Demons in the kitchen: why are chefs such jerks?

November 20th, 2012

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Why is it that the words “chef” and “abusive” are so synonymous? The guys (and they’re invariably male) doing the rottweiler-on-crack routine.  Throwing the f-bomb around with the wanton abandonment of a sprinkler system. Behaving with all the serenity and decency of someone with a c-clamp permanently attached to their nipples.

Then there’s the by-product of this behaviour: the drinking, the drugs. Oh, and the endless tabloid coverage.

Gordon Ramsay, of course, is the number one representative of the “chef as douche” phenomenon … he of the machine-gun fire of expletives.

But is all this all a rational and deserved way to categorise a chef? Or is just empty posturising … and is the chef bogeyman just another example of the douche that reality TV shows are made of?

Not necessarily – and that’s according to the douches themselves…

No less a source than Marco Pierre White (British food-god, mentor to Ramsay and one-time youngest chef to have been awarded three Michelin stars), describes in his biography “The Devil In The Kitchen”, the sheer hellish cruelty of the elite kitchen. A culture to which he quite happily contributed.

And meanness is part of his rep. Hence why he is commonly photographed posing like a camp gangland boss in a Guy Ritchie film.

For those that don’t know, Marco is a chain-smoking maniac who was great pals with such gentile folk as Oliver Reed and, legend has it, once had sex with a customer between courses at Harveys, his restaurant in south London, in the late 1980s.

He’s commonly referred to as the “enfant terrible” of cooking – but his book makes him just sound like an “enfant f*cking douchebag.”

Says the Lord Voldemort of cooking, “I created fear but I don’t remember anyone ever saying, ‘Pack it in, Marco.’”

And the justification for his behaviour is that it was the professional thing to do.

“If you are not extreme then people will take shortcuts because they don’t fear you. And to achieve and retain the very highest standards, day after day, meal after meal, in an environment as difficult and fast and chaotic as a restaurant kitchen, is extreme, well, in the extreme. (pp. 2-3)”.

Chef as pantomime villain?

So blase about all this ranting and raving, he’s prepared to speculate that his underlings somehow got off on this abuse.

“They were all pain jockeys––they had to be,” he says, “They couldn’t get enough of the bollockings.”

And, surprise surprise, we can’t see to get enough of their “bollockings” either, with our perverse fascination with monstrous behaviour the underlying source of Ramsay’s huge success.

Weirder still, it’s what we almost seem to expect from them. When it was revealed that the Evening Standard had to pay damages to Pierre White for false claims that he hit his restaurant manager over the head with a saucepan, it was a bigger surprise to find out that the story wasn’t true.

Of course, you should expect a certain amount of unhinged behaviour from a chef. After all, these people are creative types – artists, actually (as surely as, you know, bloggers are) and artists are notoriously weirdos.

Damaged creatures

Insecure, certainly. In fact, some are as hyper-sensitive as an ingrown toenail, as American celebrity chef Guy Fieri demonstrated last week when replying to a critical review from the the New York Times.

Apparently the reviewer, Pete Wells, had the temerity to criticise Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar.

Admittedly, the article was pretty scathing: calling Frieri out over the  “limp and oil-sogged” French fries and a watermelon margarita that tasted like a combination of “radiator fluid and formaldhyde”. This led Frieri, to take to breakfast TV to denounce the review as “ridiculous” and suggest there was some kind of hidden agenda at work.

Yeah Guy, maybe the agenda was that your food is overpriced taste-bud-soiling crap. If I want anything that hits the palate like industrial slime, I’ll get a $10 steak from the Sugar Mill.

Hellbound heart

But there’s also determining factors at play, apparently. These people are driven to excessive behaviour.

For example, Chef turned life-coach John Flynn openly admits he was the “original chef from hell” – but attributed this behaviour to the fact the kitchen is “a form of hell”. Makes sense.

Flynn goes onto to describe the pressure cooker atmosphere in detail: epic hours, nerve-shredding pressure, and liberal excretions of blood, sweat and tears. Being left a barren, emptied husk is the standard routine with drink and drugs apparently the only way to replenish the spirit.

Cameron Power, another chef blogger, recently described the cesspit of pain that amounts to a professional kitchen in a blog entitled “Why Chefs Are So Angry”.

Cameron’s take on it was out of left-field.

Apparently, the problem is our – the customer’s – fault.  They, these noble chefs, are passionate artisans – while we are the “bastards” screwing things up. With our pesky dietry requirements and disrespectful advice.

His philosophy is as follows:

“Chefs love food, I love food! I just don’t like you”.

Furthermore, he says, things have gotten more stressful with the popularity of so-called “open kitchens”. Mainly because, out in view of his customers, he no longer has license to behave like a complete choade. That this necessarily makes him hate people even more is one of life’s sweet ironies.

What more can you expect?

Eccentric genius = jerk? 

Not so, we say. While researching this article, we also found evidence there were plenty of master-chefs out there who were, gasp, nice guys. Humble, respected, loved by their staff.

True, still nuts. Still a bit kooky. But not the brutal verbal-ram-raiding egomaniacs of repute.

A prime example is Michael Carlson, chef and restauranteur at Cafe Schwa in Chicago (that’s him, with the hellraiser beard in the foreground.)

Commonly regarded as a complete fruitloop – but this is described as part of his genius. Colleague Jonathon Ory describes him as “nuts” but “what makes him nuts is that he’s striving to be perfect” while fellow chef and friend Stephanie Izard has described him as “mind-churningly brilliant”.

Oh and he was recently arrested for setting off fireworks outside his restaurant.

Sounds like a desperately difficult maverick genius?

Actually, many people insist Carlson is the loveliest of guys, a “wild chef with a compassionate heart”, a loving father, and someone renowned for giving away his food for free. Another colleague, Gaetano Nardulli describes him as “the nicest, most generous person I’ve met.”

There you go, boys.

Nice guys can succeed in the kitchen.

And let’s hope his influence in that sense is more than just purely in the culinary department. If that doesn’t work, we suggest they view this cautionary message to Angry Chefs everywhere offered by those redoubtable comedians Armtrong and Miller.