You want loyalty from your line cooks. Somebody who wakes up with a
scratchy throat and slight fever and thinks it's okay to call in sick is not
what I'm looking for. While it's necessary for cooks to take pride in their
work—it's a good idea to let a good cook stretch a little now and again
with the occasional contribution of a special or a soup—this is still the
army. Ultimately, I want a salute and a "Yes, sir!". If I want an opinion
from my line cooks, I'll provide one. Your customers arrive expecting
the same dish prepared the same way they had it before; they don't want
some budding Wolfgang Puck having fun with kiwis and coriander with
a menu item they've come to love.
There are plenty of exceptions, of course. I have a few Americans in my
traveling road show, a few key people whom I tend to hire over and over
as I move from place to place. The relationship between chef and sous-
chef can be a particularly intimate one, for instance, and it's nice to have
someone with a similar background and world-view when you're going
to spend almost every waking hour together. Women line cooks,
however rare they might be in the testosterone-heavy, male-dominated
world of restaurant kitchens, are a particular delight. To have a tough-as-
nails, foul-mouthed, trash-talking female line cook on your team can be
a true joy—and a civilizing factor in a unit where conversation tends to
center around who's got the bigger balls and who takes it in the ass.
I've been fortunate enough to work with some really studly women line
cooks—no weak reeds these. One woman, Sharon, managed to hold
down a busy sauté station while seven months pregnant—and still find
time to provide advice and comfort to a romantically unhappy broiler
man. A long-time associate, Beth, who likes to refer to herself as the
"Grill Bitch", excelled at putting loudmouths and fools into their proper
place. She refused to behave any differently than her male co-workers:
she'd change in the same locker area, dropping her pants right alongside
them. She was as sexually aggressive, and as vocal about it, as her fellow
cooks, but unlikely to suffer behavior she found demeaning. One sorry
Moroccan cook who pinched her ass found himself suddenly bent over a