So you want to be a chef?
Seasoned chefs reveal the realities of the job and how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the game.
IN the past 10 years, enrolment in culinary schools in Malaysia has shot up dramatically, alongside an increase in the number of culinary schools that have sprouted parallel to this surge in interest.
For example, a single private university in Kuala Lumpur offering a culinary arts programme can now see an average of 350 students a year. By contrast, 20 years ago, the total annual student enrolment for culinary arts throughout the country was somewhere in the region of 1,500!
“I have some ties with Le Cordon Bleu in Malaysia and yes, I too have noticed that there has been an increase in enrolment in the culinary school from people from all walks of life,” says celebrated local chef Darren Chin, the chef-owner of refined eateries like DC Restaurant and Bref.
Much of this has to do with shows like Iron Chef and Top Chef, which has given chefs a platform and a voice. When these shows first aired, it marked the first time that chefs – who are typically behind-thescenes-folk – were seen and heard. And more people than ever resonated with the fact that cooking could become a viable, respectable career, something that in the past was never the case.
The emergence of these cooking shows also precipitated the age of the celebrity chef i.e. people who became known for their food and their personalities.
This notion that a celebrity chef could be literally anyone was further promulgated by shows like Masterchef which celebrated everyday folk with promising culinary skills. Never before had cooking seemed so glamorous and yet so accessible.
“It’s one of the easiest industries to go into and now it has been put on a pedestal, in the sense that the job is really respected. So now there are many people who quit their jobs and choose to become chefs because there is this sense of instant gratification when you present a dish and people are happy and you make their day.
“So for chefs of my generation – who are 35 and above – it’s like a breath of fresh air, because the perception is no longer that this is a job for people who aren’t academically-inclined,” says Chai Chun Boon, the senior chef de cuisine at luxury resort The Datai Langkawi.
But despite perceptions and attitudes changing over the years, the realities of the job remain the same. So what does it really take to make it as a chef in the longrun?
The reality
Despite painting a pretty picture on television, a chef’s life can be downright exhausting. Most chefs work in hot kitchens for between 12 to 14 hours a day, in a physically laborious job that typically requires standing for long hours.
Chai for example, remembers working nearly all hours of the day at some of the Michelin-starred restaurants he was based at in the past.
“When I was working in Michelin-starred restaurants, I was working 18-hour days every day. It was long and tiring, but if you think about it, my experience was probably accelerated because in six months’ time, I would have put in the same amount of time as someone who had worked a year in a 9-5 job,” he says.
Cooking for pleasure is also vastly different from cooking for customers, who can be finicky, opinionated and sometimes downright rude.
“Just because you love to cook doesn’t mean you can become a chef, because cooking for family and cooking for 100 people with different opinions are two very different things. And unfortunately, a lot of young or new chefs are often not very clear about this,” says Logan Lopez, the chef-owner of European deli Wurst in Bangsar.
Most restaurants are also open either six or seven days a week, so the average chef barely gets a breather and quite often works on public holidays as well. To compound this, base salaries are often low and it can take anywhere from eight years to 15 years before a chef gets promoted to head chef or executive chef, depending on where he or she is working.
“Someone sat me down once and mapped out how long it takes to get to the top as a chef, and gain enough experience to be good at the job. I was told it was good to be a sous chef for two to three years and to be head chef of a restaurant for a few years so I could make mistakes with someone else’s money before opening my own restaurant!
“And basically it takes about 15 years to get there, although this
ramsey says chefs typically have to work up to 15 years to get to the top, which means a long road to promotion. — Filepic
depends on how talented you are and the experience that you have. That experience helps more than anything and you really need to spend time working your way up. To those who can afford it, doing internships in Europe is a great way to move forward,” says Jeff Ramsey, who helms KL eatery Japas by Jeff Ramsey and earned his first Michelin star at the age of 32.
For those working in the hotel industry, the journey to the top is even more tedious as it follows a certain hierarchical pattern.
“A person should spend 18 months in each department to be well-equipped. So to get to the position of head chef or executive chef takes about 10 years. The old saying is that to get to the next level, a chef has to resign or die.
