Cheffing - an identity crisis.

When work becomes self.

Being a chef is a job. A way to earn a living. Yet few chefs would consider their profession as just that. Most chefs will tell you that cheffing is a way of life – an extension, if not the base of their personality. Cheffing is an identity. And we internalise this identity to such an extent that it can be hard to separate ourselves from our jobs.

These days, many people may wish to avoid solely being defined by their jobs. But chefs don’t seem to mind. If anything, I feel like we often crave it. Announcing our job title to a stranger comes with a momentary expectant tension as we await the approval of the person opposite. And more often than not, we are rewarded with exactly that, with what seems to be genuine interest in our jobs and, therefore, ourselves. In addition to the external validation, cheffing can give us a feeling of being in control of our lives. Cheffing can make us feel skilled, organised, efficient, tough, fast, hard-working, and perhaps above all, needed.

Having only started working in hospitality in recent years, I have been lucky to merely experience this on a superficial level. Yet for some chefs who have been in the business for many years, this phenomenon can run much deeper. Many chefs have started working in kitchens at a young age, perhaps getting a first restaurant job when they were still teenagers, an age where you are very much looking to define yourself. They allow themselves to be shaped and moulded by the hospitality environment. And by not being familiar with any alternative lifestyle, they can’t imagine themselves being anything other than a chef, or even more so, can’t imagine themselves being needed anywhere else.

For some, it may be a kind of escape. Some chefs quote kitchens to have provided a space where they could avoid tough social or economic backgrounds, a space which allowed them to take their minds off their own problems and concentrate on the blissfully impersonal stresses of the kitchen instead. Similarly, the profession has long attracted marginalised groups, people who might not feel like they belong to “regular” society and who see kitchens are the only places where they can be at ease and feel themselves.

So for those who not only started young but also tried to escape their “normal” lives, cheffing is not merely an identity but indeed a desperate and holy refuge, perhaps the only place where they have felt safe and accepted. The relationship with cheffing is therefore dangerously codependent. There is a reliance on our work to provide us not only with purpose but also with a sense of self, a sense of belonging, and a sense of home.

The bitter truth of the matter is that many chefs work such long hours that establishing an identity outside of work can be near impossible. In a restaurant where you work up to seventy-hour weeks, the chefs simply don’t have the time to question their identity beyond cheffing. Their few free hours will be used to recover from and prepare for work. And critically, those who do use cheffing as an escape will not even find a problem in this as it allows them to avoid their lives without question.

It therefore poses the question of what remains if we ever do stop working in kitchens. What is left when we can no longer identify as chefs? For most of us, that doesn’t refer to retirement age. The job is physically and mentally demanding, and despite our obsession with the job and the identity it can give us, most of us silently agree that we wouldn’t want to be standing in kitchens until we’re sixty-five. So what will happen when we do leave in order to care for future families or because we simply want a break from hospitality? What options does the industry provide? And what if a tired-out chef doesn’t see any options open to them beyond a kitchen?

Hospitality remains a largely understaffed industry with high turnover rates and limited budgets. As such, I understand that the options to support chefs are still limited. Yet for those employers who can afford it, providing chefs with a sustainable work-life balance as well as a variety of training options can make a considerable difference in allowing chefs to see and appreciate themselves beyond their skills and identity in the kitchen. As much as I want us to continue to take pride in our professions (increasingly a rarity in this day and age), I hope that there can be a step away from the codependent relationship many chefs have developed with their jobs and that every chef can see and appreciate their potential identity even when they take off their apron.