A Russian car thief. A Mancunian ex-heroin addict who’d proudly upgraded to methadone. A Cambridge boy estranged from his trust fund. A former academic who, after a brain injury, could no longer read the tickets but somehow knew exactly when the lamb was resting. Rico, a 6ft 7in Ghanaian kitchen porter with hands so burnt and scarred he could pull cast iron from the oven bare-handed.
They all walk into a bar.
Well, past the bar, down the sticky stairs and into the kitchen for Tuesday morning briefing.
Before escaping into the nomadic world of private catering five years ago, I’d spent the better part of a decade in London’s kitchens.
By my mid twenties I’d cooked and served in Michelin-starred dining rooms, neighbourhood bistros and also the sort of places where the fire alarm only went off if someone remembered to test it. Almost every one staffed by a brigade that looked vastly different, yet somehow contained exactly the same people.
You’d struggle to find this collection of rejects, geniuses and emotional refugees anywhere outside the closing credits of a Guy Ritchie film. Restaurant kitchens remain one of London’s last uncharted pirate ships, crewed by obsessives, immigrants, aristocrats, ex-cons and addicts, all trusted to feed hedge fund managers cod for 48 quid.
Off-the-chart sleep shortage
One kitchen shift I worked a few years back with one of these motley crews in central London serves as the most poignant comparison of chef life to the outside world.
It was December. Upstairs the restaurant was packed full of the nauseatingly synthetic camaraderie only a gaggle of office Christmas parties could fabricate. Marketing departments in matching disposable jumpers and paper crowns celebrating another successful year. I trudged through them after 14 hours on my feet, chemically fevered and nicotine deficient, heading outside for a dried roll-up.
One table erupted into applause. Charts were printed out. Prosecco was spilt in excitement.
“What are they celebrating?” I murmured to a staff member. A waiter, with the patience usually reserved for explaining sharing plates to drunk accountants, leaned over.
“They’re competing on sleep.”
He was right, they were all wearing Oura rings, comparing sleep and recovery scores. “My aunt’s got one,” the waiter said. “Really helped her energy. You lot should try it.”
Energy? Try one? Kenny on meat hadn’t slept properly since Saturday, when he passed out in the larder hugging a sack of Maris Pipers. Rico’s pulse probably couldn’t be detected through the scar tissue on his hands. Half the brigade ran exclusively on nicotine, caffeine and the sort of unresolved childhood trauma that makes you volunteer for 16-hour shifts, along with a damning lack of nowhere better to be. And if the app told us our stress levels were high? What then? Service still starts at six. The corporate world has wellness seminars, mindfulness apps and resilience coaches. We had espressos blended with cooking wine, Lucky Strikes and the vague agreement that somebody on larder might storm out in a teary huff by last orders.
Square pegs in square holes
People often assume kitchens create broken people. I think kitchens simply collect them. The dyslexic kid who couldn’t pass exams. The refugee who barely speaks English. The addict trying to outrun himself. The obsessive. The awkward. The anxious. The angry. The failed artist. Hospitality has always absorbed the people other industries quietly reject.
It won’t cure your alcoholism, your depression or your inability to maintain eye contact at staff gatherings. But it might hand you purpose. It might give you a family stitched together from strangers equally incapable of fitting in anywhere else. And that’s the tragedy of watching British hospitality slowly suffocate.
The sector isn’t just losing restaurants. It’s losing one of the last places where damaged people can still become useful. Yes, VAT is crippling. Energy costs are absurd. Labour shortages are relentless. One in five restaurants fear closure this year. But beneath every closure notice is another brigade scattered back into the world, a collection of square pegs who somehow found a square hole. People love restaurants because they think they’re buying dinner. That’s far too transparent.
They’re buying people, ambience, a full house and some theatre. They’re buying birthdays, anniversaries, first dates, marriage proposals. Old reunions. Sex. Laughs. Grief. They’re renting a space to celebrate, drown, plot and commiserate the most crucial cornerstones of being alive. Downstairs, meanwhile, the pirates are often just trying to survive another service.
The Government talks about productivity and wellbeing as though every industry starts from the same place. It doesn’t. Hospitality has always been where Britain’s misfits washed up. People who couldn’t sit still in classrooms but found out they could stand for 16 hours without complaint, who found some belonging among strangers and purpose among pressure to energise an industry we all use.
It may not be the most conventional workforce, but I can tell you this with absolute certainty: it’s not a sector of slackers in need of more cuts. You’d find a better “sleep score” and “recovery rating” in a hostage negotiation than a London gastro.