
So You Wanna Be a Chef - Anthony Bourdain - jkkramer
http://ruhlman.com/2010/09/so-you-wanna-be-a-chef%E2%80%94-by-bourdain-2.html
======
mml
i lived the life for 8 years when i was young. everything tony says about
cooking, and cooking education is 100% true.

i was far too broke to get into drugs, and thereby did the waitresses stay
away too, so i have no entertaining stories of fevered cutting-board liasons.
i do have many marginally interesting stories of burns, lacerations and
unbelievably horrible working conditions for very little money.

interestingly, the experience has served me very well in the software
business. i rarely complain about my chair, monitor, lighting, keyboard or
anything else that isn't actively burning.

------
mruniverse
I love his writing. Some of it is uneven, but it's mostly good. I first got
hooked when I read the first pages of "A Cook's Tour" where he begins

"Dear Nancy, I'm about as far away from you as I've ever been... There's one
lightbulb, a warped dresser, and a complimentary plastic comb with someone
else's hair in it. In spite of the EZ Clean design features, there are
suspicious and dismaying stains on the walls. About two thirds of the way up
one wall, there are what look like bloody footprints and - what do they call
it, arterial spray? How they got there, so high up, I can only guess. The wall
opposite has equally sinister stains - evidence of a more opaque substance -
these suggesting a downward dispersal. Having seen the bathroom, I can't blame
the perpetrator for anything."

I can read that letter over and over.

------
callmeed
Bourdain's earlier book, _Kitchen Confidential_ is great and I highly
recommend it. It also has a "So You Want to Be a Chef" chapter (perhaps they
are the same).

[http://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Confidential-Updated-
Adventure...](http://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Confidential-Updated-Adventures-
Underbelly/dp/0060899220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1285019980&sr=8-1)

There was a time in my life when I aspired to be a chef and/or restaurateur.
Later I concluded that it's better if some of your passions are simply left as
that ... passions without the added burden of depending on them for your
livelihood.

But I do think everyone should work at a restaurant at least once in their
life. It's a customer-service learning experience and gives you an
appreciation for the staff when you patronize restaurants later.

~~~
sgoraya
> But I do think everyone should work at a restaurant at least once in their
> life. It's a customer-service learning experience and gives you an
> appreciation for the staff when you patronize restaurants later.

Very much agreed - I worked in the kitchen of a family run Chinese restaurant
during my junior and senior years of high school. Did everything from taking
orders, to chopping tons of cabbage, mopping up a drunk assholes puke to de-
veining shrimp. _All at the same time!_ J/K ;)

Although it sucked _some_ of the time, looking back at it, I would have done
it all over again. Learned a lot (I can cook Chinese and can put together a
great dinner very quick), made long lasting relationships (the same family
still owns the restaurant and I stop by whenever I visit my parents) and the
customer service aspects have been ingrained in me since.

------
bobf
At the end of the article, Bourdain admits he succeeded primarily due to luck,
and that "luck is not a business model". I suspect many here have heard the
more famously quoted "hope is not a business model", which is also true.
Perhaps less famous, but more dangerous to entrepreneurs: "passion is also not
a business model".

Interestingly, although each of those is certainly not a business model, all
of them are ultimately required for a startup to reach a [VC|FU-money] level
of success.

~~~
mechanical_fish
You need to read that final sentence in context. It is part of a very
carefully written passage in which Bourdain attempts to convey the following
message:

 _Do not get addicted to drugs. You will fuck up your life._

to the audience that most needs to hear it without coming off as judgmental,
or holier-than-thou, or hopelessly clueless and naive, or unaware of his own
good fortune, and without angering the people -- many of whom he probably
counts as friends -- for whom self-medicating with drugs and booze is the
_least_ fucked-up of a number of fucked-up alternatives.

My paraphrase accomplishes none of these things, which is why Bourdain is
Bourdain and I'm just a drive-by commenter on HN who cooks only as a hobby.

------
SanjayUttam
Wow...Whether you agree or disagree with his opinions, that is a fantastic
read...

~~~
nhebb
He writes like he talks - straight to the point, with a lot of style. He's
also one of the few judges on Top Chef that I can stand to listen to. Too many
of them are finicky little shits, but he's truly appreciative of talent.

------
jaekwon
No, his books hammered this in my head. I don't want to be a chef.

I read Kitchen Confidential and loved it. Is there a similar non-technical
book I could read on another line of profession that would be just as
interesting?

~~~
jacobian
Studs Terkel's _Working_ is a collection of short essays about people in a
whole variety of professions. Most of the writing is people talking about
their own jobs in their own words. It -- like all of Studs' work -- is
incredible.

~~~
papa
And if you want more in the style of Terkel, "Gig: Americans Talk About Their
Jobs" (Edited by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter, 2001) is also a
good read.

There's an astounding range of jobs profiled from Crime Scene Cleaner to Porn
Star Actor to Tofu Maker.

~~~
wallflower
Po Bronson also wrote a surprisingly good book that I picked up from the
bargain bin.

