” I’m a short cook — and before you say anything, yes, short cooks run some of the best kitchens in the world. We’re closer to the food. Don’t sleep on us.”
When you learn to cook out of necessity, something unexpected happens.
Somewhere between necessity and obsession, you find out you’re actually good at it. Not just good — you care about it in a way most people don’t care about anything.
Twenty-five years in professional kitchens. Fine dining. Diners. Cafes. Cafeterias. A coffee truck on a highway — honestly the best job I ever had. I’ve worked the line, run the line, trained the people on the line. I’ve done every kind of kitchen there is for every kind of person there is.
I’m a short cook — and before you say anything, yes, short cooks run some of the best kitchens in the world. We’re closer to the food. Don’t sleep on us.
The kitchen is a brutal, beautiful, chaotic place. It will break you down and build you back up and break you down again. I loved every loud, hot, exhausting minute of it.
And then it was over.
Burnt Butter started because I still had things to say. About food — real food, made properly, without the pretension. About technique — the stuff they don’t teach you but every good cook knows. About life after the kitchen, which turns out to be stranger and richer than I expected.
I write the way I talk. Direct. Sometimes sweary. Always honest. I smoke on the back step and I have tattoos and I recently got very into Japanese flower arranging, which surprised me more than anyone.
If you want perfect, polished, sponsored content — wrong place.
If you want the real thing from someone who’s actually lived it — you’re exactly where you should be.
I still have a voice. This is where I’m using it.