I Was A Line Cook At A Fine Dining Restaurant, And This Is What I Hated Most About Working In The Kitchen

My time in a fine dining kitchen as a line cook was one of the most stressful and surprising experiences I ever had. It wasn't just difficult work. It was a difficult environment for a number of reasons. It was cramped and frantic, and the personality clashes you see on shows like "The Bear" were not uncommon. I don't recommend it.

Every workplace is different, and I have no doubt some kitchens run like a well-oiled machine. I worked at a historic inn. It had been built as a private home in the late 1800s, and was later converted into a business. This meant that the facilities were never designed with a commercial kitchen in mind. Even with renovations, the footprint of the space remained. I've never seen another kitchen like it.

The space was cramped and tiny, with four gas burners and two prep stations where we were expected to prepare every dish without stepping on the toes of everyone else in the kitchen. There were two reach-in refrigerators but no under-counter ones. If you needed new plates, you had to traverse a labyrinth of hallways and go downstairs to storage. The dish pit was so small and inefficient you sometimes had to wash a pot or utensil yourself in the middle of service because they'd get so far behind. Keep in mind, this kitchen prepared meals for inn guests while also doing daily two and three-course lunch and dinner menus. Only the desserts were brought in from an outside vendor. But as stressful as it was working in a cramped, centuries-old kitchen, the worst part about working in fine dining was the feeling of superiority among the chefs. 

There was less yelling in my kitchen than on a show like "The Bear." It was by and large less stressful. Our dinner services were hard work but rarely overwhelming. That said, personalities in fine dining kitchens can be tough to handle when egos get involved. Some people take their titles to heart, and a kitchen is a place where someone who thinks they are better than you will often let you know. Sometimes daily. Sometimes they'll let everyone know on every single shift.

I once watched a chef trim a pepper and accidentally scrape the usable portion into the trash while leaving the seeds and stem on his cutting board. Upon realizing his mistake, he simply took the pepper out of the full trash and kept working with it. It had been sitting in scraps of fat, other vegetables, and who knows what else. I got an earful for suggesting that using garbage peppers was not a good idea because I was just a line cook and he was the head chef. He knew what he was doing and I didn't. I should have just focused on my beet carpaccio.

Ego is the crux of what I hated most about working in a fine dining kitchen. Because, at the end of the day, it is a kitchen like any other. We are making meals for customers who have paid to enjoy what we have to offer. I don't think that should require more or less care than in the kitchen of a diner, a steakhouse, or a fast food joint. Everyone deserves to have an experience worth the money they spend, whether it's $10 or $100. But not everyone sees it that way.