Interns

I was an intern once.  All I really remember is the constant "push, push man" yelled at me in a thick french accent.  A common phrase yelled in a busy kitchen.  It means hurry, or better yet it means you should have been done with that hours ago.  I couldn't keep pace because I was naive to the work load and ethic needed to survive a restaurant of that caliber. 

I may not have kept up, but I tried.  I tried as hard as I could.  I watched everything around me and then went home and tried to replicate it.  I always wanted to get better and to learn more.  I wanted to know how to make everything, but more importantly I wanted to know how to make things better.  I used to dream about the places I would go out to eat if I could afford and think about how I would prepare what I would have ordered. 

About the only thing I read is about cooking, be it as complex as a Ducasse or Roux brother's cookbook or as simple as a Cook's Illustrated or a Saveur.  I study Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz as much as I do Escoffier and Childs.  I literally live, breathe and eat food.  I work as hard as I can and I always want and work to get better. 

Sometimes I think that cooking professionally in America is still considered job, not a career.  In other countries it is considered as elite as law and government.  It is hard to think that so many "aspiring young cooks" thing that all they have to do is show up...