"What Should I Do With My Life?"

<http://www.fastcompany.com/node/45909/print>

If you get the book, read the one about the catfish entrepreneur

~~~
stevenbedrick
Agreed re: that being a surprisingly good book. It's definitely worth a read,
if for no other reason than for the sheer variety of jobs that he ends up
encountering. That, and the part about the catfish entrepreneur.

------
Unosolo
What a terrific career advice! Go after hard to get skills in your early
career, work with the best even if you have to work for free! Don't let the
better pay to lure you into dead-end jobs.

I wish my parents taught me this when I was 18. I’m thirty-two, a consultant
developing in-house software for insurance industry. Well-paid and in demand
for the best part of my thirteen year professional journey, getting well above
average programmer’s pay I suffered so many sleepless nights thinking about
where I really dreamt to be: working for the likes of Adobe, MS or Google. A
real software company that makes a difference in the world!

Just to think that would have I made some better choices thirteen years ago, I
could have been part of the core Skype team right now breaks my heart. But I
can’t, I’m just not fit for the job, after thirteen years of hard work there
is nothing on my CV that would make a head hunter working on behalf of a real
software company to pick up the phone and give me a call.

So far the strongest driving force behind my career, the litmus test for any
prospective job was financial viability; it was always about the better pay! I
had to support myself and increasingly my family since I was 19 and I just
couldn’t afford to go into full time education, I had to stay on the path
scattered with lucrative but essentially mundane in-house programming jobs.
The beast I had to feed was getting bigger and bigger as I was getting older
and I didn’t know any better nor had anyone given me the timely guidance to
get off the money needle and hunt down the hard-core programming skills and
experience needed to hack Linux kernel, write a sound processing library or a
come up with a better search algorithm, the skills that would have opened so
many doors to me, the doors that now matter so much!

The advice I’ll be giving my kids is not to let the financial considerations
alone to guide your early career choices, go for awesome skills what will pay
off in a fulfilling job later in your life.

~~~
peripitea
That's great advice to give your kids, but you should also be teaching them by
example that it's never too late to make a change!

If you really want to work for one of those companies, don't wait for a
headhunter to contact you! Fix up your CV, figure out a way to get your foot
in the door (Hint: You're posting in a community filled with employees of the
companies you want to work for. Be resourceful, but don't be annoying.), and
brush up on your programming interview skills. It's really not that hard.

------
VladRussian
"Look at the crews of any really high-end restaurants and you’ll see a group
of mostly whippet-thin, under-rested young pups with dark circles under their
eyes: they look like escapees from a Japanese prison camp—and are expected to
perform like the Green Berets."

At some point in my life, working in a bakery, i - a 19 yr old and very fit
back then - still had very hard time to keep the pace with and not fell behind
the middle-aged women who'd been working there for years (it was a temporary
summer job for me, and in general no man had been able to work there for more
than a couple of month in a row)

~~~
electromagnetic
I think his references to weight are a bit vague. What I get from the piece is
that when he says 'fat' he literally means it, not necessarily overweight but
with a ludicrous body-fat percentage.

I grew up in England, I visited a _lot_ of bakeries and nearly all of them had
several large kids in the back working. Not fat but a sort of padded-muscular.
Similarly this is what I've seen in most restaurants since I moved to Canada.

Perhaps his comments hold true to, like he said, really high-end restaurants,
but in my experience they don't serve food they're serving a garnish on an
inedible ceramic surface. When you're lifting dishes into an oven that only
weigh a fraction of a pound, of course you're going to be whippet-thin, you
could be the anorexic king and still be able to lift those plates with grace.

If anyone's watched any of Gordon Ramsey's shows, you see him truly move with
things a lot of the lean-contestants struggle like hell with. Why? Because
he's 210lbs, he's well built. He's literally ran around the kitchen doing
_everyone's_ job when it's an emergency. He also serves dishes that the plate
doesn't weigh more than the food.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
I used to work as both a line cook and a pantry "chef." The pantry person is
the guy who puts the scoop of ice cream on the baker's pies. Thus, I am
familiar with bakers. The bakers usually start out small but end up ENORMOUS.

~~~
electromagnetic
I wonder if this is a case of building endurance. If your work level doesn't
increase dramatically (IE you have to carry say 5 bags of flour, 3 bags of
sugar, etc. several times a day every day from day 1 to day 3651) you're
eventually going to build the right combination of muscle to minimize the
expenditure of energy. I know there's a term in exercise for this, but I work
in construction so I get about 8 hours of vigorous exercise a day, so I've
never been interested in going to a gym and doing more repetitive tasks than
my day job and actually cost me money.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
I would think it's more a case of eating 8000 calories worth of cakes and pies
every day...

------
scrrr
_"If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge
you to travel—as far and as widely as possible."_

This is the best advice. People that never traveled, settled with their first
girlfriend and took the first job, can be happy and fulfilled. But they miss
out on so many good things..

