Unless you got lost somewhere in the depths of The Queue and never quite made it back to reality, you’ll be well aware that The Bear roared on to our screens this week. If you haven’t got around to devouring it just yet, here’s what’s on the menu. A tight, white T-shirt-wearing, tattoo-strewn chef with large, forlorn blue eyes, a waft of unwashed hair and a navy apron (character name: Carmy Berzatto. Real name: Jeremy Allen White. And yes, he is 2022’s most unlikely heart-throb) goes from being head honcho at the world’s most lauded restaurant to running his late brother’s Chicago-based sandwich joint. What pans out in the following eight, anxiety-inducing episodes is designed to get your stomach wrenching and rumbling by painting a portrait of what life is really like inside the kitchen, the one aspect of restaurants we very rarely see. While there is love and loyalty, there is also rage, blood, sweat and tears. This is, apparently, a portrayal of the very best and very worst of kitchen culture on both the fine dining and casual ends of the restaurant spectrum.
As a nation that has grown old seeing Gordon Ramsay lose his lamb sauce, the head chef in Ratatouille construct a murder plot and more recently, 92 minutes of Stephen Graham on the verge of nervous breakdown in Boiling Point, the above synopsis might not sound like an entirely shocking portrayal of kitchen culture. However, even the most hardened of viewers would find it difficult to stomach the more strenuous moments of The Bear, which include severe levels of emotional abuse, violence and quotes from sous-chef Sydney including: ‘It was the first time I didn’t have a complete and utter psychopath behind me screaming and pushing.’
Frightening? Yes. But are scenes like these simply a Hollywood dramatisation? Well, when you spend as much time researching and writing about restaurants as I do, you begin to hear things. Whether it is team members suffering with stress and exhaustion-fuelled drug and alcohol abuse, a Midlands-based two Michelin-star chef talking about ‘pissing’ in his team’s coffee before he plonks a plate down in front of you, or industry talk of a London-based two-star chef, whose team allegedly chooses to wear shin pads to protect their legs when he kicks them. Yet, among all this there is plenty of evidence of healthy, happy environments, with teams of staff who consider one another family. Of course, in a country that holds around 33,000 restaurants, there will be extremes on either end of the spectrum, so the only way to truly distinguish between truth, ‘banter’ and hearsay is to take the temperature from chefs behind the pass.
There was an element of letting you be in the shit. You were destined to fail
The first thing I’m told, by Jack*, is that there are different paths for cooks with different priorities, which can severely alter one’s experience. ‘There are roles out there which are career roles, and there are roles where people can cook for a job, where it’s not as intense, there isn’t somebody above you pushing for certain goals.’ For those choosing ‘career roles’, which may involve being part of a business aiming for accolades or fighting to be recognised as the best in their category, ‘it’s not a regular day in the office’, he says. All nine chefs I spoke to for this piece have worked jobs that have required them to start before 9am and finish after 11pm, which I’m told are modest hours. For Jack, at the upmarket restaurant he worked at until earlier this year, he says: ‘We were pulling 90 to 95-hour weeks pretty much every week. It was very intense. I can count on one hand the amount of breaks I had there in two years.’ Meanwhile James, the head chef of a one-Michelin star restaurant, says that the 60 hours he works are fewer than the industry standard. ‘It has taken us a long time to get to that stage… we’re still working from 7 or 7.30 in the morning and getting out at about midnight.’
Needless to say, this must be exhausting. If the restaurant is busy enough or has enough funding, there is often ‘a brigade of chefs that work on the rota at any given time so you swap in and swap out so you can work less hours a week’, says Robin, who has cooked in an array of kitchens. But if not, according to Henry, who has worked at and run restaurants of all levels, the best-case scenario when working exceptionally long hours would be ‘if we were organised and there are enough hands on deck to make it happen, it wouldn’t be stressful for anybody, generally speaking.’ The worst-case scenario — long hours combined with a lack of staff caused by Brexit and Covid-influenced career changes, plus the pressure to perform by restaurant owners and chefs — can, it seems, bring out the worst in people.
