What Does It Take to Be a Professional Chef and How Does It Affect the Industry

What Does It Take To Be A Professional And How Does It Affect The Industry?

There are two approaches to becoming a professional in the culinary industry: going through an accredited culinary program or going straight into the field and learning from your experiences. Both of them have their pros and cons, but at the end of the day they both have an expectation to fulfill: to get things done. While identifying these pros and cons of a culinary graduate versus a kitchen veteran in respects to a real world application, and utilizing the text in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Success as a Chef by Leslie Bilderback, and the updated edition of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain that there is no real, set-in-stone pathway to becoming a culinary professional, there are only certain criteria that are universal to getting there.

The pros of not attending culinary school, “teaches you the physical, hands-on business, not the textbook business.” (Bilderback, 12). Starting from the bottom, and slowly learning creates a foundation of real life application, not theoretical service. They learned their skills from experience and from the chefs they work with that have been around for a longer amount of time. It becomes second nature just to do it. They don’t question or stop to think about it, they just do it. For example, they may not know what a brunoise cut is, but they will be able to follow an example, and more than likely will be able to cut it faster than the student.

However, there are cons of not attending culinary school. Not all restaurant chefs are particularly interested in cultivating their employees. Some just scream at cooks when they make mistakes rather than explain what went wrong. Some will take the time to teach ...

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...ts” (Bourdain, 289). Part of being a cheerleader is to start with you. Knowing what you want and going out to get it is a crucial aspect that should be the catalyst for becoming enthused by it.

While terms as celebrity chef, The Food Network, and overall interest has perpetuated the interest, the dynamic of the professional kitchen has been transformed by the pros and cons of the choice of graduating from a culinary school or going right into the industry. The standards of what being in the industry have been raised due in part that the word professional can now include those who work in a kitchen without the notion that it is lowly work.

References

Bilderback, L. (2007). The complete idiot's guide to success as a chef. Indianapolis: Alpha Books.

Bourdain, A. (2000). Kitchen confidential: adventures in the culinary underbelly. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.