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I mean, at the time it it was a job, I was 19, so it was like ‘oh look money’. I work all week and then I had money to do things in on my days off. That was different though. BecauseI I was catering - so it was more daytime, start at seven, finish at four. And then since moving to London, working in restaurant kitchens, it’s the opposite. Early starts, late finishes, no weekends off. But yeah, then I started to like it, it’s full on, it keeps you occupied all day.

I’ve never had an office job, but I don’t think I could have one. It’s basically like school. You go, ‘can you do this? Send me this email, do me these things, tell me these things again. I’m done.’ Clock off at 4:00. It’s a different environment here, it’s fast paced and there’s always shit to do. There’s never a time when there’s nothing to do. There’s always something you can learn or something you can try, just constant you know? It doesn’t change. It doesn’t really stop. There’s moments where it’s a bit quieter today or there’s less to do but there’s always something. You can clean but if you can’t clean, you can organize.

Obviously my job is a little bit different, because I have to organize and do all the stocktake and ordering. But it’s different with the amount of people that we have now. I don’t really get to do ‘my job’ in the sense that it would have been before or in other places. Where the head chef doesn’t really do a ‘section’. They’re just overseeing, doing all the background stuff and teaching people how to do new things.

My name is Rowan. I’m 25 and I’ve been working in hospitality for seven years. I’m currently a chef de partie at Sorella in Clapham.

Honestly, I just started to work in the kitchen because I didn’t do perhaps as well in my A-levels as I’d hoped. Well, in my first year of A-levels. So I quit. I was always interested in food to an extent, so I just got a kitchen porter job in a pub. And yeah that was it really. That was the start. 

Yeah, that was it. It was, more versatile than other KP roles because I was certainly allowed to sort of help out with service and the food. But yeah, I did that for over two years. After that I moved to Italy and that was kind of my first real taste of having solely a, chef, role.

I had always loved Italian cuisine. And I’d always thought, if there was anywhere I would of liked to learn the trade, especially outside of the UK, it was there. So I just thought like, yeah. That was it. Off I went really. I spent 10 months there.

Yeah, I did two stages in Italy. First one didn’t go terribly well, the second one was good. So I stayed there for quite a while. But the whole thing started off at a culinary school in Florence, for two months. And then after that, I moved on to do my stages which was very interesting. At the school we would do a we do a cooking class twice a week and we’d learn from a chef who had a lot of experience in Michelin starred kitchens. He was like the godfather of Italian cuisine. So he just taught us absolutely everything. And then there were a lot of other elements as well - we went to vineyards, a slaughterhouse.

Most of us were too tame and we of sort just bailed out (laughs). I think only one person went in the end. Well, I mean, you did literally have to witness a pig be shot dead. It was, not particularly the nicest thing.

I think, in Italy they are really keen on emphasising sustainability and quality ingredients. I think, to be honest, if we are going to choose to eat meat it does make sense that we should be exposed to the fact that the animals gave their lives for us really.

But yeah, we all bailed out. One day I really should go to a slaughterhouse.

It’s really important, especially as well to know where the ingredients come from. Certainly in most restaurants around the world of a certain quality, we always make sure that the meat we get is really sustainably sourced. And, also for the sake of taste.

With this kitchen, I’m relatively happy with things. Everybody’s nice, it’s quite relaxed and the food’s really good. So I think that’s like the best possible outcome. But most kitchens aren’t that. Most are places of extreme competitiveness, a lot of shouting, a lot of bullying and a lot of ego. And jealousy.

Yeah. I mean, if you have a young person come in and you’ve been a chef for 20 years, but you’re not very good, you have a huge ego and then you have a young chef come in and he or she is instantly better than you then there’s going to be some jealousy there. So in that respect, I think that there’s so much more I would change about kitchens. Some of the stuff that goes on in kitchens, especially in Michelin star establishments, the tales I’ve heard are downright horrific. Everyone really needs to be aware of that. Everybody needs to speak up about it really.

