It's springtime, and a chef's fancy turns to mentoring; specifically through judging state-level/high school ProStart culinary competitions. In the course of seeing 100's of young cooks cooking I was reminded of the beginnings of my career and my apprenticeship. I am also reminded of my overblown sense of self-worth which cost me the opportunity to work for a highly regarded, award winning chef, and how I must have looked to people who interviewed me for a job.
After completing my apprenticeship I moved to Arizona and embarked upon my first job search in five years. It took a while to gain traction, but I remember getting some okay responses, finally landing a position with a nationally flagged hotel chain; which I subsequently quit because the position was "below me and not what I want to do with my career," (I was subsequently rehired with a promotion and a raise).
As I worked in the hotel's banquet kitchen I convinced myself that I should be a sous chef/executive chef somewhere else, and within six months I filled every day off I had looking for a new job. Not surprisingly, (ok, in actuality--and looking back, I had NO reason to expect call backs, let alone interview for anything more than a line cook position), I was getting called in to several restaurants to interview for sous chef positions.
My ego was enormous!
I would tell potential employers during my first interview that I would not do huge, lengthy prep tasks. I would refuse to work certain days. Every answer in an interview I gave then, are the exact same answers that would stop a potential cook's interview to work for me, now, before it started! Not surprisingly...I remained at the hotel as a banquet cook; no one was hiring me to be their sous chef.
"Their loss..."
Then one day I got a phone call for an interview for another sous chef position. But this was not an average sous chef position. This was for the OG chef in town. One of the early practitioners of Southwestern Cuisine. A contemporary of Fearing and Miller. A James Beard Award winner. An early champion of exploring and resuscitating the lost indigenous foodways of his surrounds.
JACKPOT!
I headed off to the interview. I arrived and was welcomed into the restaurant by the chef de cuisine, and met The Chef. I answered some preliminary questions, and was dispatched to do a bench test in what could be best described as a garage off of the chef's office kitted out with plastic folding tables to prep on.
I gladly and cheerfully embarked on the tasks set before me. When I was done, Chef came out to talk to me. He thanked me for coming in and that he enjoyed meeting me...but I wasn't going to get the sous chef job. He did offer me a job as a line cook, a position which he was not hiring for previously, and was creating solely to bring me onto his team...which I turned down out of hand.
I'm a SOUS CHEF, damnit!
It would be another two-years before I would be offered, and accept my first sous chef position. Two-years of hard work, learning, college classes, staging, volunteering for opportunities to work with other chefs for free, reading every cookbook and culinary magazine I could get my hands on...
Seven-years after my interview with The Chef, I found myself in his dining room, in his newly-custom built restaurant; I was a chef myself by this time. He came to the table; sat with us and discussed the menu. Asked my date and I what our wine preference was and recommended, (and comped), a bottle of his favorite wine. He was cordial far beyond standard professional courtesy.
He sent a message without saying a word.
Now, as I mentor cooks and chefs I can't help but relate my experiences as I help them navigate their own career paths. There are no shortcuts, and they need to live a purposeful life; knowing that every move they make today needs to be moving them closer to their ultimate goal. Be humble and never turn down an opportunity to learn. When it's your time, and it will come, you will know; be patient but be continually working towards where you want to be.
Put the work in.
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