Blog

It’s a tale as old as time. These two aspects of our lives play a significant role in our subconscious minds.

Is everything we consume in some way, or form, less natural than it was 50 odd years ago? How did we get here, and how do we go back?

Would you take your own food to a restaurant? Obviously not. Your own wine? That’s a different story – and a sure-fire way to get a heated debate going amongst restaurateurs, sommeliers and diners.

Would you take your own food to a restaurant? Obviously not. Your own wine? That’s a different story – and a sure-fire way to get a heated debate going amongst restaurateurs, sommeliers and diners.

From the outside, owning your own restaurant might look like the ultimate in the good life. But here’s the reality check – if you’re looking to get rich, the restaurant business could possibly be the hardest place in which to make a profit.

Influencers, content creators, lifestyle curators, whatever their latest word to go by is – aren’t they all just self-absorbed narcissists and attention-seekers, parasites looking to fund their expensive tastes with freebies?

Getting hot in the kitchen. It’s the stuff of office gossip and tabloid headlines – the illicit workplace romance where the doctor runs off with the nurse, the pilot literally flies off with the cabin attendant, the teacher and the school principal have their own kind of “homework” – and, yes, chefs making off with the hostess are right up there.

What lights that fire in your belly that drives constant, compulsive pursuit of perfection, that makes finding the best ingredient or getting a great review a matter of life and death, that gives you sleepless nights and gets you up at 5am – not because you have to but because you want to?

Washing dishes and hauling garbage might seem like the lowliest of kitchen jobs, with zero glamour or celebrity potential, but no restaurant can function without them.

This is how a love affair starts. At age 15 I had just finished three months working as a stagiaire in one of Paul Bocuse’s restaurants in Lyon. Three months of back-breaking (and unpaid) work, 18-hour days of dawn patrols and late nights, a summer spent peeling onions, gutting fish and fowl, and mopping floors. A learning experience bar none, but no less soul-sapping for all that.

TV chefs were respected, and they were very skilled at what they were doing, but then we hit the “boy band era” of the late 90s and if you were good looking, had a bit of personality and could boil an egg or grill a piece of fish, you got yourself a show. Did TV kill the apprentice chef?

It’s the question at the heart of every conversation with a chef or restaurant owner.

Creating a dish with truffles takes an understanding of the ingredient and how to highlight and balance its unique aroma, flavour and texture. The combinations that work best play on the truffle’s earthiness and savouriness, and balance it with richness and creaminess…

TV chefs were respected, and they were very skilled at what they were doing, but then we hit the “boy band era” of the late 90s and if you were good looking, had a bit of personality and could boil an egg or grill a piece of fish, you got yourself a show. Did TV kill the apprentice chef?

Carnage seems the only way to describe what lies ahead in an industry where most need tomorrow’s trade to pay yesterday’s bills. Are we going to see a very different restaurant industry post this pandemic?