gritty musings...Bright Shiny Pennies

I don't know if I walk a normal path.  Although I realize that everyone, not just chefs, must circumnavigate a life with more bends than a cavatappi noodle.  The road at this point seems to be strewn with obstacles to joy.  Impediments to the "ultimate success. This last joint, a happy, bubbling, cauldron of gastronomic joy, died far too soon and scarred my heart.. To say I have been bedside at the demise of really good restaurants, would be to deny my laying in the the bed next to the cadaver of culinary dreams.  I have seen more than a few, die that festering slow death  assigned to greasy, roach infested , dimly lit shacks. BUT THEY WERE NOT!  Some died for lack of interest, bad location or economic climes.  Some died from lack of start up capital, the number one killer of restaurant dreams.  Still others died from ownership and or mismanagement.  I suppose it really doesn't matter why they die. In the end, the lights are out, the staff is scattered and the dream lie o

The word is used without regulation.  It is tossed about like "nice" or "delicious".  The term chef.  I have met 23 year old men who call themselves chef.  Line cooks, great line cooks cringe when their uncle introduces them at family functions as "a chef".  It took me years of being in charge of my kitchens to be comfortable with being addressed as  "chef".  The chefs that I had met, on my path were not all great, or talented.  They were not all team leaders, insightful or creative.  But their were a few that set the parameters that I aspire to today. And to me they defined, "chef".   I write this as I bury yet another dream.  Hours of hard work and compromise down the drain in the flush of an owners pen.  Don't get me wrong owning a restaurant is in very rare cases satisfying or rewarding. It is in most cases all about your check book and nothing about the ego or idea that brought them to the table and ultimately, me.  I can say