Since the 1960s, a series of TV programs have increasingly popularized cookery and made international celebrities of a few big-name chefs.
As each decade has passed since, more and more people have been attracted to the idea of becoming a chef – but what’s actually involved?
What Is A Chef?
The word chef originates from Latin but in today’s English its use derives mainly from the French “Chef de cuisine” which translates literally to “Head of the kitchen”.
Being a Chef de cuisine means you’re in charge of everything that goes on in the kitchen and are pretty much the head honcho – though sometimes in a professional restaurant there may be a separate position of executive manager. This can sometimes lead to friction between the Chef and the executive manager just as to who exactly is in charge overall – though few people every really dispute the authority of the Chef in the kitchen itself.
Not All Chefs Are Equal
Let’s get one thing clear at the outset though, there are chefs and then there are chefs!
Firstly, if you run your own restaurant you can, just like you can in your own kitchen, call yourself anything you want. You can call yourself the Chef de cuisine or the Grand and Omnipotent Vizier of the Mystic East – that’s up to you. In the USA, with a few special exceptions, there are no legal requirements for holding formal qualifications before calling yourself a chef.
So, if you choose to call yourself a chef and then just open tins and heat the contents up, well fine – but don’t expect culinary industry professionals to take your title seriously!
That’s because around the globe, the culinary profession has pretty much adopted the French structures and conventions around career development (though there are some differences between North America and Europe) – and if you haven’t been through the various stages you’re unlikely to be treated with much respect by classically trained chefs.
Big Chefs And Little Chefs
So let’s assume for a moment that you’d like to adopt the classical route to becoming a chef – what’s involved?
Well, to start with you’re going to need a stomach for hard work, very long hours and very low pay (initially). If you leave college or university with some form of degree or diploma in a related subject then so much the better but don’t expect much by way of ‘fast-tracking’ of your career.
Hopefully it goes without saying that you’ll also need a passion for food and a good natural palate.
You’re almost certainly going to start as some form of notional ‘trainee’ in the kitchen of a major restaurant or hotel. Finding such positions, particularly under a well-known chef, is desperately difficult. Competition is fierce and you’ll have to work hard to show you’re better than a lot of other applicants.
Once in, you may be called a ‘commis chef’ but if you think that on day-1 you’re going to get into creating delicacies with those expensive truffles, then be prepared for disappointment!
You’ll be working in a relatively old-fashioned form of apprenticeship and will probably start at the very bottom of the pecking order. You could spend a lot of time not doing much apart from cleaning up after others or doing some fairly menial preparatory tasks such as preparing some of the more basic ingredients.
It’s unlikely you’ll get anywhere near major food preparation or service initially – you’ll be learning the job bottom-up. Oh yes, that chef de cuisine you want to emulate – other than in the smaller kitchens expect him or her to be a fairly distant figure that may not bother themselves much with your activities.
Progression
Soon you’ll start to be trained in some of the more basic skills and may progress to what some restaurants will call a station-chef. That means you’ll be responsible for preparing a certain range of foods.
Examples of this may be the vegetable chef where you’ll be preparing all the vegetables, soups, and perhaps pastas. You may then progress to being a grill chef responsible for grilling all meats and fish and so on.
You should expect periodic moves from one station to another as you learn each of the disciplines in turn.
At this point, your work will probably be delivered by and large to the sous-chef who is the person that is responsible for pulling it all together before a final inspection by the chef de cuisine prior to service.
You can expect to spend quite a few years moving around the various stations before eventually making it to sous-chef yourself and then, very possibly several more before you’ll be able to secure a position of full Chef de cuisine.
Your ability to move upwards quickly in the major kitchens, will depend heavily upon your references and the impact of the ‘names’ you’ve worked under as you’ve moved around the industry. That’s why searching out a household name Chef to work under is important and it’s well worth trying to survive a few tough years to get their name on your résumé!
Chefs Salaries
Chefs get paid according rank, skill and experience.
Typically, a junior chef with around one years experience or less can expect to receive $20-30,000 per year. Those with ten to twenty years experience can receive around 60-70,000. Most chefs sit somewhere in between.
Of course, chefs who own or have shares in restaurants can earn considerably more.
Chef School
Notable chefs schools in the US include The Culinary Institute Of America, Le Cordon Bleu, and the International Culinary Schools at The Art Institutes.
Chef Careers
The outlook is good for the food and service industry. Chefs and cooks make up over three million jobs, and the number is growing.
A chefs career typically starts at a training school, or as an apprentice. The chef then works his or her way up a structured career ladder, in jobs such as Commis, Pastry Chef, Saucier, Sous Chef, Head Chef and Garde Manger. As the chef climbs the ladder, they take on more responsibility and gain a different range of skills.
Comments on this entry are closed.