Yes Chef April - Michael Killip

YES CHEF
By: Michael Killip, Chef, Entrepreneur, Restaurant Consultant and TV Personality

Keep Both Feet on the Ground While You Sleep on the Floor!

I remember when I was much younger than my ripe age of 50, thinking how far away the age of 50 years really seemed. When I was younger, everything experienced was a lesson. Every issue I had in life was intense and handled with great concern - that’s just who I was.

Pictures of Boca found here.

At the beginning of my career as a cook I went on a working stage to Boca Raton, Florida. I had written to the celebrity culinary personality, Mr. Norman Van Aiken who had just recently launched a new restaurant in the Crocker Centre of Boca. Writing as a young and very inspired student of the kitchen, I had hoped for the chance to spend 6 weeks working in Mr. Van Aiken’s new restaurant. Now, you must understand that setting up a working stage in someone else’s kitchen meant that I would be working there solely for the experience, not for a wage. The opportunity to study and work in this man’s kitchen was reward enough, and very often you, as an apprentice to gain such experience, would have to pay the chef for his time.

I was off to Florida on my first adventure in a new career full of hope and anxiety for the coming opportunity to study with this very talented man.

I arrived in Boca and made my way to the restaurant found in one of the most affluent communities in the United States of America. The restaurant was called Hoexter’s Market. It was found in an open air shopping mall called “The Crocker Center”. To give you a better feel of the level of opulence, picture a very high end restaurant that offered their guest valet parking - But the mall where the restaurant was located also had valet parking! Cars found in the parking lot were over the top Rolls Royce, Mercedes, Bentleys and more!

Well, I made my way through to the kitchen and introduced myself with my letter of introduction. To my disbelief, nobody knew who I was. They had totally forgotten I was coming to work and they really didn’t know what to do with me.

I had limited funds and they told me to go out and look for lodging and to come back later when the chef was expected to return.

To make a long story short, I felt that I had come so far and everything was crumbling around me. No one knew why I was there and I didn’t have enough money to find anywhere to stay in such a wealthy community - I was scared!

After hours of looking throughout the area and not finding anywhere to stay I returned to the restaurant with the hopes that the chef had come back and perhaps he would remember me. Well, he did return but didn’t remember me at all.

The sous chef at the time was a young man who took me aside and explained that the restaurant had just opened and that it was very hectic, and that they were very busy. I explained to him what had been promised to me and how far I had come to gain the experience of working in this particular kitchen. He then introduced me to the Lunch chef who was scrambling to get ready for the restaurant’s first lunch service. The sous chef explained who I was and that she could use me as free labour for the next 6 weeks over lunch. The last thing the lunch chef wanted was to have to babysit a green apprentice from Canada when she was so focused on her lunch service.

That first day, at the time, seemed to be one of the longest days of my life and, when it was over, it still continued as I didn’t have any where to live! The sous chef took me home with him and allowed me to sleep on his floor, which I did for the entire 6 weeks.

I look back on this entire experience now and smile - But believe me, living through it at the time was terrifying. I was there to expand my food knowledge, but received more of a life lesson than I had bargained for.

To this day I am dear friends with the lunch chef, who has over the years become my mentor in cooking. The restaurant itself only lasted another 3 months before it closed due to food cost and other expenditures that pulled it down the drain. I will never forget what I learned about food and, most importantly, what I learned about myself and surviving what, at the time, was one of the most traumatic experiences I had ever had to date. I lived through it as we always do and can now look back on it and see how it made me a stronger cook and person, starting on the adventure that lay ahead of me in this new career.

When life feels darkest and nothing seems to be going right for you, the lesson I learned was to reach deep inside and hold tight. Do the best you can to ride through the experience and learn from it. My friendship with the lunch chef has lasted over 25 years now and, as an unexpected gift out of the entire experience, I wouldn’t do anything over that might have changed the outcome.

Until next month,
Michael