.

A sous chef's ultimate goal is to become an executive chef. Hard work, better than average ability, and sometimes a little bit of luck are all needed to reach that plateau.

Sometimes the executive chef is also the owner, the ultimate goal in chiefdom: owning your own restaurant. But always remember, no matter where you are on the totem pole in the restaurant business, it is never a nine to five proposition. It is your life.

Of course there are other culinary occupations. There are cooking school teachers, food stylists, caterers, and restaurant consultants to name a few. But inevitably, these people have spent years paying their dues in front of hot stoves when everybody else was out having fun or being with their family.

Or you could become, HA, a food writer. You probably have a better chance of ending up on the Food Network than being able to support yourself, (let alone a family), by food writing alone. At the risk of sounding discouraging, the stars in people's eyes are ultimately the result of being beat over the head with reality.

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