It’s a Chef’s Life

Although I like watching Master Chef, I would love to see a reality show on the life of your average chef in the kitchen.  The job is not easy and has unsociable working hours.  In England I had a housemate who was a chef.  He ran a restaurant somewhere outside Doncaster.  This was his working day.  Get up at 9.00am get ready and go to work.  Work out menus for week, put in order for food, take delivery of food, sort out staff and covers.  Prep food, manage kitchen and cook food, clean kitchen and about 1.30am leave restaurant.  He would then be ready to socialize and have a few beers – the only problem being that most of us were in bed by then.  His  life therefore, tended to revolve around drinking with other chefs or going to all night discos as everything else was closed.  Definitely not condusive to meeting women or being able to sustain a relationship – it depressed him and he drank way too much for his own good. I suffered as well because he never fancied cooking at home or was too pissed, so I missed out on good cuisine. 

 One particular week he was upset as his latest girlfriend had finished with him on the grounds that she never saw him.  My friends and I decided to cheer him up and meet him after work.  We got hammered and arriving back in the early hours of the morning he decided to cook up a storm.  Unfortunately, he was only capable of cooking up egg fried rice.  

 The next day, bleary eyed I fell down the stairs in search of some headache tablets.  As I groped my way to the kitchen I was greeted by my landlady.  Her foot was tapping and her arms were crossed.#

 “Ah hell” I thought “what now?”.

She launched into a verbal attack “You woke us up last night.  Look at the mess in the kitchen.  There’s rice everywhere. You’d better clean it up. This is not good enough. I’m anally retentive and can’t stand anyone having fun.  I expect you to pay rent and tip toe around me ”.

While she was berating me Tania, the Alsatian, padded in and snuffled my hand.  Looking down I saw that the dog had a rice necklace interwoven into her fur with clumps of egg interspersed like jewels hanging off a white chain.   I tried, with  limited success, to clean her up without landlady from hell noticing.  No chance.

 “Look what you have done to the dog” she screeched.

 “Oh for god’s sake” I replied “I’m not allowed to use the phone, I have to use a separate room to eat in, your neurotic, you and your boyfriend have rows in the bathroom, your daughter whines, is a pain in the ass and demanding because your so wrapped up in yourself and now I’m not allowed to have a good time”.  “Oh and by the way you owe me for dog food”. 

At that point, Andy, my friend staggered out of his pit, rice still stuck in his hair.  He got the same dialogue.  Unfortunately, he saw the dog and started to laugh –  I joined in. 

The landlady stalked out of the house leaving us to clear up the kitchen and clean the dog.

We  both moved out a couple of weeks later.  I never did get that cordon bleu meal.