My Journey

 

I was first introduced into the kitchen 2 days after my 16th birthday. I was excited to earn some money at the weekend, £3.32 an hour to be precise.

 

Now school was a weird time. I was going into sixth form with 0 interest in my “chosen” subjects. I really tried to fit in at my new workplace. It was loud, it was scary and fast paced. I used to wash up as quickly as humanly possible. I had perfected the art of washing up and i was proud, the chefs liked me, i think, looking back, why wouldn't they? I did everything like a muppet. 

 

There was a chef there called Keith, he had a level 2 so to me he was Gordon Ramsey. He once had a fight with another chef and they were literally rolling around on the floor. Sean, the other chef I did not like, was always drinking something from a glass bottle in the fridge that smelt like petrol. It was my first encounter with physical violence. They used to all go out after work with little bags of pills and sometimes they would drop me home. I felt accepted.

 

Fuck this school stuff, i left and went to college to do my city and guilds 1,2 and 3. I also left the restaurant after a year or so because I felt like I was pretending to like all the violence and testosterone. I should have listened to those gut feelings but something told me that it's not all the same.

 

Fast Forward a stint with pret a manger whilst doing my NVQs and a life friend (from primary school, we never went to the same secondary) was going into his second year at Keele university. Filled with hope, promise and a fully loaded fiat punto I moved halfway up the country to begin my drug and alcohol fuelled career.

 

I actually got a job FOH at the university, I found it a breeze and within 6 months i was head waiter, i vividly remember Danny who was one of the chefs screaming out over the pass, “fuck me can we get a fucking pastry chef” whilst his three tier cake was sliding all over the place. “You need to pop some dowels in their Dan before you ice it mate” I said with some sort of enthusiasm. “Come on then cheffy, come here and fix this” So i did, and iced it. “Dan, I do have a level three in pastry you know” not like that makes a difference, but he certainly was impressed, i started in the kitchen on the next rota run, leaving the waiting staff flapping and asking me how to clean the coffee machine for the next few months.

 

Keele university was a great job, we worked Monday to Friday mainly, the pay was good at the time and we got access to the university bars. Imagine chefs having weekends off with access to the university bars. Needless to say i don't really remember much of my time off, i do however remember most monday mornings. I never really got into the powders, but weed was literally growing off trees and everywhere you went it stunk of it. So naturally I indulged in many hazy nights. 

 

I met a girl from sheffield, and i sort of ended up chasing her around till eventually i jacked in my job and blindly moved in with her,  I hopped around from shitty restaurant filled with its own fair share of stories all drug and alcohol related debauchery to some nicer restaurants, Man these nicer restaurants were hard work and they played even harder too.

 

I was working for my first 3 rosette place as a CDP and we were in the middle of cooking lunch for Jamie Oliver who was filming for his “ministry of food” series on tv. He also hired out the whole gaff so lunch was fairly straight forward but stressful a fuck too, i had never felt pressure like this before. I remember the sweat dripping off my eyebrows, my hands trembling. I was being paid 18k a year for 65+ hours a week. Disgraceful. I don't know why I put up with it for so long. Something inside me snapped whilst being caved in on the “snacks” section, i looked over at a subway (the sandwich shop) across the road and said “i could literally be paid double making fucking sandwiches”, the owner and big boss was standing right there in my face, “Yes Michael but think of this an an experience” That was it, my hungover, hazy mind just snapped and i lost it, “yes experience isnt paying my fucking bills though is it” and i walked, i left my knife box and everything in it. I never returned.

 

I was broken, I had put 3 years into this restaurant. My girlfriend was smoking as much weed as i was, and i felt like scum, i got the nearest, quickest job, I still felt like scum. What the fuck was i doing?

 

All in all i smoked, cried, drank my way through 5 years of shit and one day I WOKE UP and said fuck this, i stopped the smoking, i stopped the drinking (kind of) and started to take life a bit more seriously, My girlfriend at the time did not take to this new me and we started to drift apart. One particular evening I was trying to get to sleep and I heard car doors opening and boots closing. When I woke up most of my belongings were gone, all stuffed into my car! 

 

“Hey what the hells going on?” I had nowhere to go, I still had to be at work for 7.45 am so I just went there with a car full of stuff like a looney. I thought maybe I could crash at one of my colleagues' houses. No bueno.

 

I plucked up the courage to call my Mum, Dad answered Fuck. “Hey Dad, erm something happened and i don't know what to do” i felt like a little boy again, scared of being told off, tears rolling down my face even writing this now. I can vividly remember the fear of the unknown judgement. All I ever wanted to do was make my Dad proud of me and this felt like a step backwards.

 

I drove 3.5 hours in my peugeot 106 (kind of an upgrade) to my parents and we stayed up till the early hours talking though everything. I owe them everything and my life changed dramatically from this point on.

 

I found work in a nice pub, and I found my groove again. I met one of my old girlfriends, she loved food so it was a win-win. Rocksalt opened up with Mark Seargent and I was thinking of applying for Folkestone's crazy new high end restaurant. He walked into the pub! Holy shit “Hi Mark” it was so leftfield it caught me off guard, I just happened to be downstairs getting a pint of cider for a sauce i was making. “Hi Chef, good food here, keep it up or come and work for me.

 

He literally gave me his number. I then had to cook for him and his companion whilst pretending I was all cool up in the kitchen. A few months later I traded my whites for the silver jackets we used to wear at Rocksalt. I flourished, I hit every section hard, larder, garnish, pastry and eventually sauce. I was doing the hours, doing the time, earning the respect. I was back, back in the game.

