Chefs are Fucking Crazy

August 27th, 2008Blog0 comments

My two favorite food shows have one thing in common. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations has a disclaimer after every commercial break that warns that the show is for mature audiences only. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is rated TV-MA. Why? Because the chefs on these shows are fucking crazy.

Ramsay swears like a motherfucker. For some reason BBC America lets the word “shit” slip by but bleeps out the word “fuck”. Bourdain swears, makes double entendres about food and fucking sheep, smoked two packs a day (I’m told he just recently quit), and implies that he takes a massive dose of hallucinogens during his on-camera trip to Peru.

I am told that most chefs are crazy. They scream, curse, throw things around. The phrase “he swears like a sailor” doesn’t apply anymore. It should be “he swears like a chef”. Also, “he punches like a chef”, “he murdered that dude just like a chef would”, and “they went all chef on him.”

I’ve been thinking about this. Why are chefs fucking crazy?

What I have so far is this: They work in restaurants.

Restaurants are where it all goes down. People die in restaurants — they have heart attacks, get food poisoning, choke on something. Historically, a restaurant is a great place to assassinate someone. Restaurants are the likeliest places to be blown up by terrorists. Plus restaurants are stocked with tons of booze, which is essential to giving a person enough liquid courage to punch or stab someone.

And then there’s the kitchen. It’s hot, cramped, and everyone is under pressure. Everyone is armed. Knives, mallets, rolling pins, pots and pans. There are pots of boiling liquid, ovens baking, hot oil.

So essentially you’re planting already insane people in the worst environment possible — an environment most conducive to violence. That’s why chefs are fucking crazy.

And the crazier they are, the better the food. Mmmmm, nummers!