For the same reason so many cooks and chefs smoke, drink, do drugs, have a rather “varied” sex life, and aren’t generally considered mainstream.
My tats
I’ve answered some of this but I’m in the mood for a long answer, so here it is…
It starts not with “what makes chefs get tattoos” but with “what makes people who are more likely to get tattoos chefs”. Our job isn’t, despite what you might think, glamorous. Even the most accomplished chefs and virtually all cooks are in the shadows of restaurateurs or figure head chefs. Do you really think Keller, Chang, Flay, or any of the “big” chefs still cook? With notable exceptions (Achatz, etc.) few do. The work, the hard and grueling work, is done by chefs whose name will likely never be in a paper. We’re the dark, shady, figures behind glitz and glamour. It takes a particular person to like and work that life.
We’re adrenaline junkies. When table six’ app comes back, nine wants special mains, twelve has been waiting because someone dropped the spinach on the floor, and there’s 14 chits on the board we’re happiest. Not that we LIKE being in the weeds but we shine there. Outside of work we live the same life. We drink, we do drugs, we spend our spare time in a circle of people who work the same hours as us, cops, nurses, hookers, crooks and swindlers, fire technicians – all adrenaline junkies, too. We friend and date in this pool of crazies. Fancy cars and big houses, expensive clothes and fat wallets aren’t what passes as attractive here. Instead it’s personality, individuality, and a knack for having wild stories to pass the night in a low down tavern at the end of the pier in a dark city.
One doesn’t simply walk into Chefdor. Going from goon to boss is hard labor. Lowly paid, virtually thankless, labor. Over the years you’ll experience pain and defeat more than you like. Your hands are arthritic from constant exposure to extremely hot followed by freezing temperatures in short order. Your back is screwed up, you have cuts and burns. Kitchens have the second highest on the job injury rate in America. And, if you’re male and want kids, you better start early. There’s something about standing in front of a hot stove all night…
Those who stay with it for 5+, often 10+ years to become chefs, are freaks. Dedicated, crazy, extremely weird, freaks. They’re also smart and hard working. Who wouldn’t want a smart and hard working person in their job? Yet, for many reasons, they stay in a low paying, socially disruptive, job, working weekends and holidays and anniversaries. Why? Some because no one else wants them. Most because they love the work, love the food, love working with it. With freakdom and that kind of dedication come the food related tattoos. We are members of an exclusive, fire tested, crazy, secret society of people who are stuck behind walls, away from society, when everyone else is awake, only to be let out into the dark of the night when no one cares. And those tats tell that story.
That’s not to say that these days you won’t get cooks and chefs that will just get tats and shave their heads because “everyone else is doing it”. But the grizzled veterans of this business, like sailors, are just broken shells adorned with pictures telling their life behind a stove and in bars when the only company is a washed up hooker from New Jersey who is really a film star and just does this until she is discovered – for the last 20 years of her life.
sharing is caring...
