Cheeseworker-on-chef prejudice

I admit it, I have a love/hate thing with chefs. Now, I know there are a number of chefs reading this, so don't think I'm talking about you. I like you all of you or I wouldn't have friended/linked your journals. But in professional settings, and by that I mean my professional settings, there is a certain type of chef that annoys the hell out of me with their entitlement and pretension.

Before I started working in cheese I had no real opinion of chefs, except that I liked fancy food. Actually, back then I didn't even care so much about fancy food. But I had some outsider respect and appreciation of the trade as well as a knowledge that they know a hell of a lot more than me about food.

I think it was delivery drivers who began souring me on the idea that chef was a job title that deserved automatic respect. Receiving cheese in the walk-in coolers, I would talk down drivers who had come from some of the city's finest restaurants. They would demand the drivers deliver their tiny little cheese orders in one-hour windows. Freak out about cheese that didn't look the way that it should in the made-up version in their minds. Never pay their bills and then yell at the drivers who were told to not deliver unless they got COD. Were they really chefs receiving the orders? I don't know. But that's how it got translated to me. When going out to eat, I actually find it a rare day when I see a restaurant cheese course menu that has no spelling errors and is factually correct.

(I should mention that while cheese knowledge at restaurants has gotten better, whim-based refusal of perfectly good cheese has historically been a wonderful thing for us, because the distributor then has to call around and offer a large discount on good, sometimes slightly hacked-into cheese.)

Even Anthony Bourdain, who's work I love outside of one paragraph in Kitchen Confidential, delights in letting a driver unload a whole order then refuses it to teach the driver a lesson about delivering on time. Bourdain won me over everywhere else in that book and in the rest of his celebrity career, but when I read that paragraph, I wanted to hate him. (Tony, if you're reading, I forgive you now.)

When I went to my first cheese conference, the American Cheese Society was trying hard to incorporate chefs into an organization that was almost entirely producers, retailers and distributors. Pandering might be too strong a word, but chefs were paired with cheesemakers to make cheese creations and almost universally, created uninspired or ill-suited concoctions and then "educated" the rest of us, who remember pretty much work solely with cheese, as to its characteristics and best uses.* At that conference I knew almost nothing about cheese except for what had wandered close enough to our store for us to trap, cut, and sell, and even I knew that there was much more knowledge in the audience than on the panels.

The final straw in the building of my cheese/chef frustration was ordering a Vacherin Mont D'or appetizer at one of San Francisco's most expensive restaurant a few years ago. I was actually excited to see what they would do with a cheese that I had never done anything but eaten straight out of the bark. I was horrified and mystified when I got what turned out to be a browned Vacherin grilled cheese on a hard crostini.** All the subtlety, grassiness, and characteristic ooziness was gone and, really, almost any soft cow cheese could have been on that plate. Clearly they were just selling the name with no idea of what should be done to let it shine. What an incredible waste of the world's best soft cheese,*** and one that is almost impossible to get in the USA. If I had my way, specialty distributors would have shunned that restaurant, leaving them to cheese they can't hurt.

Again, I'm sure there are more exceptions to this than real examples, so I'm not saying it's rational. I'm just saying I feel it. No matter how many awesome chefs I meet, I always expect the worst. I mean geez, it's not like they teach cheese in culinary schools or in most kitchens. It's not their fault.

Nevertheless, my back was up when I heard a customer whispering**** in an authoritative voice. I asked if they need help and the customer said, "No, I brought a cheese expert along with me today," pointing to the woman next to him.

"Where do you work?" I asked her.

"I'm a pastry chef" she replied.*****

The paragraphs that began this entry should show that I am not an impartial observer. This kind of answer feeds my worst fear of chefs, but I fully admit that I am pre-disposed to think that way. I am not using adjectives to describe her comment because I fully acknowledge that I may have heard her say this "as if it was obvious and I was stupid" when another observer might have heard it as "nonchalantly". It also wasn't until later that I realized that it was her friend (Dad? Uncle? Who knows) who called her the expert, she hadn't proclaimed it.

Still, it was a mystifying answer. I had never thought it self-evident that a pastry chef is a cheese expert. Thus, when I responded, "What does that have to do with cheese?" my tone probably had a little too much edge. I know if made my co-worker laugh out loud, and she has told me before she enjoys when I am a jerk to customers because it's so unexpected.

The Pastry Chef bristled and informed me that pastry chefs are the ones who generally put together the cheese courses at restaurants. I feel a little bad about the way I said it, especially if she had just been trying to pick out some nice cheeses for a family gathering. But it was an honest question. I swear! Sorry.

Hey, at least I didn't mention that I noticed incorrect information on her restaurant's cheese course menu the last time I was there.




*I must point out a huge exception here. John Ash, who some of you might know, came to the conference so he could learn about cheese even though his reputation and career was already secure. A sales rep for a certain company didn't show up to a meeting with him so I, because I was doing prep work in the kitchen for a cheese tasting later that night, went over it with him cheese by cheese. He responded by inviting me along to dinner with his group at a restaurant of a chef he trained. That is still the best meal I ever had in my life.
**anarqueso illipodscrill! You are my witnesses!
***in retrospect, they also could have been passing off a faux Vacherin as a real Vacherin and trying to disguise it I suppose.
**** I'll admit it, cheese whispering is my other big peeve. Usually when I overhear it, it's people talking shit, about cheese, or our store, for all the wrong reasons. No, I will not supply the right reasons.
*****Ha! The typo "pasty chef" almost made it into this entry. That really would have changed the whole thing.