“So it’s a long process when it comes to hotels plus in terms of menus, it’s not as flexible as free-standing restaurants because it has to go through multiple layers of approval, from the food costing department to the marketing team to the general manager,” says Logan.
How Covid-19 has changed the industry
The Covid-19 pandemic changed lives and livelihoods across the country. While most of it hasn’t been great, there have been some silver linings, especially in the F&B industry.
When the Covid-19 pandemic first hit, restaurants were forced to retrench or fire staff. As a consequence, many trained chefs ended up starting their own F&B businesses, in line with the increase in demand for food delivery services.
Consequently, it has become extremely hard to find and retain chefs in the industry. As a direct result of this, many chefs have discovered that they have to adapt or die if they want to hire new talents. Many for example have now increased basic wages to keep up with current demand.
“From a monetary sense, salaries have gone up at least 35% now. Before, a fresh grad would come out and get RM2,000 to RM2,500 but now they are asking for RM3,000 to RM3,500 and if you don’t meet this minimum cap, they are not interested in working. So I have approached it in terms of meeting their monetary requirements,” says Chin.
Chai believes this is one of the good things about Covid-19 in that it has forced the industry to change salary standards in keeping with modern times.
“This lack of manpower started a strong movement where people
Chin has been moving with the times and now has an eye towards investing in particularly talented young chefs who work with him. — Filepic
according to Logan, cooking for customers is very different from cooking for family, so young chefs have to be prepared to endure criticism. — Wurst
started to throw salary packages to attract people to work for them.
“And honestly, I think it’s good for everyone because Malaysia has to change. I came to KL in 2000 and used to have a bowl of noodles for RM3, but now it is triple the price. Everything is more expensive and yet the salary range remained the same until 2020, which doesn’t make sense. So the positive side of Covid is that salaries have deservedly gone up,” says Chai.
Work-life balance has also become critical for many young chefs and what this has translated to is more restaurants opting to shorten opening times or even deciding to allow chefs to work five days a week, something that was previously unheard of.
“I strongly believe that the current newer generation are not willing to sacrifice time in the kitchen unless they are motivated. Cooking professionally is basically an enjoyment in terms of providing that kind of service for clients, but many young chefs are not willing to sacrifice their time, so we have to be realistic and set precedents to meet these expectations,” says Chin.
Chin has also gone above and beyond to retain staff as a direct result of the critical manpower shortage affecting the industry post-covid. If, for example, he finds a chef that he feels is particularly talented, he invests in them.
“When you work in the kitchen, you literally advance your age a lot more than a person who is doing a regular job – that’s a huge sacrifice for one individual. So for us, we want to make it worth their while, so I have decided to invest in potential candidates by awarding them future businesses.
“So if I find that the person is naturally gifted and serious about taking the next step, the final step is owning their own restaurant. So my restaurant group is willing to fund that because the main objective is to create loyalty. Otherwise you have people working for one year and then jumping to another restaurant. So I am thinking of sustainable ways to reward and paint a bigger picture so they can see an end goal,” he says.
Staying in the business
The stark reality is that most people who study culinary arts or even start out working as chefs don’t always last. In fact, according to Chai, drop-out rates are incredibly high.
“Oh, there is a huge drop-out rate – in a class of 10, maybe one or two will continue working as chefs while the remaining eight will change careers,” he says.
For those who do stay in the industry, Logan says they get what they give and adapting is part and parcel of life as a chef.
“How I look at it is basically it’s like a marriage – if there’s no pain, there’s no gain. And I think you must be willing to give something to earn something. The industry is very real and it teaches you that this is how life is, so you just have to learn to manage it,” he says.
Others like Chai say it is important for chefs to remember why they are doing the job in the first place. This helps keep them grounded, sane and more likely to stay in the industry for the longhaul.
“I think with every job, you need to find your ground and see why you are doing it. I personally don’t like cooking very much, but I am good at orchestrating flavours and decent enough to be able to create dishes that people can enjoy, so I see myself as more of an artist than a cook or a chef. So I think you need to find your own reasons to why they are doing it. For me, it is about curating art on a plate,” he says.