When I fell into this thing, this cosa nostra of cuisine, it was by accident. I had a background in fine art, and I was seduced by the creative process of cooking and the satisfaction of making things with my hands. Fifteen years later, I've been a baker, a line cook, a sous chef, now a pastry chef, and I can't imagine doing anything else. But back then, I never planned to make a career out of it, and the "foodie" culture we know today was still in its infancy. Back then, people still craved what came out of kitchens more than access into them.

Now, fueled by cooking shows and the Web, we have a culture of cuisine-as-entertainment. We're barraged by food porn, coffee-table cookbooks, and gritty tell-alls of the professional kitchen. Customers are constantly looking for what's new, the next big thing. As a professional, I've seen this culture make certain cooks hungry for stardom, hoping to be on TV shows and in magazines. But I've also seen that interest in cuisine shrink the world, making exotic ingredients more accessible, and push us to keep discovering new flavors and learning new techniques. It's a truly exciting time to be a chef, but it's always taken certain kinds of personalities to excel in cuisine, to have that geeky kind of masochism that drives us to aspire, impossibly, to perfection in both art and athleticism.

Continue Reading...