From Dictionary.com, ‘chef -noun 1. the chief cook, esp. in a restaurant or hotel, usually responsible for planning menus, ordering foodstuffs, overseeing food preparation, and supervising the kitchen staff.  2. any cook’

Is that all a chef is? Is the chef that person in the starched white jacket making their way through the restaurant greeting guests and asking how the meal is? Are they slumped over a 6 or 8 burner stove screaming out orders and obscenities?

Interesting questions. What do I consider a chef to be? A chef to me isn’t simply the person in charge of the back of the house but the driving force behind the entire restaurant. You can tell, the minute you walk in to a restaurant, whether or not they have a good or even great chef. There’s a feeling, an atmosphere, a spirit in the place. If the restaurant is empty, or if the host or hostess looks a little ragged. If the servers look like they’ve been kicked in the gut one to many times, more than likely it’s because of the back of the house. Everything stems from there.

Anthony Bourdain refers to the chef as a pirate or U-boat captain and that’s not far from the truth. It takes a certain type of person to want to give up weekends, holidays and work 12+ hours a day. Trying to make a profit with materials that go bad in a couple of days, maintain cleanliness and make sure that each plate is as good as the last one you put in the pass*. Dealing with vegans, vegetarians and every other dietary demand, you have no idea how annoying and rough it is in the middle of a Friday night rush when a vegan nazi wants the Fettuccine Alfredo without cream, butter and Parmesan cheese.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not whining about my job. Quite the opposite. I love my job and I love what I do but there are times when I would love to head out to the dining room with my 10″ chef’s knife in hand and start slicing people. I do what I do because I love it and the camaraderie of the kitchen is the closest I’ve ever been to the camaraderie that I felt serving on an Abrams tank crew during Desert Storm.

So then what is a chef? A chef is many things. They’re the humble greasy spoon diner guy to the 5 star chef. They’re the heart and soul of a restaurant operation. The person who does the mundane paperwork, managing the kitchen team and is accountable for all the food and labor costs. In my case, working in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp with 3 other people. They’re also the people who create the heavenly dish that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Now we have celebrity chefs. Chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Emerill Lagasse, Anthony Bourdain, Cat Cora and Gabrielle Hamilton have made it glamorous to put on that starched jacket and toque. It doesn’t change what we are but it does make us look a little better. We’ll always be a little off center and you know what?

We’re proud of that.

* The pass is the area in the kitchen where the prepared food is passed from the kitchen line to the servers and then out to the guests.