We ask for people in the kitchen
But it is very hot there!

Phew! I was hot !

“French cuisine is dying! French cuisine is dead! We don't make apprentices anymore,” the hoteliers of the Center told me, meeting at a congress in Blois. And as they had told me, as they were well placed to know, I thought it best to repeat it.

This earned me a letter from M. Salé, General Secretary of the Syndicat des chefs de Paris, in which he told me in essence:

“The profession of cook no longer attracts people because it is not what a vain people think — a vain people of diners, of which you are. You know the job of a cook by its results—which are brought to your table. You know the dining room of hotels and restaurants. Do you know the kitchen? So come with us for a ride. You will understand many things. »

I was careful not to miss this invitation. I was given an amiable mahout, who took me—through the back door—to the rounds of the houses where they dined and supped.

With him, I went down into dark basements, where white devils wriggled in front of boilers - devils who pulled the pans by the tail.

— That's where I got very hot.

In the first of these basements, where I felt boiling, the good devils didn't complain too much:

"Compared to what you see elsewhere," they told me, "it's quite comfortable here." It promised...

"What do party leaders earn from you?" I asked the “big shot”.

— 900, 950. They are interested in business…

My traveling companion, familiar with things in the trade, whistled admiringly.

So that's a lot, 900 francs, for a chef de partie? I asked, curious.

— In the vast majority of houses, they earn 750 francs a month, at most,

- No more ? A party leader? Really ? I wouldn't have believed that.

In the second. basement, it was hot too.

"There are plenty of air vents," I am told. But, if you open them, they just open into your legs. So, we prefer to suffocate…

In one corner were piles of black bags.

"Is it the coal cellar?" I asked naively.

— It also serves as a locker room for the workers.

Ah!.

As for the third basement, it was cramped. The fishmonger, while emptying his fish, nudged the roaster who was covering his poultry. Twelve men bustled around a large stove which left only a narrow passage between the wall and him. And the appetizing fresh appetizers were prepared right next to the swill vats of the "dishwasher".

"How can you work inside?" I say to the chief.

"Don't talk to me about it!" All my workers f...... the camp one after the other not that they are paid less here than elsewhere. But it disgusts them to operate in these conditions.

"And where do they eat?"

“Not here, of course. There is no place. We eat in the pantry. do you want to see? -

Ouch! my rheumatism!

Because I have a few minor rheumatisms, and this trip from the kitchen to the pantry has not done them any good. We go down a steep staircase and, without transition, we pass from the furnace to the cooler.

- But, there is enough to catch the "cold"!

“So most men would rather grab a bite on the go than sweat downstairs for lunch or dinner here.

The fourth basement was a kind of subterranean corridor, foggy and nauseatingly stinky.

When we had thus visited some of these hells, we sat down, my guide and I, at a shady ironwork, and he said to me, summarizing and concluding:

— Working conditions that are unhygienic in the first place, which mean that a worker in our profession is worn out and can no longer find a job at forty; wages which have not risen in proportion to the rise in the price of living — far from it — all this does not make the job tempting. Add the working hours and their distribution: 9 hours in principle, including one hour, all theoretical, for meals. We work from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.! This is the time when the factory apprentice is free, plays with his comrades, jumps on his bicycle, if he has one. Do you believe that the apprentice cook does not look at him with an eye of envy? Without counting the days when he takes part in the duty and when for him it is no longer a question of 9 hours, but of 12 or 13 hours of presence... No, you see, it is not attractive

A little later, I described my walk to a restaurant owner of mine, himself an excellent cook:

"It is certain," he told me, "that French cuisine is in danger of dying out for lack of cooks." It is also certain that it will be a great loss for the country. Finally, it is certain that working conditions hardly allow for the training of apprentices in Paris. But in the provinces...

— It's the provincial hoteliers, precisely, who complain that they can no longer find neophytes.

He replied, seriously:

— Just as we are perhaps not doing everything necessary here to make the trade healthful, so in the provinces they are doing everything necessary to attract young people to the handling of the lardoire and sauteuse?

"If we don't want to see our culinary art fall into the hands of tasteless laborers and if we don't want to experience the bland ratatouilles of 'international' cuisine, it's not enough to moan. We should act. And acting often means making immediate sacrifices to better reap later...

Jean Piot