I’m writing this post sat on a chair in a small, Ill equipped kitchen in a Tesco canteen somewhere in the UK at 11pm, where I have been tasked to make a chicken Korma (sauce in a jar I may point out) for roughly 15 people in 3 hours……
What I find going through my head is not how easy a way this is to make a living but about why so often the temp chefs I’ve had in my kitchens in the past seem to have lost the love and passion which I assume they must of once had.
A restaurant needs customers, a chef needs customers and all restaurants are vying for those customers to walk through their doors. The chef must Create a menu that makes these potential customers look twice and decide that your establishment is where they will spend their hard earned money.
What i love about being a chef is the chance to give people something they have not had before, a mouthful of food they connect with and will talk about for days , weeks or years after. A combination of flavours that they didn’t know existed and to inspire someone to maybe cook at home or become a chef or simply to keep eating out and find more of these experiences to tell others and to share with friends a family.
I remember eating at Restaurant Gordon Ramsey when I was 18 years old, my first ever 3 star experience and I had no idea what to expect. I remember the bread and butter being a talking point on our table and if this simple offering was so good then what’s to come?!
I remember the meal as a whole as one of the best I’ve ever eaten and I have been lucky enough to now have other 3 star restaurants to compare it too and it still is one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten but the thing I remember most vividly is the second course being a foie gras terrine with tiny pickled mushrooms and some fine green beans as a garnish. Those green beans blew my mind!! to this day they are the most green beans tasting green beans I’ve put in my mouth! Sure the terrine was probably good but I expected that, I didn’t expect green beans to be elevated to this stage so magnificently. I want to have people like me at 18, young chefs or whoever really to eat something I’ve cooked and be talking about it for years! That’s why I love to cook… So how is all this relative to being a temp chef?!
Well, as I sit here waiting for 15 people to come from their night shift and as I think about the care home I’m due to be temping in on Saturday, these people did not choose to eat here, they did not read the menu and decide to eat here with me, they have no choice. I’ve been told to cook a Korma and some other things in the fridge if I wish and then I will stand with my offering and the people will come with no other options available really. A care home for the elderly has a devoted customer base, they can’t choose to go to the care home down the road because they prefer the options the same with a prison for example which I once did a temp shift in. These places that often require the services of a temp chef are places where a chef has very little reason to love what they produce or indeed have the budget to create anything nto liven up the options to their particular customers….
So maybe I can start to understand why some temp chefs may have been to a few too many places where the love is simply not required…..
temporarily.
Jonascooks 