Chefs outline macho culture of deliberate burnings, bullying and abuse

Many chefs still see pain as ‘a medal of honour’, a study has suggested, with ‘extreme suffering’, including deliberate burnings, physical abuse and bullying commonplace in many high-end kitchens.

The research, conducted by Cardiff University and Emlyon Business School in France, has been based on anonymous accounts of 62 Michelin-starred chefs working in the UK and abroad. The research has been published in the journal Human Relations.

Many detailed experiencing physical abuse and “horrific” bullying right from the start of their career. Others described how chefs sterilised wounds on hot stoves and plunged hands into deep-fat fryers to ‘prove’ themselves at work.

The research also paints a picture of an often hyper-masculine, macho working environment, with female chefs having to “suffer more than men as they labour to construct a valued identity in the context of fine dining”, it concluded.

One chef described to the researchers: “At such a young age I was in a position where I felt very lonely. I was really exhausted. I wasn’t used to the abuse I was getting. I was getting really abused, really badly – you’d be called all sorts of names. I was locked in fridges, punched, kicked about. Yeah, it’s pretty horrific.”

Another outlined: “When I was at [place name], I slashed my thumb really badly. I couldn’t stop it bleeding, and [name] grabbed my arm just – he put it [my thumb] on the stove top and cauterized it. And I was just like screaming. And he’s like ‘there you go, stopped the bleeding, hasn’t it?’… So to this day, I’ve got like literally no thumb print. I was like pissing blood, everywhere, in the middle of service, and he’s like, ‘you’re not going anywhere’.”

A third said: “They would get you to put your hand into flour, then into it eggs and then into breadcrumbs…and the game was who could hold their hand in the fryer the longest, with the breadcrumb mix until … you feel it burning and take it out. So there’s a lot of shit like that, that happens, you know … whether it’s sealing open wounds on a stove or whether it’s, you know, who can withstand the temperature of something, or who can leave their hand under the salamander the longest. Who can pick up the stupidly hot pan without an oven cloth, you know. It’s [about] proving you[rself].”

Some chefs said they were routinely subjected to endurance tests, such as peeling “up to 150 fresh langoustines every day with our bare hands.”

Another said food would be thrown in their face if they made mistakes. The level of pressure led to some having bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea before clocking on to a shift, with some stints in the kitchen lasting 20 hours.

Another chef described how his boss “picked up his bread knife from the middle of the kitchen and just – had it to my neck in front of everyone.”

Brian McElderry, executive director of chefs’ union Unichef, described the revelations as “absolutely unacceptable, whether in a Michelin-starred kitchen or a cafe”.

McElderry also told The Guardian newspaper that in recent weeks he had witnessed chefs committing assaults by whipping using towels and that he was handling a complaint about a member grabbed by the throat in a kitchen.