Careers: Chef

this much I should be a chef yeah makes sense right except loving to eat food

and loving to create food are two entirely different animals or if you're [tiger and goat for comparrison]

a vegan chef of two entirely different soy plants first of all ever seen a chef

well they look like this a lot more often than they look like this not a

shocker when you spend all day every day with your mug hovering over the wafting [man sniffing pot full of food]

aroma of delicious food well you're probably not gonna starve now if you're

cooking healthy stuff using natural ingredients well you probably be just [knife chopping vegetables]

fine but if you're the head chef at Lu ellas

large Shack you could be in for a long future of clogged arteries and heart

disease so definitely a professional hazard there you have to be wary of nope [high cholesterol warning tag]

then there's the matter of hard work and studying what studying but mom cooks

dinner for us every night I don't see her poring over any textbooks well sure

but mom isn't cooking for 50 or 60 demanding patrons and trying to get [restaurant full of people]

written up in bone Appetit magazine throw in a couple of hamburger patties

onto a frying pan and steaming a few baby carrots isn't quite the same as

making this or this or this cooking can be and often is an art to paraphrase an [an assortment of fancy plates]

old SNL character it is just as important to look good as to taste good

remember him Billy Crystal he was great all right well if you have any designs

on cooking the best food in any of the top restaurants well you'll need to have

learned thousands of intricate and sometimes dangerous cooking techniques [chef with pan on fire]

you'll have to have the creativity and originality to craft new and exciting

dishes you may need to experiment with molecular gastronomy which is basically [person working in lab]

where chemistry and cooking meet for those of you who get a kick out of kin

lab most high-end chefs have spent years studying at some keulen Airy school with

a hoodie toidy French name look Uzi Lala stuff like that or getting

screamed at daily by some British guy who thinks he's God's gift to filet [chef screaming at woman]

mignon so yeah it might look fun to toss some pizza dough in the air or to set a

skillet on fire but well there's a ton of hard work involved if you want to

reach the pinnacle of your craft but now let's take a look at the word chef

little misleading you're probably picturing this guy in the tall white hat

smelling vaguely of truffle oil well sure he's a chef but so is this [painting of chef]

woman and this guy not that there's shame necessarily in cooking food on a

smaller scale after all not everyone can afford to eat at Chez Panisse every

night of the week and everyone's got to eat right so maybe it'll be a [girl eating a banana]

short-order cook in this Denny's or maybe you'll work a food truck on

Michigan Avenue in Chicago or maybe you'll be a military chef serving up [woman in mess hall serving military]

grub in a mess hall to keep our boys and girls overseas well-fed and energized

well obviously no shame in that but not much money either not that the goal of [check changing hands]

being a mess hall cook is about fine dining or taste anyway it's about [military man eating food]

generating fuel for those who are protecting our rights and freedoms but

point being any of these chefs are just gonna be scraping by lucky to make 30 or

40 grand a year or so well how about chef of a new quasi fancy sit-down

restaurant well they've got to be doing all right for themselves yeah possibly [busy restaurant]

if the restaurant even last cuz you know one out of every three restaurants fails

in the first year which means everyone is out of a job the chef included even a [chefs with cardboard signs]

new restaurant that becomes popular is likely gonna be in the red for years

before they start to turn a real profit which means you can keep dreaming about

that six-figure salary but it usually ain't gonna happen now yeah there are [woman dreaming of money while in bed]

some chefs who break through to a six-figure land either those who work

and established five-star restaurants or get lucky enough to host a show on The [chef on a cooking show]

Cooking Channel or the Food Network where they're getting TV money to

supplement their restaurants profits so maybe they get their own magazine maybe

they've got their own line of barbecue tongs or whatever but yeah if you really

want to be cooking unintended you got to own the restaurant and it's the real

estate under it that usually carries all the value that restaurant has to be [small pub]

financially successful enough to you know pay the bills easier said than done

but that's the key to be part artist and part businessman

if you're just the head chef at a halfway decent restaurant in tow pika

Kansas well you might be making 50 grand 60 grand a year if you're the sous-chef

or assistant or below chef even less maybe you're making 35 grand a year [head chef and sous-chef]

something like that if instead you get yourself a gig at La coot all a hit

place in Manhattan well maybe you're making a hundred grand a year but if you

owe a lot crouton well you're taking a percentage of the restaurants profits

above and beyond your salary like a hundred percent if you own the whole

thing right but from your Billings you got to pay employees pay the rent on the

physical location the ingredients the insurance maybe you're collecting

another five hundred grand a year or more as always the real money is in

owning things and then you can do your wrong thing if you want on the side so

if it's such a risky proposition and so tough to make good money as a chef why [gambling table]

does anyone do it well what you got to realize is that you're not just feeding

people we need to eat in order to keep moving yeah but it's more than that if

there's one thing that brings people together emotionally its food you could [family eating at a table]

probably even get a Montague and a Capulet to sit down over a delicious

plate of braised short ribs and likely not kill each other at least not until [two men breaking bread]

dessert food is comfort it's love when a chef prepares a meal for someone they're [chef massages man at table]

taking care of them there's that emotional psychological connection for

all of us and if that doesn't grab you stop watching this video you're not a

chef our mothers fed us before we were even

old enough to form solid bowel movements that's how long we felt an association

between nurture and sustenance well to make people usually perfect strangers

feel satisfied full happy well that's an achievement in and of itself it's art [woman eating a shrimp]

and here's a bit of good news the food industry isn't going anywhere

robots may be taking over the world in other ways but until they can produce [robots setting fire to the world]

ships tour and cook food all on their own well there will be a need for

professional chefs we're always gonna need to eat we're always gonna feel the

need to be taken care of to share an enjoyable experience with friends we're

also gonna need to take the occasional trip to the Olive Garden you know just

to get our breadsticks fixed so while the prospects of any given eating

establishment might be dicey your job security as a whole zon fairly solid

ground your skill set will always be in demand even if you have to go from

cooking this to cooking this hey somebody's got to

cook those square of cardboard pizzas right