May 11th, 2026

Put Your Big Girl/Boy Pants On

A love letter to the cooks who didn't need a safe space — and a reality check for those who do.

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I have been cooking professionally for over two decades. I've worked in hot, cramped, understaffed kitchens where the AC was a myth, the head chef was a nightmare, and the walk-in cooler was the only place you could cry in peace. And you know what? We were fine.

Something happened between then and now. Somewhere between the rise of food TV and the invention of the "wellness check-in," we collectively decided that kitchens needed to become... comfortable. And listen — I believe in basic human dignity. I believe in paying people fairly and not hurling sheet pans at your line cooks. That's not what this is about.

This is about the fact that cooking — real cooking, professional cooking — is hard. It is physically and mentally brutal. Your feet hurt. Your burns layer on top of each other. You smell like fryer oil on your days off. That's the gig. That's always been the gig.

Twenty years ago, if you couldn't take the heat, you literally got out of the kitchen. Now they want to schedule a debrief about it.

I'm not saying the old ways were perfect. The hazing culture, the screaming, the absolute disregard for mental health — that stuff was genuinely toxic, and I'm glad some of it is gone. But somewhere in cleaning that up, we accidentally raised a generation of cooks who don't know how to get their ass kicked by a busy Friday night and come back on Saturday ready for more.

I've seen young cooks walk off the line mid-service. Mid. Service. Over what? Being told their sauce broke. I've seen "chefs" with 400k followers who can't butcher a chicken without a tutorial. I've seen culinary school graduates who have never worked a double, never prepped for a banquet of 300, never improvised when the delivery truck didn't show.

The craft used to be earned. You sweated for it. You stayed after your shift to learn how to properly break down a duck because the sous chef said so and you wanted to be better. Nobody filmed it for content. Nobody asked if it aligned with their personal brand.

I once sliced the tip of my finger clean off on a mandoline. My chef pressed it to the flat top, cauterized it right there on the line, looked me dead in the eye, and said "get back to work." And I did. Because that's what you did. Was it an OSHA nightmare? Absolutely. Did I learn more about mental toughness in that thirty seconds than most cooks learn in a year? Without question.

The kitchen doesn't care about your feelings. It cares about whether your mise en place is ready by 4pm.

Look — I love seeing new people fall in love with food. I love the enthusiasm, the creativity, the fact that more people are taking cooking seriously as a career. But love for food is not the same as toughness in the kitchen, and confusing the two is exactly how you end up crying in the walk-in at 7pm on a Saturday because someone told you your risotto was too loose.

Tighten up. Learn from the criticism. Get your ass back on the line.

The food doesn't wait and neither do the guests.

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