Target

My first mistake was trying to go to Target on Saturday. Have you ever been to Target on Saturday? I apologize if that seems to be a stupid question, but in my line of work, Saturday errand running is not exactly an option.

As soon as I drove into the parking lot, I should have known, and should’ve promptly turned around. It seemed like hundreds of cars were zooming around the parking lot, slamming on the brakes and inching along as they stalked the closest parking spot. Like a cheetah hunting a gazelle, Windstar minivans slowly crept through the tight aisles until they SLAMMED on the gas to whip into the spot just vacated by another vehicle.

Mothers and children were ambling through the rows of cars, haphazardly making their way to the entrance. “She should really put a leash on that one; it’s dangerous out here….” I thought to myself. ‘If I had one of those, it would totally be on a leash….”

Inside, I was amazed by the swarms of people, and all of them, and I mean ALL of them, seeming not to have anywhere else in the world that they needed to be after they collected their Rubbermade tubs, hula hoops, flash drives and Vicks Vapo-Rub.

I, on the other hand, had lots of places to be after I snatched up my Coke Zero, Post-it Notes, binder clips, bathing suit, and birthday card. It didn’t take long to notice that I was the only person walking quickly and in a straight line. Post-it Notes, check. Bathing suit, check. Binder Clips, yes. Birthday card…check. ‘Zero’! It’s on sale!

As I zoomed over to where the ‘Zero’ was, I came upon a woman who had parked her shopping cart diagonally in the aisle. Her screaming toddler’s wailing was going, apparently, unnoticed (by her), as he flailed about in the enormous red basket. Annoyed that she would assume that she is the only person who may have a need for granola bars, I barked out a pointed, but clear, “BEHIND YOU”.

Oh my god.

The look.

We were like an explorer and a native of some lost tribe, discovering the other, and then staring quizzically, perplexed by this mysterious person staring right back.

It was in that moment that I remembered that “on the outside”, people say, “excuse me”. I was not wielding a chef’s knife or a hot roasting pan…I was just tying to get to the ‘Zero’. The problem is this; civilians are not accustomed to being notified by your nearness with an abrupt announcement. They are much more comfortable with such niceties like, “pardon me”, or, “I’m sorry; could I just sneak past you?” all uttered in a very sheepish tenor, with eyes fixated on the floor.

There is generally nothing ‘sheepish’ about me, and nothing sheepish about any other chefs I know. Proud, assertive, hurried, and confident, we have places to go and not very much time to get there. Time wasting, dawdling, and moseying about is not tolerated in a professional kitchen. Wandering is an indicator of uselessness and inferiority. A cook who casually strolls to and fro in your kitchen has about a 3 day expiration date before the pack forces him out.

Likewise, in a kitchen, you would never sprawl out everywhere, with all of your tools, ingredients, and recipes strewn about. Being able to work in a tight, sometimes unreasonably small space is the mark of flexibility, efficiency, and resourcefulness. A chef would never park his or her shopping cart diagonally in the aisle of any store.

Nor would a chef walk around, seemingly unaware of their whereabouts, and the proximity of other people around them, looking genuinely surprised when another person crossed their path; and by ‘path’, I mean, their transverse meandering through a common walkway, pushing a shopping cart and looking everywhere except straight ahead.

So, there we were, staring at each other, almost daring the other to push this just a little further. The woman snapped up her Nutrigrain bars and pushed her cart, as I passed silent judgment on her for buying such inferior, chemically-laced foodstuffs made in some factory by someone wearing a hairnet and lab coat. She muttered something under her breath as she continued her shopping elsewhere in the aisles of the bustling store.

Judgment reciprocated.

Her toddler was still screaming. I could sense that she had moved over to the electronics, based on the dullness of his shrill cries. Maybe she will buy a GPS to show her where she was going, and objects surrounding her. Jeez, do they make those like a pedometer – something she could strap to her shoe? That would be nice… I wondered if he screamed at such a decibel that she was unable to hear, much like dogs have that heightened sense of hearing on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I strolled up to the Zero, shaking my head. I wondered what it was like to be this unaware, this isolated. My god, what a gift that would be… the ability to totally zone out and go through life unfettered by the various incidents and people around you. Total and complete ignorance, aware only of what it right in front of you at any moment. I can’t even conceive of it.

