Finding Good Chefs ?

A lot of of young and energetic people want to be chefs because it's just cool.

But if you're just in it for the fame, TV segments, and pop-up dinners, I'd say steer clear.

Passion is an important factor as well as strength to achieve great things in this business however the we should not forget that the basics are the key to grow, understand and assimilate his surrounding... Do not be fooled by social media, shinny plates and success stories are only the tip of the iceberg...

There's this term—creativity—that gets used a lot to describe young chefs these days

It's a very dangerous word that is abused often and gives people a false sense of legitimacy. When I was a kid reading the 'French Laundry" cookbook, I started writing up mock menus for fun because I was interested. Sometimes I would look at the photograph of a dish and I didn't really know what I was looking at or what it was made out of, so I started thinking about what made sense to me: I want to replicate that visually, so how do I do it?

Copying something in the way that it exists or with a slight adjustment is not creativity: It''s copying. And while we all have copied other great chefs at some point, we knew that's what it was and we knew we weren't being creative. Looking back, I was coming up with very weird dishes; you might look at them now and consider them modern, but this was years ago and I didn't know shit about anything. It was just all made up.

The Question I asked myself today was : When you, as a chef, did you really know how to cook?

After 1, 5, 10, 20 years...?

When did you feel accomplished a bit? Or still, you are thinking like me that you will never be able to understand a thousand of what this craft is all about... Cooking can be dirty, tiresome, frustrating and nothing comes fast...start by the start and observe, ask question... constantly.

Learn with the best, the Chefs that want to share, teach and help to makes you a better chef... That is an advise, my advise

Being a chef is not an easy life...You have to really want it...

Being a chef is not an easy life. You will lose friends, ruin relationships, and become difficult to deal with in certain settings; some people break down because of the stress. You have to really want it. Because if you want to be a chef—only mentally because it's cool and it's something interesting or whatever, but not because you really feel it in your bones yet—it's a really, really tough life decision and a physically and mentally grueling job. To spend all this time and effort, and then decide a few years later that it's not for you is a giant waste of time. Plus, you don't make very much money.

Unless you're going to completely immerse yourself, I would say steer clear.

You can just keep watching Top Chef...