So, you say you want to work for a star chef.
You’ve dined in all of his restaurants and watched him on the Food Network. You’ve bought all of her cookbooks and tried to reproduce the recipes at home. You’ve seen their branded products advertised on the Home Shopping Network and have some ideas of your own that might translate to mass-market sales.
But as an aspiring professional, you’ve also been following their progress over the years in the hopes that someday you might be able to hitch your wagon to their culinary star. You’ve visualized yourself working beside them in their kitchens, learning how to prepare their dishes, mastering elaborate cooking techniques and networking with other culinary professionals who share the same goal.
As a growing number of motivated young Americans set their sights on making it in the increasingly media-influenced fine-dining universe, many are seeking out the individuals who already have blazed new paths of opportunity. And no longer does a young chef have to travel across the Atlantic to mentor with the best in the business. There are plenty of well-known, world-class chefs working stateside right now.
But the question remains: What does it take to convince one of these celebrity chefs to hire you? How do you become an acolyte to one of the reigning high priests of haute cuisine?
Let’s face it—we’re talking about individuals who often have the pick of the litter when it comes to filling kitchen positions. Charlie Trotter, chef and owner of the internationally acclaimed Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, says he receives on average a dozen résumés a day, “mostly e-mailed.”
Certainly, plenty of back-of-the-house jobs will be opening up over the next decade or so. According to the National Restaurant Association, the number of positions for chefs and head cooks will increase by 16.4 percent between 2008 and 2018, jumping from 122,000 to 142,000. That reflects an average annual hike of 1.5 percent.
But of those many thousands of chefs who will be looking to fill back-of-the-house positions, only a couple of hundred possess the kind of name-brand cachet that leaps off a résumé and provides the recognition that one day might help you persuade a wary investor that you’ve paid your culinary dues and are ready for a shot at the big time.
Sure, you know what you’re hoping to get from them. But what, exactly, is it that they want from you? Do they expect you to have graduated in the top 10 percent of your culinary school class? Or do they want to see years of professional experience logged on your résumé before they’re willing to find a spot for you on their cooking line?
While each chef obviously is going to come at the hiring process from a somewhat different vantage point, most seem to be in general agreement about the qualities their ideal candidates should possess.
Trotter says in the 21 years his restaurant has been open, he always has known what he is looking for in a new kitchen hire. “It’s never been about the résumé,” says Trotter, who also stars in his own cooking show, publishes cookbooks and merchandises a line of products. “It’s not about whether someone has been to the [Culinary Institute of America] or done stage at a three-star restaurant. It’s about attitude. I’m more interested in someone giving me a one-page essay on what makes them tick and why they would make a difference at this restaurant than looking at a résumé.”
Trotter likes to hold “far-ranging conversations” with job candidates.
“We talk about their experience or culinary school education, but I also might ask other revealing things, like if they were marooned on a desert island, what would be the five great books of literature you would want to have with you?” he says. “If somebody has the right mindset, they can accomplish great things.”
Trotter isn’t alone in that outlook. Ming Tsai, owner of Blue Ginger, the east-west-fusion-style restaurant located in the Boston suburb of Wellesley, Mass., and the star of the PBS cooking show “Simply Ming,” says he hires “on character and attitude more than skills.”
“I can train someone to sauté and hold a knife,” he says, “but I can’t train someone to care or be respectful or try their hardest without being told. Skills are trainable; character is not.”
Traci Des Jardins, chef-partner of Jardinière and Mijata, and managing partner of Acme Chophouse, all in San Francisco, observes that “basic intelligence and attitude are the most important characteristics” when making a new hire.
“Sometimes a person with a passion for the business is the best candidate,” she says.
Alfred Portale, chef-partner of the long-running Manhattan hit Gotham Bar & Grill, explains that a lot depends upon the position for which he is hiring. Nevertheless, he adds: “Experience is important but probably not as important as attitude and desire. It’s whether or not the person is hungry, whether they are really at the right place in their career to fill the position. I’m looking for a good fit for us and for them.”
Michael Symon, chef and partner in Lola and Lolita in Cleveland and a regular on Food Network’s “Iron Chef,” agrees, saying, “No matter how much experience or education you have, if you don’t have the right attitude, you won’t function well in our kitchens.”
Certainly not all positions are equal nor do they require the same strengths or skill sets. Tom Colicchio, owner of seven Craft, Craftsteak, and Craftbar restaurants in New York and Las Vegas, says his expanding restaurant business allows him to oversee the hiring of only executive chefs. While most of Colicchio’s upper-level chefs have come up through the Craft ranks and possess the skills and attitude he requires, other criteria come into play at this level as well.
“I need someone who understands the business,” says Colicchio, who also appears on Bravo’s popular “Top Chef” television show. “If they have been around as a sous chef, they obviously have the skills. But to make that last step up to chef, they have to be able to organize. They have to be the leader when I’m not there. They have to be able to run the business and organize the restaurant.”
In fact, those chefs who have expanded their brands into other venues “need to hire someone they trust and who understands the business as a whole and has the ambition to move up the through the ranks,” says Scott Feldman, who runs the New York-based Two Twelve Management & Marketing firm, which represents a number of top-name chefs and restaurateurs.
After attitude, chefs look at experience and culinary education, although for some a culinary degree can be a two-edged blade.
