J'Accuse!      12/24/2008  

A Case Against Absentee Chefs (and Their Underlings)

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Chefs like Michael Shlow (right) need their underlings. But do they have to 
actually write the menus? Really? 

Forbes has a nice feature today about celebrity chefs and the men who actually cook at their restaurants. This is old news, of course — everyone from Alan Richman to the guy at the laundry have pointed it out, frequently with much agitation. But anyone who knows a spoon from a spatula can tell you that chef is a managerial position anyway; the guy who actually cooked your steak is some randy dropout who stands there at his pan all day, planning for a long night of drug-fueled coition at some downtown bar. What we here at The Feedbag object to is the practice of chefs letting their flunkies actually design the menu. And that, for us, is way over the line.


The Chef has to at least create the menu. He can’t just lend his name, set up the financing, and then go downtown. He has to put his knowledge and experience and sensibility before the customer — his, not somebody else’s. He’s getting a lot of money, and he’s neither cooking nor even cracking the whip. So he has to create the menu. He just has to. People want to eat his food, not the food of some guy who “has cooked with me for ten years and knows how I think.” Let the lieutenant write the menu when he has his own restaurant. The chef is the one being paid as a star. Let him perform like one — even if it’s for only the hour it takes to write the bill of fare. Thank you.

Forbes: Who’s Really Cooking Your Celebrity Chef Meal?

Comments

12 Responses to “A Case Against Absentee Chefs (and Their Underlings)”

  1. Andrew Little on December 24th, 2008 2:42 pm

    I really like reading the information on your site, but I have to take exception with this article. First, let me say that I am a chef and I work every day behind the stove AND the desk.

    I think it does a HUGE disservice to all cooks, sous chefs, and chefs de cuisine for you to lump them all into the category of ‘randy drug fueled dropouts’. Unlike the Bourdain/Ozersky stereotype, there are cooks out there who are keeping their heads down, working hard and hoping to get to the top. One way to get to the top is to shadow a well respected chef for many years.

    I do agree that celebrity chefs should write the menu, but referring to their second in command as ‘flunkies’ is just baseless and wrong. Is Jonathan Benno a ‘flunkie’ because he’s the chef de cuisine at Per Se? Come on. Is Chris Muller a ‘flunkie’ at Le Bernardin? Speaking as someone who actually writes a menu not writes ABOUT menus, I can tell you that it takes longer than one hour to compose a menu and having creative input from the ‘flunkies’ that I CHOSE to hire is invaluable. No, they aren’t writing the whole menu because I don’t leave the restaurant, but they are contributing and that is important.

  2. DocChuck on December 24th, 2008 3:01 pm

    WOW!

    Mr. Little seems to have a handle on things … or at least on how “things” really are, Cutlets.

    On the few yearly instances that my wife insists on dragging me to NYC for one of her hated “business meetings”, I would have to say that if I spotted the jolly good giant (pictured above on the left) preparing MY meal, I would excuse myself and hightail it back to Maryland.

    I’m sure he’s a nice enough fellow, but I think I’d rather go home and cook my own meal, thank you very much.

  3. Josh Ozersky on December 24th, 2008 3:05 pm

    This is well said. Thanks for writing in. My language was, as ever, immoderate; obviously, the likes of Benno or Muller or Mark Lapico or Jason Hall or Gordon Finn or any of the other great cooks who actually make New York’s kitchens run deserve a better title than “flunky.” It’s even OK with me if they create a few dishes. But those guys, with the exception of Benno, are working with chefs who for the most part create the menus at the restaurants. It’s when Gilligan runs the ship while the Skipper preens for the camera that is my problem. As for line cooks being randy dropouts constantly longing for drugs and coition, that’s so obviously true that I can’t imagine how anyone would dispute it!

    Yours,
    Josh

  4. grewish on December 24th, 2008 3:16 pm

    well done zersky my MEP always includes an eight ball…

  5. Joe on December 26th, 2008 7:38 pm

    As a line cook in a restaurant for a celeberity chef in chicago, I first of all can say that the line cooks are not drugged out “flunkies” as you call them, most of us, atleast in Chicago, at the better restaurants are kids straight out of school trying to make are way and get are name out there. We make no money work long as hours and take all the shit and none of the praise, but we bust our asses and we love it. You don’t just walk into a restaurant with a culinary degree and become sous chef, chef de cuisine, or executive chef, you have to spend you time in the trenches. So to lump us in with the guy behind the counter at the local 5am burger place who ripped bongs for 6 straight hours before his shift is an insult and just straight up ignorant, and trust me no one hate theses absentee chefs more then us. So next time you enjoy a great meal at a nice restaurant instead of bitching about whos not there take a minute walk to the back and thank the guys who are on a double make 8.75 an hour who are there.

