There’s this perception out there that people go into the cooking field for the love of it, solely for the love of it, simply for the passion, not the money.  How naive to even think that people are willing to sacrifice their personal life - willingly, I may add -  in order for others to gain financially. This super-human species of cooks do not exist.   What does exist is a status quo, an unjust axiom that states that cooks must sacrifice like no other profession because that’s the way it is, it’s always been. Who’s benefited from this?  The restaurateur and the customer, and not the profession.

Wages are going up, but not because we suddenly feel for our cooks, but because demand for staff, especially qualified staff, is high and getting more desperate.  The industry needs bodies - it’s supply and demand.

Right now the hot topics are sustainability and local ingredients.  That’s very admirable.  So Chilean sea bass, wild coho get a lot of attention these days - a good thing.  But what about the cooks, the ones that cook 95% of customers’ meals (it’s primarily cooks, not chefs, that cook our meals)?  At the moment we’re not - as an industry, as a culture, as a local public, and definitely as a media - doing much to sustain their survival in their profession.  Attracting intelligent, ambitious, hard-working people into this field is becoming more difficult (sorry Food Network, you’re no longer helping). Won’t be long before we’ll have to import our cooks. 

I like fish, but I like people more, and love cooks most. Is the food business, like big corporate business, in denial?  Will it take as long as the global warming issue for everyone, including public and media, to get real about making the necessary paradigm shift?  I hope not. 

 Tony Minichiello,  Culinary Instructor