“When you're used to working 18 hours a day (in sometimes horrible conditions), everything else becomes a piece of cake”: Matt Tebbutt tells the Independent, not skimping on details related to the tough life in kitchens: “The restaurant business is a bit like enlisting in the army.”
The chef
At a time when one would no longer want to hear about war, British celebrity chef Matt Tebbutt uses the term to describe the atmosphere that pervades most restaurant kitchens. The climate the brigades breathe during the many hours they work (in whatever type of restaurant they work, he is keen to point out) is quite different from the sequins and sequins, which appear in the various cooking shows. Tebbutt knows this so well that since 2014 he decided to abandon his career behind the stove to devote himself entirely to television programs dedicated to gastronomy. “Kitchens are a bit like joining the army. You go in from the bottom, keep your head down, find your way and slowly build yourself up. It's brutal, but you learn a lot, “ the chef confides to the Independent.
That's saying a lot for a chef who discovered his calling at age 16 after reading “White Heat” by Marco Pierre White: “In that book Pierre White made chefs look cool, sexy and really rock and roll. It was the first publication in which this somewhat rough-looking chef chronicled the world of restaurants and the world of food. He brought out the juxtaposition between the sweat, blood and tears in the back and the apparent perfection visible by the diner, I simply fell in love with it.” After that reading, Tebbutt knew he wanted to be a part of that world, so he trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine, then went on to work at the highest level alongside such high-profile names as Marco Pierre White and Sally Clarke.
Over the years he has seen a lot of kitchens, extreme situations and scenes, but the episode that upset him the most was what he experienced as a diner when he was working in London. “One night I was not working and went to eat at a restaurant with friends. They had an open door in the kitchen and we saw the chef tearing the kitchen staff apart. Everyone was with their heads down, looking devastated. Then the food came, it was very nice, but we couldn't eat it, having seen the misery behind it,", he says. It was precisely the pressure from the kitchen, as well as from the media, that led Tebbutt to close Foxhunter, the gastropub, which, successfully, he had been running with his wife for fourteen years.
"There was no stopping, we endured, we were tireless, we lived like this for 14 years. I was juggling TV and restaurant for quite a while then, however, I reached a point where I realized this was no longer sustainable, I was devastated. The small country pubs, as charming as they are and as much as everybody would like them on their doorstep, have to be sustained because it's really hard to keep them going. They are struggling, prices are going through the roof, energy costs, food costs, staffing. All this hinders growth: the numbers of pubs closing every week have reached absurd numbers. I think it's a real shame and it's something worth trying to save. When I first started working in TV and I was working 10 hours a day or something like that, there were people who would say to me, 'Are you okay?”, ‘Do you need to sit down?’, ‘Do you need a drink?’ I would laugh and reply, ‘No, I'm fine!’ When you're used to working 18 hours a day in sometimes horrible conditions, everything else is a piece of cake."