------
aspir
This is possibly the best "don't get into startup in any form unless you're
designed for it" article I've ever seen. I've known a lot of people who want
to either own a restaurant, or open their own web design firm, or do something
entrepreneurial when they just don't know what they'll be in for. I could even
use this as a form letter for many other areas (except for the "too fat?"
part).

------
onan_barbarian
Some good analogies with the main business of hacker news, here. It's worth
thinking about some of the connections, especially:

1) Working in places where you will learn and acquire respect subsequently, if
you care about that sort of thing. Yes, you can get more doing chintzy jobs,
but there are plenty of high-paying jobs in computers that are the equivalent
of Bourdain's 'country-club kitchens'.

2) Coming in with the right attributes (e.g. not being fat), and not mistaking
attributes of people in at the end of their careers with the ones that you can
get away with when you are young.

I have seen many, many people who have decided in computer science to emulate
some famous guy who is wildly opinionated and a bit obnoxious and have it work
out far less well for them than it did for the Grand Old Man of computer
science.

~~~
jseliger
_Some good analogies with the main business of hacker news_

I thought so too, and as a result wrote a post about my own "business," so to
speak, in the form of writing: [http://jseliger.com/2010/09/20/so-you-wanna-
be-a-writer-what...](http://jseliger.com/2010/09/20/so-you-wanna-be-a-writer-
what-anthony-bourdain-can-tell-you-even-when-hes-not-talking-about-writing/)

------
phishphood
I bought and ran a restaurant as part of my mid-life crisis/being bored with
the computers.

I can vouch that pretty much everything he says is true

~~~
blizkreeg
How did it work out for you?

~~~
phishphood
In terms of business I did well, I turned the place around and it started
posting positive cashflows (excluding my take)

In terms of personal toll it was very high, had it gone for few month longer
it would have ended in a divorce and hospital most likely, due to physical and
mental exhaustion.

I sold the restaurant and moved on back to the start-up world

------
barrkel
It sounds a lot like the video game industry.

------
phugoid
He says "The restaurant kitchen may indeed be the last, glorious meritocracy,"
yet his own career has greatly benefited from his talent for writing and self-
promotion.

~~~
ssharp
It's been awhile since I've read Kitchen Confidential and have some timelines
mixed up between that and his new book, so I'm not sure about this, but I
believe Bourdaine had already become head chef at Les Halles in NYC before KC
was published.

He is now a writer / TV personality and is no longer spending his career in a
kitchen. Certainly, he is making more money now than he would have been able
to do while only being a chef, but he advanced pretty far in the restaurant
industry before he wrote the book that launched his second career.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I believe Bourdain had already become head chef at Les Halles in NYC before
KC was published_

That is correct.

EDIT: You also need to read the article, in which he says:

 _If I hadn’t enjoyed a freakish and unexpected success with Kitchen
Confidential, I’d still be standing behind the stove of a good but never great
restaurant at the age of fifty-three. I would be years behind in my taxes,
still uninsured, with a mouthful of looming dental problems, a mountain of
debt, and an ever more rapidly declining value as a cook._

Bourdain is under no illusions about his own value as a cook, as opposed to
his value as a writer. And he'll be the first to tell you.

~~~
wyclif
In a manner of speaking, he found his true self. It's a great piece of
writing.

------
imasr
I think one might miss the point here, if one would take his writing too
literally, that he ended up on an amazing success by just following what was
good for him no matter how long did it take. The idea that you have to be
willing to kill yourself in the process of being successful is a dangerous
one, and will only be true measured by others standards.

------
DharmaSoldat
Kitchen Confidential got me into the life and I.T. got me back out. This guy
is one of my heroes.

I also agree with callmeed, in that passions sometimes shouldn't be one's
livelihood... I ended up leaving due to burnout and doubt that I would have
been as successful opening my own gig based on the highly competitive
environment where I live.

------
marze
That was very well written.

------
nphase
<http://www.cookingforgeeks.com>

~~~
dasil003
Nice hack on the gray text thing.

------
klochner
Was I the only person that wondered when cooking stories became news for
hackers?

~~~
geebee
This is exactly the kind of non-programming link that _should_ end up on
hacker news. I was fascinated by this glimpse into another world, it's
similarities and differences to the world of software. It's a world where
entrepreneurs, artists, technicians, grunts, and others all try to work
together, often in a brutally competitive environment. I'm also fascinated
with the decision to go to a culinary academy or not (like programming, this
is a field where you certainly _can_ get an expensive degree, yet you need
nobody's permission to code or cook... it's right for some, not right for
others... though obviously, an academic background in computer science is more
likely to pay off than a 60K culinary degree). You can try to do an end run
around the entire establishment, and with enough capital, talent, luck,
passion, you just might win... or you go about it with the almost the same
highly structured process of academic degree and apprenticeship that a dentist
would take. There are the dangers of a cushy job, but one that you need for
the money.

All in all, it sounds remarkably similar to the software world. Probably a
little harder, and lower paid for the winners and losers, but with a different
kind of glory if that's what you're going for.

Great read, great post for a tuesday morning on HN.

