If you work in restaurants, you’ll know that every few years the same conversation comes around again.
A chef somewhere at the top of the industry is accused of creating a toxic kitchen environment. Stories emerge about shouting, humiliation, long hours & impossible standards. The media runs the headlines, people argue online and the whole profession briefly becomes the subject of public debate.
Recently that conversation has resurfaced again following allegations about René Redzepi and the culture inside Noma during earlier years of the restaurant.
I’m not interested in piling onto one individual chef (let’s be honest we immortalise some who we’ve watched act just as bad in a very public way for years). I’ve never worked there and it wouldn’t be honest to pretend otherwise. But what the conversation has done is bring the wider question back into the open:
What are professional kitchens really like and what should they be like? Because the truth is, for those of us who’ve spent our lives in them, kitchens have always been complicated places.
The Reality of Kitchen Culture
Restaurants are strange environments compared to most other workplaces.
It’s worth acknowledging that I’m writing this from a particular perspective. I’m a white man from a working-class background in an industry that, in my experience, has largely been filled with people who look like me and come from similar backgrounds.
I can’t pretend to understand what it feels like to work in a professional kitchen as a woman, a person of colour or as someone from a totally different background. There will be experiences and pressures they’ve gone through that I simply haven’t lived.
I’d also like to point out, Before going any further, this isn’t an attempt to attack an industry that I care deeply about. Cooking has given me a career, a craft and a community that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Like many chefs, I love this profession. But loving something doesn’t mean pretending it’s perfect.
Now that’s out the way, let’s acknowledge the generally accepted facts. Kitchens are intense, high-pressure spaces where a (usually) small team has a few hours each day to produce something that has to be perfect every single time. Mistakes are public, service is relentless and the expectations from guests are extremely high. For decades the industry developed a culture where that pressure was dealt with in a very particular way. Shouting was normal, harsh criticism was normal & long hours were simply expected.
Many chefs of a certain generation learned to cook in kitchens like this. I certainly experienced my share of it early in my career.
My experiences
While I love this industry and wouldn’t choose to do anything else, it would be dishonest to pretend it hasn’t created some very difficult experiences for the people who work in it.
Like many cooks, I started at the very bottom, washing dishes and learning on the job. Kitchens have traditionally been intense environments and historically that intensity hasn’t always been handled well. Long hours, relentless pressure and a culture where shouting, humiliation and aggression were often seen as normal parts of the job were not uncommon.
Over the years I’ve seen behaviour that in any other workplace, would be completely unacceptable. Equipment thrown in anger, cooks publicly humiliated, young chefs pushed to breaking point during service. Injuries brushed aside because the kitchen was short staffed. People routinely finishing long shifts only to return the next day and do it all again.
What often gets overlooked is that while the physical side of kitchen work is tough, the psychological pressure can be far more damaging. The constant scrutiny, the fear of making mistakes, the expectation that you simply absorb whatever comes your way. For some people it builds resilience. For others it leads to burnout, unhealthy coping mechanisms and in the worst cases, far more serious consequences.
Experiences like this shaped my early years in the industry more than I probably realised at the time.
Things have improved in many kitchens over the years and the industry has started having more honest conversations about working conditions. But stories like those that have recently surfaced remind us that these issues haven’t completely disappeared.
Acknowledging that reality isn’t about criticising the craft. It’s about recognising where the industry has come from and where it still needs to improve.
The other side of the coin
That being said, it’s equally important to acknowledge the good from this industry.
As I said, I come from a working class background, I grew up on a council estate, I never went to catering college, I went straight into the workforce because I had to earn money. There are very few industries where you can go in at the base level with realistic chances of promotion and self improvement like hospitality.
I wouldn’t be the person I am today, wouldn’t have what I have today, wouldn’t be writing this blog or running Bohémien today if it wasn’t for this industry. Yes, there have been some dark times, yes I’ve put years of blood, sweat and tears into my career. But for me, it has been worth it. I get to spend every day doing the job that I love, working with incredible people, getting my hands on beautiful produce, cooking for and chatting with people who love good food just as much as I do.
