Can 17-Hour Days Ever Be An Excuse For Violence In The Kitchen?

You probably read the story in the papers this week about head chef Charlie McCubbin (arrowed above) punching a kitchen worker and throwing him down the stairs after food critic AA Gill described his meal as “disgusting”.

McCubbin, 51, chef-owner of the River Café in Glasbury, on the banks of the River Wye, in Wales, escaped with a conditional discharge – the lowest possible sentence – after the court heard he had worked 17-hour days during this year’s Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival and had “snapped” under extraordinary pressure.

Adrian Gill - who was at the festival plugging his new book Blasting Baboons With An Uzi - had apparently made the remark to a waiter in jest, and went on to give the 40-seater establishment four stars out of five for his £25 meal of antipasti, crab tart and lasagne.

But it was too late. The court heard that after the waiter told McCubbin about the drubbing, he kept storming into the kitchen and told cook Keith McVaigh, who was repairing a window: “When you’ve finished that you can f*** off and not come back.”

He then swung a punch at McVaigh, 52, which missed, and pushed him down a short flight of stairs, and then swore at another man, threatening him and saying he would take his "head off", Brecon magistrates were told.

His defence lawyer Bruce Gray pleaded in mitigation that McCubbin had worked himself to the point of exhaustion, and that somehow excused the violence.

But it doesn’t.

I’ve written a lot in the past about chefs working 17 or 18 hours a day, and how these ridiculous working hours should be stopped – if not by the Government, then by the restaurants themselves. And I’m pretty sure if they were, there would be a lot less abuse in the kitchen.

But however hard you work, and however much pressure you’re under to keep up standards, and however bad a review you get (or don’t in the end), it doesn’t justify physical violence and threats to kitchen staff.

Urging magistrates to give the chef the most lenient sentence possible, Gray said: "I say this to give you some idea of the stress of working in an environment where reputation is everything. Mr McCubbin feels he has to check and double check everything.

"The incident that led to this was that a cellar door had been left unsecured all that night and that was the straw that broke the camel's back."

A cellar door being left unsecured! To be fair, I’ve seen and heard of many incidents of chefs flipping over far less – dastardly crimes like clingfilm coming free from the corner of a container, or cooks forgetting to switch off their mobile phones during service.

But as for feeling like he has to check everything that goes out is ludicrous - that’s his job, standing at the pass, scrutinising plates, unless you’re Heston Blumenthal, in which case you’ll have your eye on other dishes.

It’s ridiculous that McCubbin escaped without even a fine or a few hours of community service for taking a swing at an employee and pushing him down the stairs, when a stand-up comic (however bad) gets four weeks in jail for throwing a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch.

I mean, where’s the justice in that? And what sort of message does it send out? There must be hundreds of sadistic chefs rubbing their hands with glee up and down the country, knowing they can mistreat their long-suffering underlings and get off scot free by blaming it on the stresses of work.

“I caught him spying in the oven at his soufflé, your honour...”

Oh well, case closed.

As for Gill pretending he thought the food was awful, and knowing full well the sort of tsunami that would cause in the kitchen, it’s a shame McCubbin didn’t direct his anger at him. Or at least throw him out of the restaurant as Gordon Ramsay, the man he says he’s often compared to for his foul-mouthed histrionics, once did.

The Increasing Irrelevance Of Michelin Stars

There has long been a perception that Michelin stars are becoming increasingly irrelevant in these belt-tightening times. So it will do nothing for the tyre guide’s credibility and fading reputation to learn that it has awarded a star to a Normandy seafood restaurant that closed two months ago due to a lack of customers.

When parting with their hard-earned cash, people should feel confident following Michelin’s expert assessment – surely that’s the whole point of its so-called bible.

Alright, we all know food and service awards are highly subjective at the best of times, and should be taken with a big bucket of salt, but not knowing a restaurant has shut shows a basic lack of research. Surely a last minute ring round is essential if you’re reviewing a place months before the guide comes out – as the inspectors obviously did.

You can only imagine the red faces at Michelin after it emerged its 2011 France guide, published on Monday, had finally given a star to Les Hêtres in Ingouville-sur-Mer (below), not knowing it served its last meal in December.

Chef Max Bichot, 52, said: "If I had been given the star earlier, it might have made all the difference...my cooking was just as good before."

He heard about the posthumous gong from a former employee, and was told the inspectors were delighted with his "baby mackerel in white wine and citrus juice" and "red snapper fillet on a bed of ratatouille and rosemary."

In a sign of the decline of top-end dining, and the growth of good quality “middle market” restaurants, it was the first time Michelin’s Bib Gourmand restaurants (which offer three-course menus that cost €35 (£30) or less in Paris, and €29 (£24) or less elsewhere) outnumbered the starred venues. Bib eateries are those that are considered to offer “good food at reasonable prices”.

Also, it was the first time since 1992 that no new restaurant was promoted to three stars. And in an attempt to distance itself from claims that it is elitist, Michelin has hooked up with 1,000 restaurants across France for the launch of its ‘Printemps du guide Michelin’ – which gives food-lovers discounts at participating establishments for three months.

Not surprisingly, more and more chefs are moving away from the stresses of Michelin-starred cooking, and its deplorable 18-hour days, to a more normal life cooking in wallet-friendly restaurants.

You might think Bichot would be depressed knowing he can’t reopen Les Hêtres (which has been sold and is being converted into a private house) to cash in on his success – but not a sausage.

"I had the good fortune to fall in love with a woman who has a seafood restaurant at Yport,” he said. “I am going to help her out in her kitchen – with no pressure."

Tweet

Chef Dies After Working 100-Hour Weeks

I’ve blogged a lot about how hard cheffing is and how much respect I’ve got for the poor souls who beaver away doing 18-hour days in Michelin restaurants, often without complaint.

During my stint as a chef, I met a lot of them. Some were so tired at the end of their shift, that not wanting to waste valuable sleeping time getting a night bus home in the six hours they had before the next gruelling shift, they would sometimes bed down on the dry store floor - and then get up with frozen joints and a cricked neck to do it all again.

But if you want an example of the dangers of working these sort of hours, then look no further than the tragic case of Nathan Laity (above), a young man from Cornwall who moved up to London to pursue his dream of making it as a top chef.

Nathan, 23, became so exhausted after working 100 hours a week as sous chef at the Tate Modern, he died after contracting tonsillitis, his distraught family said.

He came down with a sore throat but continued to work 14 hours a day - 98 hours a week - for 27 straight days without any time off, it has emerged.

He died in his sleep, and doctors say his immune system had simply shut down.

His mother Tracey, who discovered he was dead on Mother's Day, told her local paper, The Cornishman: “His body just switched off. He just went to sleep and never woke up.

“He was a lovely boy and just one trip to the doctors would have saved him. But he was ambitious.

“Nathan loved his job. He just kept going and he was working very hard. He was very stubborn about it.

“He was very talented. The head chef at the Tate said Nathan would have gone to the top.”

During his short career, Nathan worked at top restaurants in Portugal and cooked for celebrities including DJ Chris Evans and footballer Alan Shearer, joining the Tate Modern in 2008.

Nathan was buried today. The poor bugger.

:: My book on life as a chef, Down And Out In Padstow And London, is available here on Amazon...