Page 17 - foodservice - June 2018

RANT
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BROKEN, BEATEN BUT UNSCARRED
COMMERCIAL KITCHEN CULTURE IS ON THE TABLE THIS MONTH AS ANTHONY HUCKSTEP TAKES AIM AT THE BRUTAL, BULLY TACTICS OF OLD AND CELEBRATES TODAY’S MORE RESPECTFUL AND NURTURING APPROACH.
Anthony Huckstep is the national restaurant critic for delicious. and a food writer for The Australian, GQ Australia and QANTAS.
The notion of celebrity chef is pretty embarrassing. Well, celebrity anything is, let’s be honest. But for one reason
or another the cult of celebrity chef has most of us thinking we could master MKR and rule the roost on MasterChef, right? Yep, just wait ‘til they get a taste of my signature spag bol! Although reality TV’s allure has painted
a rosy existence for the life of a chef, the reality has been more akin to Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen than we realise – but as our own culture has evolved, so too has that of the commercial kitchen.
Back when I was flipping flapjacks rather than the pages of wine lists, I worked with a serial pest who would put tongs in the deep fryer then leave them on the bench for unsuspecting chefs to scald their hands. He hid prawns in people’s bags and even set fire to one chef ’s apron while he was wearing it.
He also happened to be about as useful as a wooden frying pan in the kitchen.
I’ve heard many a yarn from our best chefs of the way kitchen culture can have a negative impact not only on the team, but
their output – ie. what lands on the plate – too.
“When I was an apprentice
if you didn’t come in cleanly shaven, the head chef would grab the razor we used to shave whole pigs every morning and make you dry shave in front of the whole brigade and it’d cut your face up,” one chef told me.
It was meant to instill discipline but it made them scared to cook.
Another had witnessed the head chef smash an apprentice into an oven door, then put his arm in the oven and smashed the door shut for over-cooking something.
Said chef apparently lost his Michelin stars the next year. Karma perhaps.
Another chef had to stand in the basin of the dish pit in the water of the dishes for messing up a dish, or have plates and pans thrown at you, or you’d be sent out to stand in the cold, while another witnessed bashings in the coolroom with the lights off.
However the culture in commercial kitchens has changed. Kitchens aren’t behind the scenes anymore. It’s not only
a shift in our views as to what our society deems acceptable behaviour, but the open kitchen has also created a culture that demands to be as respectful and hospitable as the front of house staff. And if they aren’t open plan, guests are often invited into kitchens to meet the chefs or in fact eat at the chef ’s table in the kitchen. It’s now the norm to be, well, normal.
It’s a huge cultural change that’s placing a different emphasis on nurturing in an industry that is already one of the toughest, without the tomfoolery.
Foodservice might be tougher than a two-day old roast turkey, but ask any successful chef these days and they’ll tell you, you gain much more respect from your team by pulling someone aside and having an honest conversation with them than lobbing a pan at their forehead.
Rightly so. You want to inspire your staff, not scare them. If you find a good chef, or in fact any staff member, you need to hang on to them at all costs.
Perhaps the new world of commercial kitchens is as alluring as reality TV suggests after all.