The End of King Chef

For too many years chefs have ruled the roost in restaurants across the world. They were and some still are kings of the kitchen. However thanks to the different movements as well as the pandemic it's all changing. Will they be seen as they were fifty and sixty years ago? Probably.

Tejal Rao wrote about this interesting subject and facet of the culinary world in today's New York Times Food section. Celebrity chefs have been around for the past forty years, starting with Wolfgang Puck. Before that chefs were
 nothing more than work horses in the kitchen, not receiving any recognition. The profession was seen as unglamorous. They weren't a brand or a visionary. One or two may have been exceptions to the rules but those were few and far between. The Seventies kicked off the shift. It was Chef Puck who really started this movement. He had a reputation for innovation as he went from head chef at the famed Ma Maison to his own, Spago. Other chefs followed in the bad boy manner. One of the first was Marco Pierre White,a British known for his rock star good looks and an enfant terrible. In his book White Heat, published in 1990 he wrote about putting cooks inside trash cans to punish them along with other forms of intimidation.Anthony Bourdain was famous for bringing the plight of undocumented workers but also was impossibly demanding to his staff too.

Then there is the famed chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten who locked his long time dishwasher "Sam" in the restaurant's freezer and pummeled him. The reason? "Sam" took a forty-five minute break while there was a critic in the house. Chef Vongerichten was stuck doing his dishwashing. Mario Batali, the chef who wound up on several cooking shows and in a business partnership with Joe Bastianich, son of the famed chef Lydia Bastianich is also guilty of bad boy behavior , He famously sexually harassed several women, thanks to his name and power. The tide is changing thanks to the pandemic exposing the fragility and inequality of the business. Thanks to the #MeToo movement as well as Black Live Matters, women and people of color are being recognized and heard. The white male hierarchy is crumbling. Workers are unionizing at such popular places as Voodoo Doughnuts and San Francisco's Tartine. Chefs are starting to see their workers as teams. At Somni in Beverly Hills , the chef Aitor Zabala printed a menu that credited everyone. The pastry chef, Ivonne Cerdas received as much recognition as the porters Josue Rodriguez and Mario Alarcon. This may be the wave of the future.

The restaurant hierarchy will be abolished soon enough, Chefs won't be the king of the culinary castle. They'll be part of a hardworking team , responsible for running a well oiled eatery.