IF FOOD is the new rock ‘n’ roll, then chefs are its gods. This is the new mythology currently being ‘fed’ to us by TV reality shows in which chefs are shown as swaggering, swearing bad boys, who carry sharp knives and play with fire for 12-18 hours a day in pure alpha male environments.
No doubt chefs the world over are standing there in the heat of a fully fired up kitchen watching as orders fly in and food flies out, dreaming the same dream – the day when they too are catapulted into culinary super stardom.
Busy restaurant kitchens are commonly accepted as massive stress generators, and when you consider the biggest lump sum of money going through a restaurant goes through the kitchen, the chef can actually control around two thirds of the financial viability of a restaurant.
Being on their feet for 12 hours plus per day means chefs often suffer from myriad work-associated physical ailments such as varicose veins, aching back and associated knee problems, plus digestive problems from tasting but never eating a proper meal. No wonder there is a regular dropping of Ramsay-esque expletives within most busy kitchens.
It is a story 36-year-old Chris Ormston is all too familiar with. Originally from Middlesbrough in northern England, he is one of several young chefs who migrated to Cyprus having given up the ‘pressure cooking’ world of a busy city commercial kitchen in order to have a better quality of life. He had little choice – his former lifestyle was quite simply ruining his health.
“I first got into the business literally on the turn of a coin,” he said. “My best friend and I were offered two positions within a YTS (youth training scheme). We didn’t have a clue as to which one to accept so we just tossed a coin. I got trainee in a kitchen and my mate went off to learn to be an estate agent.”
At first he enjoyed the job, meeting new people and living a different if hectic life style from the one he was used to.
“But you soon learn that you are looked upon as very cheap labour so you have to work awfully hard for little money,” he said. “If you can get into a kitchen where the chef can bring you on and help train you then that’s the best. Sadly, most places these days either don’t want to pass on skills or lack the ability to do so.
“Yet, it’s only by being in a well-run commercial kitchen that you experience the real nature of the job with all its different elements.”
Chris’ work schedule was punishing. He would work split shifts six days a week, serving both lunch and dinners, often cooking for up to 1,500 people per day. On his day off he’d just stay in bed and sleep.
“Then I started after a time to suffer from really bad headaches but didn’t take any time off, I was too busy learning as much as I could,” he said. “The pressure in the kitchen kept rising, with many more customers than we could really manage and with only six chefs we were all working flat out often for 12-18 hours a day.”
It all came to head one morning when he just blacked out and was taken to hospital where they found he had a bleed on his brain.
After his recovery, Chris was headhunted by a company who specialised in catering for the motor racing fraternity, and for the next five years he cooked for Honda teams, powerboat racers and VIP clients who would pay up to 250 for the pleasure of dining with the stars of the Suzuki and Yamaha race teams.
“That was a great time for me. I travelled all over Europe, cooked in different countries for different nationalities, everything from creating a sushi fest over three days for 50 Japanese journalists to Italian feasts for VIP Italians,” he said. “The challenge was great, and there was always the opportunity to give dishes a bit of my own flair and dynamic which was satisfying.”
Chris came to Paphos on holiday, really liked it, and started to look around for a place where he could work “and bring to it my passion for quality and flavours, a place where there was genuine respect and passion for good food”.
He found all that as chef at La Frescoe in Peyia where he is about to launch a new menu and is also looking at creating a range of high quality frozen ready meals.
“Working and living here, I can now get on with what I am good at without fearing that the walls of the kitchen are going to suddenly close in on me and make me an invalid,” he said.
Twenty-six-year-old Callum Dow from London is another chef well-acquainted with the pressures of working in some of the UK’s top-rated kitchens. He rapidly rose to chef de partie, helping to create fine dishes for the rich and famous at Gleneagles Hotel, then at the Mermaid hotel where he suffered insomnia for months as he helped maintain the extraordinary high standards demanded by the likes of the AA and Michelin guide inspectors.
“It’s pressure all the time. You can never ever slip up, not ever, especially if you have been awarded two rosettes,” he said. “The stress levels are well off the normal Richter scale. You just develop a sort of tunnel vision where nothing else matters except quality.”
He paid the price when he was only 23 years old. “I had just finished my shift when these terrible chest pains started. In hospital the doctors kept saying over and over to me ‘This is something that shouldn’t happen to someone so young’.
“My heart had seemingly gone into overdrive, all stress related and quite serious, but such is the pressure you put yourself under, that by the next day I was out of hospital and back at the kitchen stove.”
Currently working as chef at the Gallery Restaurant in Tala he enjoys creating exciting dishes and helping to launch what is a more casual, less formal dining style.
But what would he do if another Michelin-starred establishment came knocking at his door?
“That’s like asking an actor if he wants to star in a film that might give him an Oscar,” he responded. “This business may be hugely challenging but it’s also addictive. Well, I am still young and there are many more challenges out there.”
