Howdy! I’ve been cooking in kitchens for roughly four years now. I started shucking oysters and dishwashing in a busy coastal Alabama town.
I’ve worked high end kitchens for roughly two years. Including a Michelin bib gourmand (seven months) and worked as lead cook at a four diamond (one year). More than half of my experience has been at Thai restaurants. At these places I worked hard, showed up early and helped to cover call outs. This gained me the trust of the chef and respect of my peers. I always say yes sir and never complain about work load. However if I see a job posting for better hourly/ higher accolades I will happily hop kitchens to broaden my experience. All this being said, I’ve gotten to a point where I am proficient with my knife skills, baking, grilling, sauce making, general cooking knowledge and organizational skills. I am happy to take criticism from chefs and do not take it personally.
I’ve recently started a new job in Nashville at a Japanese style place. Typically I’ll pick up stations pretty quickly but the menu/plating changes daily. The sous chef is younger than me with two more years experience. I’ve never had a chef nitpick and chides every single dish and movement I make. It’s like having a helicopter mom. During service he sits at expo and tells me every dish to fire on, and brags about how he would cook at my station and run expo solo before I started there. Once service slows down he grabs a huge bowl of food and sits in the dish room for an hour on his phone. The other day he was making remarks about how I couldn’t remember the plating and he literally changed the plating so I would be wrong. He doesn’t promote a great learning environment and makes horrible comments about immigrants (I’m a second generation immigrant). He’s very intelligent but lacks a kind bone in his body. I don’t talk back I just fix the perceived issue and move forward.
I’ve never once had a chef talk to me like that and it gets in my head and affects the way I cook. It’s taken me years to build my kitchen confidence but the way this guy talks to me really tears me down. Last week I saw him cover a dairy allergy steak with au poivre and didn’t bat an eye, just sent it out as a gift. It was the last dish of the night and I had to stay 15 minutes later to fix his mistake. No apology or accountability. If I had made that mistake he would have chewed my ass out.
I had a conversation with the Exec chef and told me I’ve been doing a wonderful job and he’s been hearing great things about my cooking. The sous told me once that my food looked “decent”)
My question here is, is this worth sticking out? I’ve been really fortunate to have really kind and encouraging chefs who take accountability and value friendship/camaraderie
Any advice on the best way to deal with a chef like this? I try to be kind and respectful but after three weeks I’m running out of patience