 

A year goes by and my girlfriend then leaves to go and do a masters degree and I was left with my thoughts for a year. I had this gut feeling it wasn't going to pan out too well. She finished up and got a job in Luton. I chased her to St Albans and got a job in my first chain restaurant as a sous chef Loch Fyne,It was all fresh back then, i managed to earn the title of head chef after my head chef moved on up to an area role and we smashed it, like absolutely smashed it, best in the company and all that jazz, i felt like a king and a mug at the same time, i was back to doing the standard 75 hours a week. 

 

The inevitable happened, my girlfriend and i grew more distant, i was trying to numb all the pain by drinking and pretending it was all the works fault, it was always the same story, I have to work these hours, you dont understand, i have the weight of the world on my shoulders and there isnt any let up, we open the restaurant regardless if someones sick or a chef leaves, i cant “put a pin in it” till monday when suzie gets back from fucking holiday. I was breaking down after three years of being a head chef. We broke up and I slept on another chef's floor, that same chef is no longer with us. That chef turned up drunk one day, set a pan of oil on fire and tipped it down my legs. I eventually moved in with my general manager and a few months later I jumped online to try and actually meet someone properly, this was before the days of tinder and online dating was a bit embarrassing. I “matched” with Laura, my now wife.

 

Fast forward a year and we are expecting a baby. Holy Fuck, “insert alarm bells here” shit just got real and i was determined to sort my shit out, there was no way Loch Fyne would accept me working my actual contract hours of 45 which is absolutely wild. So I threw in the towel and got a job at a new opening of Cote restaurants.

 

Paint by numbers is how i would describe a head chef at Cote for me it was the most painfully dull and “kitchen manager” job i had ever done and i found it stressful for all the wrong reasons, nevertheless i was hitting the 24 hour gym, i wasn't drinking and i did 3 years there whilst our first son Reuben was born. I was stuck in a rut though, I even tried to join the police force! At one point. I was determined to have a better future for my new little world. 

 

Laura and I eventually bought a house here in Essex as St Albans was not a chef's neighbourhood price tag. I quit my paperwork filling, stock counting, labour managing job and started working for a pub/hotel chain, freedom of menus, fresh produce, this was like a best case compromise, they had strong(ish) morels going in about work life balance and it felt like a good fit.

 

After three more years i was still head chef and i started hopping around some of the other sites, i was “fixing”. COVID 19 was that thing on a cruise ship and no one really cared, before we knew it LOCKDOWN, our world as everyone else's was turned upside down.

 

What is this Christmas time? Easter time? Mothers Day? Fathers Day? All these normal things were happening, I had maybe a few Christmas Days off before but this was different, this was good. I spent the year teaching Reuben his school work, reading books on mindset and generally how to get better at life. 

 

We all eventually go back and I'm instantly angry, annoyed, sad. I want more for my family, which we were trying to expand, after 5 years we managed to have Felix, our second little nutter of a boy. I wasnt allowed at the birth as Laura contracted Covid in the hospital and it fucked me up, i always felt like i owe Felix this, i feel like i let him down from the second he was born, i couldnt deal with it anymore, I WOKE UP again on the line one day and thought nah, im doing something with my life right now. I was desperate, I was a man possessed, I was determined to succeed, no one was coming to help me, no one was going to offer me a dream job. I had to do this myself!

 

I started my own chef business, doing private dining and just general cover in restaurants when I wanted to, it was good, I felt a lot more free and it was exciting, I got a few private parties booked in and the money was good. I then stumbled across some tv and advertising opportunities. I managed to get a gig (I still do) at a vineyard where I run my own mini restaurant on fridays. Just like that, I had broken free from the overwhelming weight on a chefs shoulders, the constant stresses of managing a daily kitchen, stocks, gps, labour, holidays and also taking on everyone's problems and trying your best to help them just so they could work.

 

So i was earning similar money but working a lot less and i took time off when i wanted the time, i now have christmas off with my family, birthdays and everything else that's important to my family, i never want my children to look back on the christmas photos and i am not in them.

 

With my new sense of freedom I was speaking to chefs, speaking about the struggles, offering some advice, hell some even listened. It got me thinking, I like this, I like helping, I then spent the next 18 months building FreeChef, a place for chefs to go and learn the skills they need to go private and free themselves. It's now my main focus.

 

The mental scars are still there though, it's not like the pain just goes away. It's like that feeling of when you finally stop to take a day off,  you get sick. It's like the world catches up on you, your body catches up on you and it finally reveals how it actually is, i used to probably have 6 coffees easily a day, never used to drink water (certainly not enough anyway) Im now 37, i have been diagnosed with fatty liver from the lack of water over the years, i was taken to hospital with hypertension, my blood pressure soars so high that it feels like someone is sitting on my chest. I'm 37, it's all fun and games until the game tries to kill you. I see chefs drinking 4 red bulls and a double espresso in a day and a little piece of me hurts, i see so much pain still out there, this is a condensed version of my story, there are so many other things i have witnessed and it's just not right, most of the incidents can be prevented by having more staff and being more aware and empathetic to their needs. Look after yourselves chefs, before it's too late. There is no shame in wanting a better life, there is no judgement on asking for a bit of help. Together we can all make a difference. I am just 1 man, But i will fight for everyone.