HA1 NEWS
France's toxic kitchen culture reckoned
Exposition of the French's kitchen culture, which is more than what it may seem
Every year after the Michelin guide announces its selection of starred restaurants in France, journalist Nora Bouazzouni receives a flurry of angry and resentful messages.
​
It’s become an unexpected consequence of her burgeoning reputation as one of the most influential whistleblowers of France’s restaurant industry.
​
The messages come from despondent restaurant staff, livid at seeing abusive, toxic chefs who have made their lives hell elevated to hero status with the awarding of one of the highest accolades in the industry.
​
“It’s really the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Bouazzouni tells CNN.
Since 2017, the French food journalist has reported on toxic restaurant culture in kitchens across France.
Through testimonies collected from industry workers since 2020, the book recounts chefs erupting in violent tantrums, burning staff deliberately or throwing pans in their faces if they make a mistake during service.
For people of color, it’s putting up with race-based harassment and being exploited and mistreated.
For women, it’s being constantly sexualized, be it hands patting their bottoms every day, lewd remarks on their appearance and, in a more serious case, rape in a walk-in cooler by a colleague.
“Indeed, behind the smooth and idealized images of the profession as presented in various entertainment programs hides a rigid, almost military and brutal hierarchical organization,” the motion reads.
“The working conditions of the kitchen ‘brigades’ are often degrading, stressful, even violent. Yet silence reigns…”
​
The mention of the “military and brutal hierarchical organization” is noteworthy as it refers to the system codified by French chef, restaurateur and writer August Escoffier in the late 19th century.
Inspired by his time in the military, the kitchen brigade, as it’s known, was modeled after the army, in which rank and hierarchy determines the chain of command.
At the top of the food chain are the chef de cuisine and sous-chef, followed by the chefs de partie, who are responsible for specific stations (sauces, seafood, cold dishes and so on), junior cooks or commis and trainees.
​
Both Escoffier and the precision of the professional restaurant kitchen that he inspired are revered in French culture.
​
But in many ways, it’s this top-down organization that has facilitated toxic kitchen culture, allowing chefs to abuse their staff with impunity, Bouazzouni points out.
​
What’s more, the kitchen brigade system has been exported and duplicated in fine dining and hotel kitchens around the world by the legions of international chefs who have come to train in the birthplace of haute gastronomy throughout the decades.
