professional cooks- the real deal

Being a chef। What a strange world it is. To be a good, solid working chef, one should be; A business man, artist, plumber, carpenter, porter, manager, diplomat, slightly disturbed, a sense of the underground, with whisps of loftyness brought on by a tempered ego, and a sense of confidence brought on by years of trial and error. Something will always happen in a restaurant, and when you are trusted, any or all of these qualities will come into play during the course of an average day. You may be making a pumpkin bisque one minute, and controlling the bleeding of a cooks wrist the next. One minute you may be cruising through a service, and the next minute you may be elbow deep in sludge because the grease trap wasn't cleaned that week. Sweat drips from every pore as you drift off thinking about your day off and how much sleep and food your body can take in 24 hours. The best thing for me, as it is for many cooks, is the immedeate gratification of a job well done. The feeling of confidence when you have won over a difficult customer with cassolet. I think that almost anyone can learn to cook, but only a few select maniacs are born to be cooks. You need to be able to appreciate quality, as well as a practicle joke. You need to unerstand someones state of mind with a glance. You need to read the terraine and understand it, even before you become a part of it. You need to be zen and Henry Rollins at the same time. Your mind needs to break into compartments, working together but not interfereing with itself. You need to know how to listen, read, and speak at the same time. You need to know how to bullshit and also when to be brutally honest. We are a misunderstood breed, we are ugly and beautiful. We are warriors and artists. We are half man, and half machine.