I think the difficult thing is there’s a fine line. It’s very important for chefs, especially in that kind of establishment to have a real sense of purpose, really prepare to move fast, work extremely hard. Every chef should have that attitude. It’s just not going to work if a chef doesn’t have that attitude and will not listen and make the effort to work hard and learn. Then in a very high pressure environment that can be extremely stressful for someone in a higher position. Yeah. So in that respect, the way we communicate in kitchens there is naturally probably going to be some shouting. But there’s a difference between that and downright abuse.

You’ve just got to be fair. It’s about fairness. You know, if that person makes mistakes, you should speak up on it. But if that person does well, you should also speak up on it. It should always be that everything is fair, and kitchens are often very unfair. That’s the way I see it.

Yes and no. I think the thing is, if anything, it helps me just to focus my mind onto things. I’ve had OCD for quite a few years and that’s not very nice sometimes. And it’s really nice that I can completely divert my OCD into my work. You know, you get an opportunity to really focus your attention working here. I think in that respect, hospitality can offer you skills in every occupation, really. Because, you’re always going to do better in your job if you’re focused.

I was in a period of job searching for a bit, which led me to start looking into becoming a chef. It was quite a left turn for me career wise. It wasn’t like anything I’d been applying to, but cooking was a passion of mine and I thought I could give it a go. So, I reached out to someone who was a chef to understand what it would be like and ask questions, and they said if you really are interested then you can do a stage (an unpaid internship a cook takes to expose him- or herself to new techniques) in London.

It was an experience. It was a bit stressful because I didn’t know the first thing about what I was doing. I just came in to try my best and have a good attitude. At the end of the day it was exhausting because I wasn’t used to working those hours. And I was just a little bit strung out at the start time, wondering if I was going to mess up something big, which I didn’t want to do because they kind of did me a favour. (laughs)

But at the end of it, he offered me a job. I spent a few days really thinking about it but it didn’t pan out in the end.

I ended up getting in contact with Robin Gill and he then put me in contact with the head chef here. I wasn’t sure if I was really cut out to work here, but I thought screw it if they don’t like me they can just kick me out (laughs).

I think I was really fortunate to start my career at this place, as it’s a really nice environment and I’ve been really supported. I definitely remember the head chef being super patient with me at the start.

I was studying biochemistry. I graduated but I was a bit disappointed with the result. I was applying for jobs but I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do in life. It was just quite a difficult time of sending off a bunch of applications, writing cover letter after cover letter, finding and applying for jobs, most of them not hearing back with a few getting back with a letter to say sorry, no thank you. It was most draining when you did get through the first stage or the second stage and then it didn’t pan out.

There were periods of applying a lot and really trying to stay on top of it, then getting frustrated and not applying as much because of that. I just wasn’t happy doing it. At some point after realising I wasn’t really in a great mental state, I thought, why am I applying for it? You know, to work a job that I’m not even sure I’ll like. So I thought, okay, let’s just go back to basics. I started to think about stuff that I like, think about the interests of mine and one of those is that I always loved cooking. When I was quite young the first job I wanted was to be a chef. So I thought screw it, might as well give it a try.

Around seven shifts of 7 hours a week. Which is split up into three days of working either of two shifts - 9pm to 5pm or start at 3pm to close (10:30pm on average). Then for two days of the week we do doubles, so working from 9pm to 10:30pm, which is about 13 and a half hours. Nearly 50 hours a week in total.

But at the moment we’re doing eight shifts a week so that’s three doubles and two singles. It’s a lot of hours and you’re on your feet almost the entire time. It can be pretty intense. There is a lunch break for about 30 minutes at 4pm. I think the biggest thing is just staying on top of things. Being prepared and making sure that the prep is enough so you’re not thinking the whole night ‘am I about to run out of this?’

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is, it’s a lot easier just to not be lazy. It can be tempting to leave things for another day but ends up just being more stressful, it’s best just to get ahead.

I think to a degree, yeah. I enjoy the organisation of everything but also the chaos of service. Things can go wrong at a moment’s notice. Each moment can be seized or wasted, it can be a little bit intoxicating to be honest. When you’re having one of the worst shifts, hundreds of plates, chaos upstairs, just full on overall, at the end of it, it can feel really good because you just got through it. You push yourself a lot.