“Some people coming out of culinary schools have high expectations in terms of position and salary,” Des Jardins says. “Some end up in culinary schools as a default position. They don’t really have a passion for this business.”
Symon notes that he receives résumés from “a lot of young cooks that went to culinary school and have the attitude that they know everything already.”
“Basically, I’m looking for people who take direction well and don’t think they know it all,” he says.
On the other hand, many chefs welcome culinary school graduates into their ranks.
“I’m a graduate of the CIA, and so are a lot of my cooks,” Portale says. “We speak a common language, and if someone goes to a culinary school for two years, they have been exposed to a lot of things and have a good general understanding.”
Tsai also harbors a positive attitude toward culinary school graduates. He has two intern positions that are staffed with students from the CIA and Johnson & Wales University.
“About 80 percent of the cooking line is made up of culinary school grads,” he says.
Yet experience is not always the magic key to the kitchen door. Tsai says if he sees a résumé from a person “who has spent six months here and six months there, that’s a huge red flag.”
“If someone has done stage in Paris for three months at a particular place, that’s fine,” he says. “But if he or she bounces around from job to job, that’s not good.”
Trotter is skeptical about a person who is just looking to beef up his résumé with short stints at top-rated restaurants.
“If somebody just wants another badge on his chest working for Daniel [Boulud] or Joachim Splichal or Alain Ducasse, and is trying to stack up work experience on his résumé, we’re not interested,” he says.
Most top chefs, in fact, expect new candidates to commit to working from one to two years for them.
“It takes six months alone to train someone to work here,” Tsai says.
Job candidates also shouldn’t plan on starting near the top, chef-restaurateurs say.
“We rarely hire at the upper levels,” says Trotter, who also operates restaurants in Las Vegas and plans to open one in New York. “Usually people have worked their way up to those positions, although there is the occasional exception. But we prefer to groom people and acculturate them.”
While résumés make a good jumping-off point, chefs say, most ask job candidates to work in the kitchen for a day or two to see what they know and how they fit in. When Portale hires a line cook, he says the process begins with a round of interviews with himself, the chef de cuisine and sometimes the general manager.
“Then we schedule a one-day trail, where the person comes in and works on a station doing some prep work,” he says. “We can get a sense of skill, how they move, how competent they are. It also gives them an opportunity to see what we’re doing.”
Des Jardins also brings job candidates in for a test run, saying, “It gives us a chance to see if the person will fit in to the kitchen.”
In the past Trotter often would present an applicant with a mystery basket and ask him to make a four-course meal.
“You could get a good sense of what they know by how they would put it together,” Trotter says.
At the same time, he adds, “You can have someone spend time washing and sweeping, and tell something about them by the care they put into the tasks that are not so glamorous.”
Symon brings in candidates for a two-day stage, noting: “I want to see if their skill level on paper matches their skill level in the kitchen. It lets us find out where to start them out in the kitchen.”
But while chefs may look for particular attributes in new hires, there also are situations that raise red flags.
A sloppy résumé can contribute to a negative first impression, Tsai says, adding: “If I see a typo on a C.V., I circle it and hand it back to the person. A résumé is your first way of representing yourself.”
By the same token, he continues, a candidate shouldn’t come in wearing a backwards baseball cap and jeans.
“Dress respectfully,” he says. “Act like you really want the job.”
Portale says there isn’t any single thing that sets him off, although he says it’s “bad form to be overly concerned early in the interviewing process about hours and scheduling and how much money you’ll be making.”
“I’d prefer to establish first if a person is right for the position,” he says, “and talk later about money and scheduling.”
“If somebody comes in and says, ‘I want to work days,’ I’d call that a bad sign,” Symon says.
Colicchio also advises job candidates not to disparage a former boss.
“It doesn’t go over well with me if you come in and complain about the last chef you worked for,” he says. “If you had a problem with someone, keep it to yourself.”
Take things one step at a time, too, they say.
“An alarm bell goes off when someone tells me they want to be a celebrity chef,” says Des Jardins, who herself has appeared on “Iron Chef.” “That’s not the goal that leads one to be a significant player in the culinary world. You have to have passion. A lot of young kids are getting into the business for the wrong reason—they want to be the next Mario Batali, and the chances of that are so slim.”
“Too many kids are getting seduced by TV,” Colicchio says. “I gave a commencement address at a culinary school recently and told the students that if you came here because you want to be the next Emeril, you’ve wasted your parents’ money. But if you have a passion for food, you’ll go far.”
Yet these chefs acknowledge that cultivating other media clearly has played a part in their success. Des Jardins notes that celebrity “definitely generates business.”
“I don’t particularly like the limelight myself, but it’s what I do to promote business,” she says. “It’s a great promotional tool for my restaurants, and I’m happy to have the opportunity.”
Tsai, who currently is producing a new season of “Simply Ming,” says his reputation makes it easier to get a candidate through the door.
“But I don’t want someone who wants a job because they think that working with me every day will get them a TV show,” he says.
Of course, some chefs do get to experience the trickle-down effect of celebrity. Symon brings three of his chefs to assist him when he competes at Kitchen Stadium. For the next season, he will bring Lola’s chef, Derek Clayton; Matt Harlan, Lolita’s chef; and Lola’s pastry chef, Cory Barrett.
“It’s just fun for everyone,” he says.
