INSPIRATION
There is a lot of inspiration all around us if you want to make a career in the restaurant business. You can find it every time you step out to get a cup of coffee or meet friends over a drink or whether it is to celebrate a birthday at the hottest new restaurant in town. We travel and discover new cuisines, we taste a dish which brings back memories, you can find inspiration on a shelf in Kinokuniya or while watching Netflix or even whilst flipping through TV channels.
Finding the inspiration is easy. The restaurant business is literally everywhere. Everyone has a memory at a restaurant. Everyone gets inspired by a restaurant sometime in life.
Cooking is humbling. No matter what Chef you eventually do become, it is always down to the basics. Bare basic! Everyone has to set up a chopping board or sharpen their knives to begin the process.
Once you get into the industry then you start getting acquainted with people. Talking to people in the industry helps. These people become an integral part of your journey. They will guide you during your career. Care for you. Even put your interests before theirs at times. Your colleagues also become invaluable teachers. All the line staff. They may teach you their particular way of doing a task to its best.
It is time to get serious if you want to choose this career. Pick the right books. Talk to the right people. Spend time in the right places.
BOOKS
It all started with Escoffier followed by Henri Charpentier. Marco Pierre White was this rockstar Chef who set the tone later. Everybody just wanted to be him. He published a book White Heat which showed the then ignorant world the life of a Chef. The late Anthony Bourdain was next with Kitchen Confidential. My first inspiration came when someone told me about el bulli and in the form of Ferran Adria.
My main sources of inspiration and one I will always look upto is that of Grant Achatz with Alinea first and Life on the line which changed my views completely. Alinea was Grant's dream project. It is one of those restaurants where a Chef would put his entire life learnings. He was already well established in Chicago by then. But to open it and take it to the level he did is commendable. His struggles during cancer... How his support system helped him... The way he had his best menu when he couldn’t taste anything and then to take it to three Michelin stars! His works inspires Chefs around the world. Look at the tabletop dessert which is done literally by a lot of Chefs globally. Where did it come from? Why don’t you read a little bit about Alinea?
Lisa Abends The Sorcerers Apprentices beautifully explains the journey of stagieres in El Bulli. The way Ferran inspired them. What they did? How they learned? People from different countries all united by one passion. One restaurant striving to be the best in the world.
Modernist cuisine the book by Maxime Bilet and Nathan Myhrvold is mind blowing and the amount of detail, photographs in this contemporary cooking encyclopedia is brilliant.
Gordon Ramsey inspires in a way, no other does. The way he manages time, the way he learned with the best, the way he built his empire and runs his restaurants including one with three Michelin stars. Amazing!
Thomas Keller, Marcus Wareing, Jason Atherton are Chefs that you work with all make up this list.