Intensity is a trait I’ve long possessed. As I child I was quite focused. As an adult I persist in my tightly wound ways. Deliberate actions, effort guided by thought, I move through life with a sense of high-strung ambition. There is an annoyingly strong pull about my energy, as well as an annoyingly strong resistance to the flow of those lesser intense people around me.

“See, Stac - your standards are just too high…” or my other favorite, “you think too much”. Two, count them, TWO of my former employers have said those unthinkable words to me. And I thought I was coasting. Shit.

Contemplation. Thought. Effort. Painstaking measures. There is always a reason for absolutely everything that I do. Nothing that I do is arbitrary, nothing is an afterthought. Relentless. Driven. Always chasing something. Nothing is good enough. Ever. Even this column has taken me 3 months to finish, and, it still isn’t right.

To be a chef, you have to be a risk taker. You have to be confident. You have to be bold. You have to be your own unstoppable force. There has to be something that throbs deep inside you, the pulsating creativity and brilliance of making beautiful order out of total chaos.

It might seem a little extreme, and, maybe it is. But I don’t find it to be all that uncommon. The chef as a professional is the embodiment of passion. Some people were wired to be engineers, born with the critical thinking skills that make them successful at solving the riddles of the modern world. Others seem to have been born with the language skills of the great orators of the ages. Sometimes, you just can’t separate yourself from who you really are, even if you’re at Target.

The Next Food Network Star

Brace yourselves – I just got cable. I know, I’m, like, 20 years late, but with the impending switch from analog to digital, I went kicking and screaming from my 13” television, complete with VCR to a 42” plasma with digital cable. Big step. Sloanvision is a thing of the past, an era gone by.

While I had watched cable while visiting the homes of some of my friends & family, I had really seen very little. I’d viewed the Food Network a handful of times, which, turned out to be plenty, but had no first-hand, ‘carnal’ knowledge of it. Until now.

I started with episodes of Good Eats, since Alton Brown seems to know a thing or two about food, unlike many of his wildly celebrated FN colleagues. Once or twice, I bumped into Giada. Not bad, though I recently tasted some of “her” balsamic vinegar and it was horrific. Paula Deen. Rachel Ray & the YUMMO express dinner train. Throwdown was better than I expected, seeing some little lady from Thailand kick Bobby Flay’s ass was worth the 30 minute investment. Emeril is still on here…?

In a fit of total masochistic curiosity, I watched about 9 minutes of The Next Food Network Star. This explained a lot.

Cringe-worthy; that’s for sure. As I watched, I was astounded at the enthusiasm and willingness with which the contestants whored themselves for the panel (comprised of Flay, De Laurentiis, the Senior VP of Production, and some other woman I’d never heard of). It was literally painful to watch. For me, it was as disturbing as watching the clips of pelicans swimming in the black oily mess now known as the Gulf of Mexico. The only difference was, the pelicans didn’t volunteer themselves for their unfortunate and certain demise.

As the panel discussed the performance of each contestant, it became clear that the criteria to become “The Next Food Network Star” was not experience, cooking technique, talent or good taste. It wasn’t about knowledge or professionalism or expertise. “The Next Food Network Star” is supposed to have, quite simply, “star power”. Apparently cooking technique can be faked, but “star power” cannot. After a few minutes of deliberation, I gave up. I had reached my limit.

The other day, I received a call from a woman asking whether or not I was hiring new chef instructors. She also let me know that she had really great class ideas that she wanted to bring to Mirepoix, all featuring things that we were apparently lacking. I inquired as to whether or not she had any teaching experience or had worked as a chef (neither question had an affirmative answer). I was also curious to know whether or not she had been to one of our classes, or knew what we were all about.

Eventually after many qualified statements, long-winded ramblings, and shameless self-adulation, all of her answers to the questions I asked ended with a fatigued “no". Shortly after, she mentioned she had just tried out for The Next Food Network Star.

Conversation over. At least in my mind it was.

On this topic alone, I could turn this column into a book, but let me narrow it all down to a few key points.