In previous roles in his career, Henry saw ‘lots of violence, lots of throwing oil at people and people throwing punches at people’s heads… Because that was the standard that was set up by the people who were running the place, the other chefs copied it like parrots. It was pretty mad.’ Plus, as a more senior chef, he has ‘employed a couple of people who basically burn out working in a restaurant where they were doing [drugs] every day just to get through the service’. For Mark, he has endured ‘high stress and a lot of manipulation. [My head chef] told me, “You’re not enough,” and “You don’t do this stuff.”’ In Jack’s kitchen, ‘there were people on the edge of going overboard [into physical violence], but someone would drag them off before it got to that point. People definitely get in foul moods. My boss ended up pushing it quite far and had a bit of a breakdown, it all just got a bit much for him and he went awol.’ Plus, in a restaurant James worked in, he found ‘senior members of staff were almost expecting you to fail. There wasn’t much in regard to trying to help you. In a kitchen, you’re all aiming to get to the same goal on a day-to-day basis, but there was an element of letting you be in the shit. You were destined to fail before you even started the day. So you are going into work just dreading it because you know you’re never going to be ready.’
In Mark’s most recent job, the pressure meant he found himself pushing his team too far. ‘I have high standards that I have to deliver to my bosses and sometimes it would be so unfair on the team. I had to push them. Instead of telling the owners, “No, we can’t deliver this,” I’d say yes and then they’d rely on me to deliver something. Then I’ll go to the guys like, “Let’s keep going the extra mile,” pushing people to the limit.’
I remember the good times; we came together and we’re putting out amazing food
Stephen, who says he has worked in ‘unsafe environments’, feels he has been ‘lucky in my career because I am over 1.92m tall, 200kg, which might have helped because they can’t abuse me, but I really struggled inside.’ While for Jack, his physical health declined severely. ‘I wouldn’t say I have an eating disorder, but I forgot to eat all day. I’m 6ft 6 and I got down to 75kgs.
When it comes to dealing with such pressures long term, many chefs choose to keep their heads down and continue with a goal in mind. ‘If you manage to stay in an environment like this without becoming crazy, you can take a lot of benefits after,’ says Stephen. Meanwhile, Mark has decided to take a step back from his role as head chef. ‘I felt overwhelmed not having someone mentoring me, so I decided I just need to go back to supervision and learning more about managing people. I’m trying to really understand what is in my future… Right now I have time to reflect, which is good.’ And some, like Robin, have chosen to leave the profession entirely. ‘[I left] for the same reason that any chef ever leaves cooking: because it’s just not something that is sustainable in the long term. Ultimately I couldn’t see a way to live a life that I enjoyed with the pressures and work those hours.’
Nevertheless, for a whole host of reasons, the culture seems to be changing. Countertalk, a hospitality platform created by chef, author and presenter Ravneet Gill, offers advice to people working in the industry and advertises jobs for restaurants that have been thoroughly vetted as safe work environments, creating more conversations around what cooks should expect in the workplace. From being a chef herself and interacting with others via Countertalk, Gill believes ‘the industry has changed so much, especially in the last year, it’s changed for the better. There’s so many jobs and there’s not a lot of people applying for them and it’s caused employers to really think about the way they treat people.’ Not to mention, chefs like James have chosen to learn from past experiences. ‘You just try to make sure you don’t be like the people that you know. It’s good to look at the bigger picture… It’s just as important to make sure that your staff are happy nowadays. The industry as a whole is tough, there’s just not the quality and quantity of staff out there, so you have to really nurture the people around you. I’m not just the chef; it’s my job to make sure the guys around me are happy and making sure they are improving every day. I don’t want people to feel horrible coming into work, even though we’re gonna have a hard day, but that’s the key thing.’
While attitudes might be changing, the hours, it seems, aren’t going anywhere. According to chef and restaurant owner Hugh, ‘You cannot expect the success of industry leaders without putting in the hard work, and that means more than 48-hour weeks.’ And James agrees, ‘at the end of the day we’re still working at the highest level possible, and sometimes people need to realise that it is gonna be tough and the work is hard.’ Plus, for the likes of Jack, it’s all worth it. ‘I always remember the good times; we came together and were putting out amazing food. Everybody says, “Oh you do all of these hours and blah-di-blah,” but I chose to do that and put that on me. This is a career that’s letting me do what I want. I think it’s a fantastic career.’ And to that we say: compliments to the chef.
The Bear is now streaming on Disney+
