The life of a first-time female chef
I’ve had a selection of interesting jobs throughout my adult life.
After working at a cookware shop, I interned at StudioCanal and was a bit too open revealing my love for Benedict Cumberbatch to a room full of laughing office workers, before I moved on to become a personal assistant to a film director.
I have worked as a talent agent, an editorial intern, a baker, a bartender at a gay bar, and then five years ago, after my heady romantic time at cookery school, I started my career as a chef.
Find out more about moving to France and my food adventures by checking out my blog https://nigellaeatseverything.com/
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In 2017, I started my first chef job at a restaurant in Manchester.
Creativity and innovation was the key to this restaurant’s menu and their imaginative use of ingredients drew me in, yet, behind the scenes, I was balancing on a tightrope.
Working as a new chef
To say the job is time consuming is an understatement. Many people have a nebulous concept of what the lifestyle of a chef is like, the long hours, the intensity and heat, and the pressure you constantly feel to guarantee perfectly presented good food is served every time.
Oh boy. While I can’t say it’s worse than the image Anthony Bourdain painted in Kitchen Confidential, which, luckily thanks to feminism, improved work standards and just general health and safety (for both the chefs and customers), will hopefully remain a thing of the past, starting in a busy, hot professional kitchen was like a highly unpleasant electric shock for little old just-graduated-cookery-school me.
My hands and arms became dotted in battle scars, the results of my daily war with the oven, and my knees formed a new skin after the thirty (yes, I repeat, thirty) bruises faded to just six.
The kitchen was designed for the tall so most of my time is spent asking the KP (kitchen porter) to pass me something from a shelf or I would clamber up onto the bench to reach it myself, whether it was the heavy KitchenAid which resided on top of the walk-in fridge or tubs of ingredients. (My request for a step-ladder was ignored or received the response, ‘Just grow’.)
There was so much charging around from stove to bench to the walk-in and back again, usually lugging heavy trays and pans, accidents could happen easily so everyone shouts ‘Backs! Backs!’ to spare collisions and was the soundtrack to our daily routine. (This reached a depressing climax where I stopped myself from shouting it in the supermarket as I walked behind other customers).
Before I go any further, I must confirm that yes, there were plenty of tears once I started this new career path. At one point, I was heaving with sobs from a previous mistake and the resulting confrontation. I stumbled around, tears trickling down my face as I made pastry and loaded the bread into the oven which was enough for my head chef to pull me out of the kitchen to order me to get a grip. Another time it was because the clattering Kitchen Aid fell off my station while I was preparing my mise-en-place for another task on my list. All equipment is precious and if something breaks under your watch then it’s you who is responsible.
Most of the time though, the problem which continuously held me back was that big fat imposter syndrome. Which was understandable really — I had literally just graduated from a Foundation course at culinary school. That is hardly preparation for the real world of a chef!
Imposter syndrome knows how to play you. You try to start each day with a level head, then a minor mistake makes you nervous, then before you know it you’ve put the custard tart in the oven at 180C and it’s now scrambled egg, or you tried to carry too much out of the walk-in meaning you drop a china bowl over all the food you painstakingly prepared earlier. Tiny shards of china were scattered across all my dessert garnishes. Unless I wanted my customers to break a tooth, everything had to go in the bin.
Learning to take initiative was my biggest learning curve as a chef. Thirty minutes prior to every service my task was to take the cheese out the fridge so it came to room temperature for the cheese boards, and to rechurn the ice cream so it wasn’t rock hard. Unfortunately for me, with a brain focusing on my long to-do list or fogged by feelings of inadequacy, more times than not I forgot to churn the ice cream or bring the cheese out. Such simple jobs requiring very little time or energy on my part were simply and casually brushed under the rug in my brain, and only became heart-hammeringly obvious when I had an order for any dessert (all of which were paired with ice cream or sorbet).
Find out more about moving to France and my food adventures by checking out my blog https://nigellaeatseverything.com/
Alternatively, follow my Substack newsletter: https://nigellaeatseverything.substack.com/
Working as a female chef
My colleagues were a group of incredibly talented young men who, to their credit, patiently took me through this baptism of fire without too much eye rolling. Whenever I struggled with something new, one of the chefs would show me the technique.
From my experience, the industry had changed a lot since Anthony Bourdain’s time, and the culture of hazing and cruelty had long gone. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but from my time in professional kitchens as a young woman, I never faced misogyny or mistreatment due to my sex. There was flirting, naturally, but I must clarify that the flirtation was mutual! When dressed in a chef’s cap, baggy trousers and Crocks, I personally find a little bit of flirtation to be the perfect ego boost.
For me, the difficulties I faced were merely as a result of being ‘green’ and therefore not very good at my job, certainly not for being female. Interestingly, I faced more coldness and bullying when I later worked in a female kitchen. This has nothing to do with male versus female — it’s to do with your colleagues and their sense of duty to form healthy relationships within their teams.
While kitchens are becoming more balanced with male and female chefs and therefore the culture is continuing to evolve for the better, a professional kitchen is for the hardened only.
Everyone reacts differently when faced with a challenge — there are many people out there, male or female, who would be in their element, producing 5-star food, keeping their section clean and tidy, maintaining their confidence, working on adrenaline and not letting small set-backs affect them. That was not the case for me.
Although caffeine and hydration does lend a hand, nothing can help you with the rush of checks as they steamroller through the pass, only good time management and an ability to cope with the pressure. You are required to use your cooking skill in an entirely new way; using your senses to recognise when the food is cooked, the amount of seasoning to use and how to apply it, you look for colour and consistency, knowing that these characteristics contribute to flavour and appearance. All this must be done as quickly as possible.
For me, thinking about the long list of checks that I knew were heading my way made my heart beat faster, my hands go clammy and I felt a desperate urgency to run. While I continued working as a chef for the next three years, eventually becoming Head Chef at a brunch café in Manchester, I hung up my apron after the outbreak of Covid, ready to find an alternative career to pursue my culinary dreams.
The cooking lifestyle at the restaurant was a million miles from my rustic style of convenience and comfort (ahem laziness) at home, as is the case with every chef. Cooking in a restaurant kitchen takes stamina, determination, grit and a lot of bravery. The romance of cookery school was over, folks.
Find out more about moving to France and my food adventures by checking out my blog https://nigellaeatseverything.com/
Alternatively, follow my Substack newsletter: https://nigellaeatseverything.substack.com/
