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Four years ago when I launched my doomed anti-F–die mag Tomato elbowed my way in to interview Melbourne chef Karen Martini at the time she was launching Mr Wolf. The thing that stuck with me is that she liked calm in her kitchen rather than the pot-throwing and stomping of a certain top local chef from Europe for whom she had worked.
She made it very clear that the formal French and English tradition of “yes chef! “no chef!” didn’t cut it in the egalitarian Australian society.
Sarah Phillipson the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog notes that some English chefs are in cycle of abuse pointing to Waitrose Food Editor William Sitwell’s, the man who riled some bloggers at this year’s Food Fest, story on his revealing interview with former Ramsay Lieutenant Marcus Wareing. Wareing reveals that “I was very unapproachable, very strict … I bollocked people like Gordon,” he says.
Sitwell recalls the time chef Tom Aikens was sacked from London restaurant Pied-à-terre for branding somebody with a hot knife. Gordon learnt his behaviour from Marco Pierre White who made him cry and who once had a chef’s white’s filleted from his back because he complained he was too hot. My personal favourite is Anthony Bourdain having a young chef stripped, covered in blood, wrapped in cling film and shoved in the freezer.
More from Sitwell’s interview:
“Never, ever did I get to bed before 2am,” says Wareing, adding a further, “never ever”, in case you didn’t quite get the point.
Aside from that, Wareing was, in fact, something of a loner. He never went out, never socialised. He just worked, washed his clothes, watched some telly, slept, then went back to work. And so after all these years, aged 38, and having worked with Ramsay since the age of 19, he has mixed feelings about him. As he says in the piece, “half of me thinks he’s a sad bastard and the other half still adores him”. He went further recently in a conversation to a friend saying, “If I saw him today I’d want to hug him …”
I know The Gobbler has a few tales from his days cheffing in London. Are Australian chefs really better behaved than their European counterparts?
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My son has worked in a demanding & abusive kitchen environment where the philosophy of “what happens in this effing kitchen stays in this effing kitchen” was strictly enforced, and, one that is demanding but calm, organized & totally focussed on the job. Both are highly regarded, well credentialed, nationally award winning fine dining establishments. Guess which one he prefers to work in?
Pranks like sending a new apprentice to find chicken lips or clear food colouring are harmless enough I guess (although couldn’t their time be spent a little more productively?) but the culture of abuse that has existed in kitchens since probably Roze de Chantoiseauis opened his first restaurant, that goes beyond cave-man tom foolery is unacceptable to me.
Interesting question Ed but simple answer No.
Being there in the late eighties I saw an entrenched culture of bastardization within the ranks of brigades of chefs that apparently worked the hardest, shagged & drank the hardest & were the hardest, no matter in which environment you found yourself in, be it Michelin Starred kitchen or soup van. I am told that it was akin to the army & in effect both shared the dubious ritual of rewarding diligent & unquestioning subservience with a celebration of alcohol.
Having said this, I only saw the ‘hotel’ side of things, unfortunately there was no Ruth Rogers or Rose Gray for me & it was in the hotels that this last shift of this dinosaur culture was yet to clock itself off into history.
Having also been unfortunate to experience the very best that the worst can dish out as an apprentice in my fist year at Lord Curzon’s restaurant in Nth Melb, sadly deceased, I cant say with certainty that the Brits have this all sown up.
We could be talking about a worldwide generational change here though? Don’t forget that kitchens here like the Florentino, the Society or the Latin(Um.. they were Italian weren’t they?) all had very old school chefs & the discipline that follows, discipline that would more than likely find itself at odds with what today’s society would find acceptable. I witnessed an age where there was a tangible cultural baton change, for which I am grateful but its has not been without some personal hangovers!
I will say though, that when a beach head was landed in Melb by the invading Britpackers in the early nineties, they dispensed with equal measure, their unquestionable skillful techniques as well as their highly honed hierarchical pecking orders & the boundaries of which they guarded at times ferociously. Cultural cringe had finally been overcome & our kitchen landscape was changed forever, one no longer needed to go abroad to be bollocked in order to be considered good!
Thanks for the plug Ed & here are the links.
http://the-gobbler.blogspot.com/2007/06/london-callingrip-joe-strummer.html
http://garrulous-gourmet-vintage.blogspot.com/2007/09/rememberance-of-things-past-definately.html
ut si, I can guess. I’ve only worked in one commercial kitchen washing up. It was quite sane although the sharp knives terrified me. I also found myself washing knives in a supermarket butcher shop. This time the people terrified me, especially the stories about people who’d had their balls shaved etc with the knives. Most frightening of all was working in the parts store of a garage, near the mechanics. People were regularly greased up and crucified - their overalls either nailed to the floor or a makeshift cross with a nail gun.
Gobbler, I knew I remembered a couple of anecdotes.
Gobblers is gone… what’s going on??
Gobbler, I can only hope you will pop up again as another identity, please drop by and say hi when your back up an running.
I’m sure many of us will miss your stories
Jack
I concur Jack, where’s The Gobbler gone? I’ll miss his fab, wonderfully written musings. I hope this isn’t a permanent departure from the blogosphere?
Both The Gobbler and The Garralous Gourmet are gone. What’s happened? I’ll send him an email and find out.
I myself, have worked as Head chef in a couple of two hat restaurants in Melbourne. The chef/owner of one in North Carlton was abusive towards apprentices - or anyone who would put up with it! He would throw food/items/whatever he could get his hands on when a mistake was made, and often used his physical presence to intimidate the dishwashers. I recall an incident where a young 17year old apprentice had raw potatoes thrown at his back, I took him he didnt have to put up with the abuse, he told me that it was nothing - his last job was worse!!
High end kitchens are and will always be the same. The ignorance shown by none industry commentators simply makes a more of ”çhef behaviour” worse than it needs to be. As they say, if you don’t like the heat, get out.
it is what it is ed.