Good riddance to bullying bosses. But we’ll miss them

White noted that ‘army standard discipline... born out of fear’, was something he ‘had learned at Gavroche’

As the great chef Michel Roux closed the doors of his London restaurant, the mighty Le Gavroche, last week, he declared an end to the era of aggressive, bullying chefs. Asked on the Wine Times podcast if the nation had finally come out of the era of shouty chefs, he replied, “I bloody hope so.”

“Service is tough,” he continued, “but it should never be brutal.” He is not the first chef to criticise the behaviour of chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White. But it was from Le Gavroche that Ramsay and White emerged, so there is some poignancy. As the establishment that bred these men shuts the door on this behaviour, it also shuts up shop for good.

Modern businesses are cracking down on bullying and social media is very handy at exposing it. But as we say farewell to bullying bosses, won’t we show a tinge of sadness? Some of my most entertaining evenings have entailed listening to chefs describe, in detail, the shredding they experienced at the hands of a Gordon or a Marco.

Indeed, White documented it in his autobiography, White Heat.

“Bollockings,” he writes, “included physical abuse. I might severely tug a chef ’s apron, or grab a chef by the scruff of the neck and administer a 10-second throttle, just to focus him.

“They were all pain junkies. They couldn’t get enough of my bollockings,” reflected White, who said that “armystandard discipline” – a discipline “born out of fear” – was something he “had learned at Gavroche”.

So, one has to ask, what will today’s apprentice chefs muse on in later life? Good stories are about conflict. Imagine the Gen Z lot in years to come: “I’ll never forget the morning I called my boss to say I was sorry but I couldn’t come to work that day because my boyfriend had just dumped me and he said, ‘Fine, take the rest of the week off.’”

Being nice and kind and gentle and understanding is certainly how we should always strive to be as bosses. But it sure as hell will make for dull reading in the future. Farewell you b-----ds. But we’ll miss you.