The Gift and the Curse of a Great Chef

  As a diner when you enter a restaurant, the minimal expectation is to eat food that reaches your sense of value.
But for the chef it means everything....

Every item that comes out of the kitchen is an extention of the chef. It is a combination of his vision, his hard work, dedication, 16 hour shifts, his time away from his family, everything that makes the chef what he envisions himself to be pours out like a cornucopia onto the plate.

The food for the diner is the chef's summation of who he sees himself.

So what the diner doesn't see is this pursuit of perfection that is transferred around the kitchen, an energy that is unspoken yet blanketed around everyone involved from the dishwasher to the sous chef. For the chef this vision of perfection is seen, but never felt, except for brief moments before it slips through their fingers like water in a cupped hand.

It is the true essence of madness....pursuing something knowing that in your heart it is truly impossible to achieve.....and yet it still is your motivating factor.

So what the diner experiences at best is a taste, a taste of their sense of perfection, but for the chef buried in the kitchen he will never know perfection was achieve. But they will attempt to reach it on the very next plate.

This is the gift and the curse of a great chef......