I remember when becoming a chef was tantamount to becoming a janitor, just a step up from garbage collector. I remember how my parents pled with me to reconsider my career path. I remember people treating me as if I had some type of mental defect, nodding patronizingly at me when I announced that I would be attending culinary school and not the University of Michigan or Purdue, or Harvard, like some of my high school classmates.

As if it had happened yesterday, I recall how hard culinary school was, how demanding the instructors, how exhausting the schedule. I remember dragging myself out of bed at 4 am in order to make it on time (and if you’re a really good culinary student, you show up early!) to baking, and after, taking a short nap in the student lounge just before my next class. I remember making two mistakes that brought me public shame and humiliation (a topic for another blog entry). I remember being completely humbled by the men who expected better than “doing your best”.

Just recently, a group of wealthy private school parents came to Mirepoix for a private cooking class. As it sometimes happens, some of them treated my staff and me as if we were uneducated, unsophisticated “help”. The next day, I was at brunch with my parents who belong to a local country club. As I entered the dining room, my presence was noted by one of the men who had been at the event the night before.

Incredulous, his face indicated puzzlement; how “someone like me” could be at the prestigious Oakland Hills??? Or, maybe, he thought I was there to collect – since he, a real class act, had ducked out on his bar tab at the end of the night.

My point is that I’m used to people viewing my profession as something that needs to be qualified, justified, or explained. I’m used to being treated as if I am completely uncultured, unsophisticated, and ignorant of the nuances of world around me. I’m used to people assuming that I’m poor, or that I drive some kind of rattletrap car, or that I can’t make my house payment.

I’m used to the assumptions that I’m a drug addict, or alcoholic. I’m familiar with the presumption that I wouldn’t know how to use a computer or read at an eighth-grade level. It doesn’t surprise me when people think my education stopped after culinary school, or when they display abject amazement that I am a published author.

What bothers me about the Food Network is that it has NOTHING really to do with food or with chefs. It pays no respect to the hours of grueling, and sometimes degrading toil of the professional kitchen. You can be an off-the-charts-dumbass who doesn’t know what ‘prime steak’ is, and, you, too, can be on television. Because of the Food Network, I have people who ask me about what I would do with a mystery basket filled with popcorn, hot dogs, wheat grass, and lyche nuts, and they’re serious.

The problem with the Food Network (and “reality” TV in general) is that we, as a society, have agreed to reward morons, idiots and talentless people for doing… nothing. We, as a society, have decided that achievement needn’t be measured, that you don’t have to hold yourself to any type of standard, or that you don’t have to WORK at your craft.

Being a chef isn’t about money or fame or appearances. Being a chef is a centuries-honored tradition. Being a chef is about excellence and commitment. It’s about teaching and learning and sharing and passion. The people who come to Mirepoix come to us because they trust us. They trust that we will treat them with respect, that we will share our knowledge and our passion. The people who come to Mirepoix come here because they know that THEY are our focus, and that we aren’t using them as “test audience” for our impending debut on the next hottest cooking show.

When we first opened, I had a staff of people who were only focused on themselves, their careers, and their illusions of greatness. After 3 long years, I was finally able to cut out the cancer that ate away at our integrity and rebuild.

Amongst my current staff, I am universally known for being demanding and extraordinarily difficult. The pushing never stops. My staff knows that I expect excellence and nothing less. They know we don’t let things slide, we don’t blow things off. They know nothing is an afterthought and no detail is too small. They know our vision, where we’ve been and why we’re never, ever, EVER going there again.

They know that we are chefs and they know, in no uncertain terms, what exactly that entails. Because we are treated like we are less, we will be committed to being more. Because so little is expected of us, we will over-deliver.

The Food Network has been both a blessing and a curse. It’s elevated our industry from a high school drop-out’s only hope to a housewife’s dinner party come true. But with its popularity, it hasn’t brought honor or tradition; that’s the job of the chef and the teacher. My mom used to tell me that “character is who you are when you think no one is watching”. I can’t think of a better standard for a chef.

So, if you’re looking for a great recipe for the pantry surprise, watch an episode of Chopped and you’ll learn the secret to bad cooking – the improper and appalling combination of ingredients that should never be combined. But if you’re looking for inspiration and professionalism, don’t look for them on TV.