Quote from: Arch on July 25, 2013, 12:17:38 PM
But if a boy grows up with a sense of smell/taste that becomes blunted by hormones as he matures, then I expect that he won't go into a food-oriented profession in the first place.
Most people I know go into cooking food because there's not much else for them to do, not because they have the nose of a bloodhound. Trust me, I've grown up in a pub which was once well known around here for serving good, real food. The first chef, my father, started cooking because he didn't want to go to university and didn't know what else to do, and thought it might enjoy it. The next one is cooking because he didn't want to do anything academic. One who just left happened to start working there when he was fourteen, so it was just a natural progression up the kitchen, and his replacement is Romanian and it was just something he could do to earn money here when his music career didn't work out right in Romania. My mother is a chef because, to be perfectly honest, she doesn't have the skills for much else. Oh and there's my boss, who
apparently is a Swiss trained chef, unfortunately no one can stand him being in the kitchen long enough to prove it to us.
I'm not saying that chefs are only chefs because they can't do anything else, that's definitely not the case. I could never do that job, and god help them all, it's a ridiculously stressful environment, and most of the time terrible hours. Just plating up the starters and desserts drives me loopy sometimes (but then the chefs aren't expected to do all the washing up and carrying the food out either...) All I'm saying is that chefs aren't good at being chefs because they have amazing senses. In my experience the average bloke on the street has senses good enough, its whether they have the knowledge - and cool-headedness - behind them that makes them a good chef or not.
