There really wasn’t much in the way of restaurants in my small town, so my first taste of the cooking world came from working at one of the local pubs. At the age of 13, I was working weekends scrubbing pots and pans and occasionally filling in on the line during busy brunch services. It was here that I was introduced to the debaucherous world that is the restaurant industry.
I remember thinking it was all so surreal—the people in the kitchen came from all walks of life and any semblance of civility or societal norms were thrown out the window; political correctness held no place here. Then, as if by magic, travelling through the door from the kitchen to the bar, the world became something entirely different. There were beautiful women busily running food out to tables, and clean-cut, handsome men pouring drinks and making customers laugh. This quickly sold me. I loved this, and I wanted more.
It was then that I experienced my first staff party. Yes, imagine that: a 13-year-old boy barely through puberty and sitting down with the people he was enamoured with. “What do you want to drink?” the man behind the bar asked me. I had only ever heard of one drink that I thought I might enjoy; beer was out of the question at this point in my life. “I’ll take a… screwdriver, please,” I stuttered out, barely able to see over the counter. This was my first taste of the dark side of the restaurant industry.
A few years later, I was introduced to the book Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and it was as though I had found my bible. This was the kind of rock-star chef I wanted to become. Partying, drugs, and more sex than a person could handle—what else could an aspiring chef at the age of 18 ask for? Little did I know that this book should have been read as a warning, and not something to seek out.
That lesson wouldn’t come for some time.
It seemed that the more I partied, the more I made my life revolve around work; the more I made my life revolve around work, the more money and power I got within it. It was a vicious cycle that I will delve into more in the next issue.