Read on Twitter
My youngest lad wants to be a chef, I thought I need to knock that silly idea out of his young head! So he’s been doing some disco shifts @Salthousebacaro turns out he loves it & is rather good! got me thinking about my so called career as a chef & advice I’d give, here goes!
This will be a bit long winded but bare with me! I wanted to be a chef from primary school age, it was that or play for @lfc still waiting Jürgen! I was the only boy at the local sink comprehensive to choose home economics as an option, imagine the stick I got on the bus home..
With my wicker basket full of Shepard’s pie! I left school with no qualifications even managing to fail home economics! Not a great start! This was 1984 lesson one, don’t follow the crowd, do what you love, dare to be different, I know it’s hard but stick at it.
From there collage at Buxton, I managed to fail my 706/2 & had to do a retake, I returned a few months later to a classroom of all the losers and oddballs, my best mates basically! Lesson two, skip the pub occasionally, do the work needed.
1985 wasn’t a great time for cooking in the north west of England & I had a few really crap jobs, it came to a point where I’d lost the love of being a chef and was thinking what the f**k was I going to do, no sm, internet etc jobs were found in the classified and word of mouth.
One day I saw a 2 line add in the MEN looking for nannies in Bermuda, gave them a call, asked if they placed chefs, 6 months later I was heading straight outa Stockport, lesson three, take a chance, sometimes go balls deep!
Turns out the kitchen in Bermuda is full of hard core, professional chefs from some of the best restaurants & hotels in Europe, I was so far out of my depth, think the only reason they didn’t get rid of the first month was that they paid a fairly large fee to the agency.
Somehow I used what little experience and talent I had, I worked REALLY hard, turned up on time, was polite & kind & somehow became part of the team, lesson four, work hard, be kind, turn up on time, have a clean uniform, you’ll be amazed how far it will take you!
It’s a lot harder to sack someone like that, lot easier to sack someone who doesn’t care. From there I went to Switzerland, there was no real plan, no grand design, just a bag with whites, few books and knives, wanting to cook, just cook and learn.
You don’t need to be a head chef by 23, to many young chefs don’t spend enough time behind the stove working on the basics, travel, don’t eat in fancy joints, eat where the locals eat, drink in their bars, listen to what they say, you’ll have way more fun, lesson 5 don’t rush it
As I said, no real plan, I wrecked my knee in Switzerland, had no job & no prospect of one on one leg, my old chef in Bermuda offered my a job back there, probably the one job I wish I hadn’t taken, soon as I got there I knew I’d made a mistake but also knew I had to stick it out
Sometimes you’ve got to suck it up, put in the hard yards & make the best of a bad situation, don’t get me wrong, Bermuda is beautiful & I had a fab life there but career wise it was the wrong choice. Eventually I started looking for the next move...
I was offered 2 jobs, 1 in Dubai 1 in Moscow, Moscow was the one for me, this was 1995 not long after the wall came down, who knew, maybe the communists would regain power & id never get the chance to go again? I was living with my gf & it was a single persons posting..
I’m sat next to that girl now so it’s ok for me to say this as it all worked out but, lesson 6, take a chance, dive of the f****g deep end every so often!
Moscow was mad! Crazy stories and the place that made me a man, I loved the whole 3 years I was there, people are very similar wherever you go, treat them with respect, work along side them, in the trenches so to speak and you’ll be fine. The 1 time I really f**d up was here tho
I’d been there a few months & thought I had it sorted, I was snr sous chef, 6 restaurants, banqueting for 1000’s at a time 120 chefs under me, 1 night 1 of the restaurants was in the weeds, we’d just changed the menu & id not learnt it properly.....
They went down and I went down with them, one chef walked past me & under his breath said’f*****g sous chef’ even now it cuts deep & he was right...lesson 7, don’t ever wing it or think you’ve made it, because let me tell you, you ain’t...ever!
By now we’re married & we go to Grenada in the Caribbean, beautiful beach house, walk along said beach to work, paradise! Swim, sail, waterski every day, pop home for lunch and grill fresh fish, perfect? Not really, the one place I’ve worked were everyone fought each other.
It was a constant battle every day, I took to staying in the kitchen with my chefs rather than get entangled in all the Machiavellian shite! Team work makes the dream work, a cliche but true, lesson 8 nothing happens by chance, you’ve all got to work in the same direction.
A so called perfect life, we couldn’t wait to leave! Return to the uk for 6 months, went for a job interview iwhilst we sorted some personal issues out with the man who would become @hanoversocial years later....lesson 9 some things are meant to be!! That was 20 years ago
A bit of a Saturday night ramble! I love my job & this industry, it has so much to offer, so many opportunities, it has given me an amazing life I wouldn’t change for anything, any aspiring chefs out there who’d like advice feel free to send in your questions & I’ll try to answer
