As we moved from place to place while I was growing up, spending time with my Dad in whatever office he was working in was always a treat. I still remember the characters who worked in those bureaus, mostly local hires who doted on this little girl who liked to sit and watch everything. My Dad traveled a great deal and when he transitioned from print to TV news his hours became even more gruelling. We saw him less and when we did he was often distracted and worn out. Time passed and journalism became taxing on our family, but in spite of all the moving and strife, the energy and thrill of the newsroom continued to speak to me.

If you’ve read any of my blogs about the things you might not know about me, many of them are about the work I did throughout high school for various American news outlets. The bulk of it was translation work as my Russian became stronger during my time at Soviet school, but I had very real dreams of working my way up through the ranks to do exactly what my Dad did, tell the world what was happening, tell people’s stories. While I studied writing and worked as Editor of my college newspaper, I felt very deflated when I approached the big networks in New York as graduation approached and they all seemed to think the years I’d spent working were not worth very much. I was met with rejection after rejection and in what I see now as a bit of youthful defeatism, decided perhaps doing an MFA in creative writing would be a way of storytelling without having to face more ego-bashing rebuffs.  

What does any of this have to do with cooking, you might ask? How did you end up here? Bare with me a moment….We finally watched The Bear last week. To me the best show of last year, it’s about a world-class chef forced to move back to Chicago to take over his family’s restaurant (little more than a sandwich shop) after his brother kills himself. Critics and chefs everywhere have repeatedly praised it for how accurately it depicts what working in a restaurant kitchen is like, and I have to agree. It’s intense, discomforting, and shocking. When the line works well it’s a thing of beauty, when it doesn’t, disaster ensues. Watching the show made me terrifically homesick for work in a professional kitchen and the stress and satisfaction that kind of pathological work brings me.

Echoing The Bear’s intensity is Marco Pierre White’s “White Heat” cookbook. I received a 25th anniversary edition for Christmas and it’s filled with essays by other chefs like David Chang and Anthony Bourdain, hailing White as their inspiration as young men (no women did the same but there are lots of photos of supermodels who hung around the kitchen). Most interesting to me is the photography in the book, lauded as the first in its kind to bring kitchen life to the masses. It was done by a man who was a news/war photographer. Bob Carlos Clark, and he writes in the book that he originally didn’t think he was a good fit for what was essentially a cookbook, but Marco encouraged him to come spend one night’s service in the restaurant kitchen and see. The rest is history as the black and white photos are essentially news/war shots, capturing the heady, testosterone-filled filled hours of service and the frenetic pace. 

I’ve long said that a newsroom and a professional kitchen are really one and the same. Both are fuelled by disfunction and ego and an unhealthy work ethic. Deadline driven, but with obviously different end products, there’s a kind of pressure in both spaces that only a certain kind of personality can handle. In both spaces there are egos easily bruised, perfectionism is standard, creativity under pressure is essential, and among the best, an intellectualism about their craft is intense. There’s often bad behaviour, misogyny runs rife, smoking is still acceptable, substances are abused. So while I didn’t stand up in front of a camera to be broadcast into living rooms around the world, I think I maybe found the one other profession that feeds whatever that need for pressure combined with creativity combined with a kind of raunchy energy. While I know my days on the line in a restaurant kitchen are pretty much behind me, I still love doing the occasional event in them or consulting whenever I get the chance. Sitting in a fancy restaurant overlooking the kitchen in service is another vicarious rush I enjoy whenever I can!

And I’m still someone who writes, but instead writes about food, recipes, their origins, and people. I like to think that my kind of journalism can be just as powerful and perhaps more thought-provoking than any breaking news story. It’s a kind of soft target retelling of things vs. a blow over the head. When I had the opportunity to share my experiences as a chef in the Middle East with a group of mostly American retirees on a cruise ship, I jumped at the chance and was so struck by the many misconceptions they had about the region and how my stories perhaps changed more than a few of their minds. Aside from a journalist’s temperament, my Dad gave me the gift of being able to talk to just about anyone about anything, which has allowed me to dig in and explore the many places I’ve been lucky to live in. So really, maybe I didn’t end up so far away from my childhood dream after all.