Where Will The Pirates Go?
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By Ellen Duffy
"A place for people with bad pasts to find a new family," is how the Patron Saint of Chefs has described the commercial kitchen. "The last refuge of the misfit," as Bourdain put it, has always been a diverse ensemble of characters who, in the best of cases, coax one another into productive harmony in the face of chemical vices, language barriers, clashing cultures, social deviance, and violent tendencies. The restaurant kitchen may be the last bastion of shareholder-sponsored anarchy. It has served, unwaveringly, as a supple haven for those of us who cannot or will not function behind a desk, someplace where Tuesday is a rerun of Monday and the rest of the week follows suit.
People who thrive in chaos are drawn to kitchens.
We owe a debt of gratitude to works like Kitchen Confidential. They cracked open the restaurant's back door and let the world peer inside, past the milk crates and San Marzano cans overflowing with cigarette butts, into the anarchic place that we call home. On display for the first time were the hot, sharp, dizzying quarters where harsh language, checkered pasts, and literal grab-ass are both accepted and commended.
Once word got out about life behind the swinging doors, some who had never even picked up a chef's knife were suddenly drawn to the kitchen's glamorized lawlessness. Burn scars became merit badges, and tales of workplace violence, war stories. Knife tattoos abounded. A new, different wave of pirates began their careers in pursuit of the glorified madness.
Where Kitchen Confidential left off, chefs like Gordon Ramsey picked up. Brought to us by Food Network, they provide a melodramatic caricature of the abusive dictatorship existing in some kitchens. Some cooks now aspire to the status of Head Pirate, with the license to throw tantrums and sauté pans on a whim.
Often, "H.R." is either the head bartender or the most tenured dishwasher. The only "door that's always open," if you feel that you're being mistreated, is the back door leading out to the alley. Sometimes an airborne sauté pan to the head from an angry chef serves as your annual performance review.
Since these exposés, a concerted effort has commenced to edit archaic kitchen customs. Escoffier's brigade de cuisine is crumbling before our eyes. Many wish to do away with sexism, hazing, harassment, open hostility, broken labor laws, and egregious OSHA violations. Thanks to a new generation of chefs speaking up and taking action, a revision of kitchen culture is in the works.
Now that we're working toward a kinder, gentler kitchen, the question is posed: Where will the pirates go? When all of the hazing has been eliminated, drug tests passed, sexual harassment training completed, and work permits checked, how many of us will still be standing? Will it be the same kitchen that called to us in the first place? If not, where will the rest of us find our home?
Like putting a well-seasoned cast iron pan through the dishwasher, are we on the brink of gentrifying kitchen culture beyond recognition? Perhaps the challenge facing us, at the critical moment in culinary history, is striking a balance between a safe, healthy workplace and a welcoming home for the array of talented misfits who live to cook in chaos.
Headquartered in Fond du Lac, Wis., Society Insurance has been a leading niche insurance carrier since 1915. As a mutual insurance company, Society focuses on the small details that make a big difference to its policyholders while offering top-notch insurance coverage, service and competitive pricing to businesses in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee, Colorado, Georgia and soon Texas.
Ellen Duffy is a Boston area chef with fifteen years of experience in the industry. Ellen believes that our universal language is food. It uses all five, perhaps six, of our senses, surpassing math and spoken word as a mode of communication. Sharing food has the mystical ability to bulldoze cultural barriers, teaching us about one another and revealing our similarities.
Ellen has cooked for food-insecure people, traveling rockstars, and everyone in between - all of whom have been an honor to serve.
Her spare time is spent as an avid music junkie (she could never cook without it), writing, and hanging with her cat and editor, Steve.
Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Best Served. To achieve our mission of bringing more voices to the table, we are committed to sharing a variety of viewpoints across the industry.
