Chef Appeal
13
limit, the competition of a worthy rival, and a reputation at stake—are
multilayered; worldly in their use of ingredients, preparations, and culinary
references; and exquisite in their refinement, even when pretending to slum it
with witty plays on “comfort foods.” And once they have taken animals,
vegetables, fruits, herbs, or spices and transmuted them into ethereal forms—
broths, noodles, foams, even custards—and once they are finished crisping so
many skins around flesh kept just so, then do the Iron Chefs begin their
demonstration of the art and architecture of plating. Rare is their failure to
achieve sensation while avoiding the ridiculous, complexity without
complication, contrast but not disharmony.
This sort of finesse instantaneously communicates something not
instantaneously acquired: years—more often, decades—of practice making
perfect, and of perfection doggedly sought. The chefs monk-like dedication to
excelling at his or her craft is frequently invoked in TV programs featuring chefs
both in and out of the kitchen. Long apprenticeships and assorted schools-ofhard-knocks are leitmotifs. On television, profiles of the Iron Chefs and the
backgrounds of their challengers make quick references to dues paid. But there
are also whole “chefographies” on the Food Network that tell how chefs earned
their whites. On the Fine Living channel, the show Your Reality^ Checked has
documented more than one case of a chef wannabe as he or she reached the
breaking point in the exposure to a career that turned out to be harder than
expected. The trials of chef training have been over-dramatized as well, as in the
plate-smashing harassments of Hell Kitchen.
I recall one of the more realistic glimpses into boot camp restaurant
style on the Fine Living channel’s program Made to Order. The episode in
question centered on chef Guy Rubino’s testing-out of a prospective extern. She
had Just graduated from culinary school and wanted to work in Rubino’s
fastidious cutting-edge kitchen. Normally on the show, we are treated to
Rubino's and his staffs display of the kind of uncommon skill and global
expertise Just discussed, but, on this day, the focus was the extern’s trial of
character for the Job. It began with a first hurdle of an interview, in which
Rubino gave her a reality check designed to scare away the mere dilettante: If
she started work there, she would forsake her current social life, the kitchen
would become her new family, and, unless limbs were falling off her body, she
would be coming in to work. No days off for a couple of years. Every episode
segment demonstrated a further element of the chefs challenging labor, from
gaining command of world cuisines and learning to subdue live creatures, still
protesting, to enduring gmeling hours on the feet under extremes of heat and the
inevitability of cutting and scalding oneself At the end of a trying night of
service, the initiate, who managed to hang in there, sits on the back stairs,
exhausted y