I couldn’t sit in an office for 8 hours a day and I take my hat off to anyone who can. Trust me, I can barley print a menu let alone work an excel spreadsheet, whatever that is (my web developer Helen will get a kick out of me sharing that)
Something that’s often lost in these conversations is that not all intensity is the same thing as abuse. Chefs are passionate people, passion is good. I couldn’t justify sacrificing so much of my time learning my trade if I didn’t absolutely love it. Cooking professionally requires standards. It requires discipline. It requires people caring about what they’re doing.
The best kitchens I’ve worked in, the ones where the food was consistently good, weren’t necessarily the quietest or the calmest. They were places where everyone was trying to produce something genuinely good. They were also not the places where staff were abused or felt like they couldn’t speak up.
Another part that rarely gets talked about publicly is the other side of restaurant culture, The camaraderie.
The strange, slightly chaotic friendships that form between people working long nights together. The pride that comes from sending out a dining room full of food you genuinely believe in. That moment where a chef who you really look up too, tells you you’ve done a good job. When you finish a busy service and realise it’s getting easier each time.
For many of us, cooking isn’t just a job. It’s a craft. And like most crafts, it demands time, patience and repetition to get good at it. That doesn’t excuse bad behaviour. But it does mean the reality of kitchens is more complex than the headlines often suggest.
Moving forward
When I became a head chef for the first time, I began to understand some of the pressures that had shaped the kitchens I’d come up through.
Running a kitchen is demanding. You’re balancing service, standards, guests, suppliers, owners and a team that depends on you. When the pressure builds, it’s easy to see how some chefs fall into the habit of shouting or ruling through fear. In the moment, it’s often the simplest reaction.
But easy isn’t the same as right. The longer I spent running kitchens, the more I realised that while pressure is inevitable, the way you handle it is a choice. Kitchens don’t have to run on intimidation to maintain standards.
Like many cooks, I still remember the difficult moments from my early years very clearly. The shouting, the tension, the feeling of walking into work unsure what mood the kitchen would be in that day. Those experiences shape you and they inevitably influence the kind of chef you decide to become.
For me, it made me want to run kitchens differently. Not softer, and certainly not with lower standards, but with a level of respect that should really be normal in any professional environment. One of the things I’m proudest of isn’t a dish or a service, but the fact that many of the cooks I’ve worked with over the years are still part of my life. We meet for coffee, play football on Sundays, go to each other’s weddings. That says far more about a kitchen culture than any review or award ever could.
None of this is extraordinary. In most industries it would simply be considered normal management. But kitchens have historically been different. For decades the industry has not only tolerated chaotic, aggressive leadership styles, it has often glorified them. Television shows and media portrayals have turned the image of the volatile chef into a kind of entertainment.
Anyone who has worked in a professional kitchen knows the reality is far less glamorous.
What Should Kitchens Look Like Now?
The industry is changing and in many ways that’s a good thing. Young cooks today RIGHTLY expect healthier workplaces, better hours, and more respect than previous generations often received. Many of their expectations are long overdue. But there’s also a risk that in trying to fix the worst parts of kitchen culture, we forget what makes cooking worth doing in the first place.
Restaurants should still be places of high standards, without the need for abuse.
They should still be places where cooks care deeply about the food they produce.
And they should still be places where learning the craft of cooking takes time and effort.
In a world where recipes and techniques are instantly available online, practical experience and on-the-job learning still matter enormously.
Why this Matters
Stories like those that have recently surfaced around René Redzepi have once again brought these conversations into the spotlight. I wasn’t there and can’t speak to the details, but if the accounts that have been reported are accurate then the criticism is justified. No kitchen, no matter how celebrated, should operate in a way that harms the people working in it.
For me, the reason any of this matters is fairly simple;
Restaurants are built on people. The food may be what brings guests through the door but behind every service is a team of cooks, porters, waiters and suppliers working together to make it happen.
If the industry wants to move forward, that’s where the focus needs to be. Standards in the kitchen will always matter, cooking professionally is demanding work and it should be taken seriously. But professionalism should also include respect for the people doing the work.
The best kitchens I’ve known have been the ones where people pushed each other to improve, but still looked after one another at the end of the night.
That’s the kind of environment I’ve always tried to create in the kitchens I’ve run, and it’s something I still believe is worth striving for across the industry.
Great kitchens should build great cooks, not break them.
Tom
Chef & Owner, Bohémien
