Speak Up

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Burn Out!

As you all know chefs endure some of the most gruesome working conditions. They work 25 hours a day, 7 days a week, with little or no breaks. They are forced to work at light speed to put out immaculate food piping hot to hundreds of diners each night. In the rush of dinner service it's inevitable that even the most seasoned chefs will get a few cuts and burns.

When Erik first began working for Jean Georges he came home with massive burns on his fingers, hands, wrists, and even arms. Of course now that he has been cooking for some time he gets burned and cut much less. But he still gets them. It usually happens when he's working too fast and makes a careless mistake. (Oh, I hope he doesn't kill me for writing this.)

While browsing through my picture files I realized I don't have any of my chef's burns or cuts documented. If you've got pictures of nasty or oozing battle scars please email them to me so I can share them with the world. Perhaps you've got a funny story about a wound-please share. Have you ever been burned? I burned the inside of my wrist (no scars thank goodness) while I was dumping a pot of Mexican chicken soup into a bowl. I almost dropped the massive pot. OUUUUCH!

DCW_NYC
-Hilary-

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will take pics of his next war wounds, only for DCWs!!

bb

Anonymous said...

The one mark that really classifies my lover as a chef would be the callous he has where his index finger meets his palm from holding his knife. That callous gets especially swollen during busy weeks, like Valentine's. The rest of his cuts and burns, he doesn't even know when they've showed up!

Anonymous said...

I was reading your blog about your husband always at work... My seems to always get some kind of burn but never notices it. I am the one that says " when did you do that?" And he can't even tell me.... He has so many scars....

Anonymous said...

It's gotten better over the years (maybe chef has smartened up and gotten less cocky in the kitchen???) but when we first got married he was constantly covered in disgusting scabs and wounds. He also once stupidly stuck his hand in a slow mixer that was kneading dough...landed him in the ER but nothing too serious, thankfully.

My annoyance with his stupidity reached it's height when I rifled through some pictures of hubby holding our baby. There was a perfectly cute pictures except for a series of ghastly looking burns across the chef's hand! I'll send pic to our DCW leader...