It has long been known that in the frenetic atmosphere of a commercial kitchen tempers can flare and boil over into verbal and physical abuse. But the days of the toxic kitchen were supposed to be long over.
he experience of a number of current chefs shows that is not the case.
John*, a young chef who was physically and verbally bullied in the kitchen of a well-known Dublin restaurant, contacted me by email.
“Thinking back to my first job in 2018,” he wrote, “I was the recipient of treatment that would be considered shocking were it to occur in any other workplace.
“I think if I share my experience, it might help to shine a light on the problems facing young chefs and bring about some positive change.”
I spoke to John, to another chef, Sally*, who worked in the same kitchen, and to Brian*, who witnessed behaviours while working a trial period that made him realise it was not a place he wanted to work.
“What upset me most,” Brian told me, “was that at the end of each night, the person who had f***ed up the most had to buy the beers for the kitchen. Invariably it was the non-Irish kitchen porter, the worst paid member of staff.”
During his employment John was kicked twice, punched in the upper body three times, grappled close to a hot stove top four times and grappled and held against a surface twice. He was slapped in the face, struck on the head with thrown food and hit with physical objects.
“These are only the incidents I remember concretely,” he says. “The list goes on. But physical assaults were almost preferable to the verbal abuse and bullying you faced on a daily basis.
“Personal matters such as relationships or medical conditions turned into ammunition if you made the mistake of disclosing them. It was relentless. This was on top of working 60+ hours a week for €22,000 (a year).
“It seems crazy to me that this can be the norm. Even during work, I was occasionally reminded that had this been in London, the treatment would have actually been worse.
“Is this what cooking was like at the highest level? Unfortunately, after hearing other people’s accounts, I believe we weren’t the only ones facing this treatment.”
Sally also experienced toxic behaviour.
“I lasted there a few months,” she told me. “I had worked in a famous restaurant abroad where there was a horrible kitchen culture, but I had only ever heard good things about the Dublin place. In those massive international kitchens the chefs are like pit bulls. You keep your head down and just work, work, work. I assumed it was just the way fine dining was, as previously I had worked in casual restaurants. During my trial in Dublin I heard things that reminded me of that kitchen, but I put it out of my head because I wanted the career progression.
“During my first two weeks, every time I made a mistake there was verbal abuse. I was the only woman in the section. Every day ‘X’, the head chef, and ‘Y’, his number two, called me a retard, a donkey, a fool. They did it less to me than the guys. The boys got physical abuse as well.
“I think they thought that a woman would be more likely to go to management.
“X and Y were a double act. They used to go for pints every day between shifts and come back to do service. If Y did something, X would laugh and encourage him. We were always being told how lucky we were to be working there.
“Chefs would be asked, ‘What medication are you on?’ if they were too slow. One day Y flicked a wet cloth in my face when he was angry. I saw people being shoved, being pushed against hot pans, screaming, thrown over counters. Y used to make sexual comments about the waitresses.
“We all used to work too many hours, which were technically illegal. It was impossible to do what was asked within permitted hours. I knew that X and Y were aware the woman from HR was speaking to me about the hours, so I couldn’t say anything about the bullying because they’d know it came from me. HR was more concerned with the hours we were doing than the bullying, which they knew there were rumours about.”
Sally also experienced sexually abusive language and harassment.
“At the start I thought that I had got the job because of my skill,” she added, “but there were so many inappropriate comments I realised Y fancied me. It got worse when I didn’t reciprocate and made it clear I wasn’t interested.
“Every day, he’d sit on the counter watching me wash the floor. At first I used to laugh, but after a while I didn’t – it wasn’t funny any more. X and Y would say to me, ‘Why are you so uptight? Why can’t you have a laugh? When was the last time you got laid?’ Y wanted to know how many sexual partners I’d had, had I ever been with a woman.”
John did not complain to management about the bullying. “At the time, I didn’t feel like talking about the issues to HR,” he said. “What was the point when two directors of the company had previously mocked me after an incident in the kitchen? Being at the very start of my career, I worried how a HR or WRC case would look. The Dublin chef community is small, the degrees of separation between kitchens are small. Would it impact my career, if I went ‘crying off to HR’ as one chef put it?”
Since John left the toxic kitchen, he has become convinced that there are other chefs who are experiencing violence in the workplace, too afraid to raise a voice and speak up about the conditions they face.
“What is worse is that young graduate chefs are seeing this for the first time and think, ‘this is the way things are’, and then the bullying and lack of respect will only perpetuate.”
“After a few months I had had enough,” said Sally, “and I went to work in a restaurant where nobody shouts and there is a much nicer atmosphere.
“The HR woman asked me to email her or sit down with her but I didn’t feel safe doing that as word gets around. I know that what happened there happened in other restaurants. So many chefs are hypocritical. They all know which kitchens are toxic.”
While a majority of chefs in Ireland have told me they believe bullying is a thing of the past, others disagree.
“You hear about certain restaurants over and over again,” said Gaz Smith of Michael’s and Little Mike’s in Mount Merrion.
“Customers tell me when they hear bullying going on when they are eating in other restaurants. I’m not perfect, but I can’t see why anyone would do that – it goes against good business practice, as these customers say they won’t return.
“Of course there is pressure sometimes in a kitchen that leads to barking but the problem is when it goes beyond that. I was lucky early in my career – many of the head chefs I worked with were women who were very calm. There were one or two a***holes, but I was never scared to stand up for myself.
“I don’t know why it happens. Perhaps it is down to insecurity, or being too driven. Possibly chefs do the wrong things for the right reasons. I think bullying used to be prevalent in London kitchens and some of those who trained there perpetuate those behaviours here. I have heard of a chef being branded with a hot implement, of others being paid hush money not to bring formal proceedings.”
Some allegedly toxic kitchens are those setting high standards and winning awards. Shockingly, some alleged kitchen bullies appear on industry panels talking about fostering a positive working environment in restaurant kitchens.
If everyone in the industry knows who they are, why are they not being called out?
Kitchen porters and untrained chefs on student visas working for cash are afraid to rock the boat for fear of losing their job and not being able to get another. Chefs who have been bullied are reluctant to come forward because they feel there is no protection for whistleblowers.
The chefs who are adamant that toxic behaviour in kitchens doesn’t happen any more say the repetition of these “myths” discourages young people from entering the industry. They say the cliché of the obsessive chef pursuing culinary perfection at the expense of a fair working environment does not reflect reality.
However, chef Cuan Greene, formerly of Noma in Copenhagen and Bastible in Dublin, believes the only way forward is to nurture staff and ensure their wellbeing.
“The articles (I have read about toxic kitchens in the UK and US),” he writes in his Omos newsletter, “had me question the hope for fine dining and indeed my future in it… Judging by the waiting lists in restaurants of chefs with (a reputation for)… behavioural issues, one could question whether… the public aren’t bothered about this mistreatment.”
Adrian Cummins says in his 13 years at the helm of the Restaurants Association of Ireland no one has picked up the phone to him to complain of bullying in Irish restaurants, but anyone who has experienced this can contact him in confidence. He encourages anyone who has been physically assaulted to go to the gardaí.
Gaz Smith hopes toxic kitchens will become a thing of the past. “Sometimes people tell me leaving a toxic kitchen is like leaving an abusive marriage, that they didn’t realise how bad it was until they’d gone. I hope if more people speak of their experiences it will help whistleblowers everywhere.”
*Names have been changed