  6. DocChuck on December 29th, 2008 1:40 pm

    Had I known the butterfish at Radius was poached by someone so in need of laser hair removal and a lap band, I would certainly have dined at Lydia Shire’s new restaurant instead.

  7. jason on December 29th, 2008 7:58 pm

    josh is a fat dumb fuck that has his head so far up the these chefs asses that you would think he could taste the coke they snorted that day.

  8. Jitti on March 28th, 2009 9:19 pm

    I read your article many times in the past and found entertaining. BUT this one is an absolute stupid and insulting to people who cook in the restaurant for living, including me.

    Before you called those hardworking cooks/chefs = Flunkies, you should walk into those kitchen you mentioned spending a day putting on the chef jacket to prep, cook, and clean. Don’t write it from another side of the door without knowing what really behind it.

    It is stupid to write about chef who own more than one restaurant or celebrity chef. Don’t you think they deserve what they have done? Can they physically cook in all of the restaurants they own 7 days a week? Or they don’t need day off? You read article on Forbs and decided to pick a picture of a chef you can write about because his name was featured in the interview?

    I work for the chef you put the picture up on your article and can only tell you that he does recognize every kitchen members as well as people who do cleaning and dishwashing and involved with his kitchen in every aspect you can imagine including working on the line @ times, menu development, greeting all his employees when he is there, as well as saying goodbye to everyone before he head out the door. And his other partners are there everyday running that place.

    Flukie? If you call Jonathan Benno and Chris Mullin that, let me ask you then how many times a week you have spoken with the CEO of your company or let alone your editor? We work our ass off to be a flukie? Perhaps some of those flukies have high education than you and chose to cook because of their passion. Why do you write for citysearch or other people then if it isn’t about selling your book. Give me a break! You just need citysearch as the platform for you to shine and able to mention on the back flap of your book that you write for citysearch.

    And one thing you are certainly wrong for sure. About your quote “One way to get to the top is to shadow a well respected chef for many years”, we choose to work @ well known restaurants mainly because they are higher standard kitchen. And that high standard was set by the chef who own the place and have worked their ass off like us in other kitchens and eventually in their own kitchen. There are people who also get to the top without having work for some celebrity chefs as well having culinary degree. Please do not forget that there are flukies that leave to open their own places and because successful on own. They were not even a chef de cuisine, like Grant Achatz or Wylie Dufrense.

    You need to get your ass in a kitchen before you write about it, mister. Go to Perse and Le Bernadin with your article and hand it personally to those two chefs you have insulted them if you have a ball, not just a pen in your hand.

  9. Jitti on March 28th, 2009 9:27 pm

    And one more thing, your best chinese pick in NYC is Chinatown Brasserie? Please eat out more. You certainly need to hang out with Frank Bruni or Ruth Reichl more.

  10. Brunis_dick on March 30th, 2009 9:04 pm

    “I think it does a HUGE disservice to all cooks, sous chefs, and chefs de cuisine for you to lump them all into the category of ‘randy drug fueled dropouts’. Unlike the Bourdain/Ozersky stereotype, there are cooks out there who are keeping their heads down, working hard and hoping to get to the top. One way to get to the top is to shadow a well respected chef for many years.”

    Yeah, Cutty, this is not good. Not good at all. And it’s not true. It might do Bourdain well to continue to fan that myth, but that’s cuz he WAS and IS a drugged-out hack who can neither cook nor write in the first place, and has to resort to the Cult of Personality in order to make some real cheddar.

    I can think of a certain female New Orleans celebrity chef who is in about the same boat, but I’m gonna be nice and not name names…this time. Everyone knows who she is, anyway.

  11. Sabadil on May 24th, 2009 9:07 pm

    This article and its malcontents are truly laughable. As a professional cook who has worked at top restaurants in NYC, I find the caricature of a cook you’ve provided– that of a dispassionate, soulless degenerate– truly insulting, and a reflection of your own limited experience in the kitchen.

    The personal qualities of sincerity, integrity, self-discipline, passion, and finesse that are required to succeed in the kind of kitchen run by a Chef like Jonathan Benno are not likely to be found in “dropouts”. They are, however, to be found in kitchens of every caliber around the world, where young men and women wake up before dawn, work themselves to the point of exhaustion, then sleep a few scant hours before waking again to continue to pursue their dreams and passions that you’ve so casually maligned with your amateur posturing.

    Like some of the other posters have recommended, I invite you to spend a week in a real kitchen, to work the long hours, to stand beside these “flunkies” and experience the demands of a profession that provides its clients pleasure, physical nourishment, memories, entertainment, and material for their blog articles, however unappreciative and naive they may be.

  12. Hamachi on June 2nd, 2009 12:03 pm

    As I have said in the past to my friends, The Big O kisses celebrity chefs but holes and is a complete jack ass and this article proves it. I have met him and he a complete dork and extremely lucky, yes lucky to be doing what he is doing. Most all of what he writes is garbage.

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