Things Nobody Tells You When You Start Cooking in a Professional Kitchen

When you step into a professional kitchen for the first time, you think you already know how to cook. Then, after half an hour, you realize it’s a whole different world.

This applies to both high-end restaurants and bistros.

On my first day at the Michelin-starred restaurant, I was super excited to step into a kitchen like that. Back then, I used to ride my bike to work; in Milan, it’s a great way to get around if you don’t have to go too far—and if it’s not raining, of course.

I had brought along the bag with my knives, and I clutched it under my arm, hoping in vain that it might give me a little encouragement.

The kitchen is huge; I almost get lost trying to get there, since I have to walk through a section of the hotel where the restaurant is located. In fact, there are so many staff members that there’s a separate kitchen just to feed the kitchen and dining room staff from both the Michelin-starred restaurant and the bistro.

I wasn't exactly sure what they would have me do, but since I'd worked in other restaurants before and had seen what happens to new—and inexperienced—hires, I had a pretty good idea.

I was assigned to work alongside a chef in the garde manger—the appetizer station—and specifically with the chef in charge of preparing seven gourmet dishes to whet each guest’s appetite for the courses to follow.

They were indeed amuse-bouches—seven delicious and intriguing bites, with combinations I would never have imagined.

I jumped right in, literally, by starting to assist this chef, and then taking full charge of the preparations on my own. In addition to keeping the refrigerators clean every day, I checked the containers with the previous day’s preparations, made sure there was enough stock of the ingredients I would need in the coming days, and, if necessary, remembered to order them.

To say it was easy would be a massive lie. The first few weeks were total chaos; it took me a long time to get into the swing of things, to get the recipes right, and to avoid wasting food.

When I was a kitchen assistant at another place—a much more humble bistro with a warm atmosphere—I didn’t actually cook at first. I was in charge of cleaning vegetables, chopping mountains of onions, mincing pounds of parsley, organizing the refrigerators, cleaning them, and checking the preparation dates and expiration dates written on the containers. Dusting the equipment, changing the oil in the deep fryer.

Every day, it was often the same prep work. The real cooking didn't start until later. That's when the chef starts to trust you, and when you've actually finished your own tasks, and the kitchen needs an extra pair of hands so the service doesn't go to hell.

After finishing culinary school, I thought, “If I know how to make a recipe, I’m all set.” Wrong. What really matters are speed, organization, precision, and memory.

It’s not romantic, I know, but it’s the truth. A thousand factors come into play in the kitchen, so it only takes a moment for everything to go wrong: carelessness, moving too slowly, a lack of precision—when it’s absolutely essential—and remembering that something is cooking while you’re juggling three or four other tasks at once. In fact, kitchens are full of timers; each one has a specific timer for a particular dish, so that when it goes off, the cook already knows what they were forgetting.

Many people think of cooking as a passion, a creative outlet, and a way to create Instagram-worthy dishes. That’s part of it, but there’s more to it than that.

What you can't see?

The temperature. In winter, kitchens are cold—especially when you walk in in the morning—and you have to start moving around and whip something up to warm yourself up a bit. In summer? An oven. It gets scorching hot, unless there’s an air conditioner to cool down the heat from the oven, the deep fryer, the stovetop, and the dishwasher that’s finished its cycle and is drying the dishes.

The hard work. The physical strain of standing for hours on end, of striving to ensure every dish is presented beautifully and tastes delicious. The challenge of coordinating the preparation of dishes so that guests don’t have to wait too long in the dining room, of having everything ready before service begins, and of making sure no ingredient runs out before the end of service.

Little rest, little time to eat and recover, and then it’s back to preparing for the evening service.

And, of course, the pressure never lets up. It depends on the level of the restaurant, but performance anxiety is almost always a factor.

What nobody tells you?

The truth is that speed matters more than the recipe, and stress isn't romantic.

No one really explains things to you. In many kitchens, you learn by watching and making mistakes, and you have to do it quickly because there’s no time to explain.

Chefs often experiment with food pairings in their free time, at home, or between shifts.

But above all, the hardest part isn't the cooking.

Working in a professional kitchen isn't easy, but if you stick with it, you'll learn more in a few months than you would in years of theory.

And in the end, that’s when you truly understand what cooking is all about.