| K | ITCHEN | S |
The
Culture
of
Restaurant
Work
G A R Y A L A N F I N E
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1996 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fine, Gary Alan.
Kitchens : the culture of restaurant work / Gary Alan Fine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-20078-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Kitchen—Social aspects. 2. Cooks—Social life and customs.
I. Title.
TX653.F57 1995
305.9'642—dc20 94-49673
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
08 07
9 8 7 6
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint parts of several chapters of the present work:
Chapter 1: Reprinted from Current Research on Occupations and Professions 4 (1987): 141-158, “Working Cooks: The Dynamics of Professional Kitchens,” by Gary Alan Fine, with the permission of JAI Press, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut.
Chapter 2: Reprinted from Social Forces 69:1 (1990): 95-114, “Organizational Time: Temporal Demands and the Experience of Work in Restaurant Kitchens,” by Gary Alan Fine. © 1990 by The University of North Carolina Press.
Chapter 6: Reprinted from American Journal of Sociology 97:6 (1992): 1268-1294, “The Culture of Production: Aesthetic Choices and Constraints in Culinary Work,” by Gary Alan Fine. © 1992 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
Chapter 7: Reprinted from Theory and Society 24/2 (1995): 245-269, “Wittgenstein's Kitchen: Sharing Meaning in Restaurant Work,” by Gary Alan Fine. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
To Graham Tomlinson and Hans Haferkamp, their absence lessens my life, my sociology, and my table.
Contents
Chapter 1. Living the Kitchen Life
Chapter 2. Cooks' Time: Temporal Demands and the Experience of Work
Chapter 3. The Kitchen as Place and Space
Chapter 4. The Commonwealth of Cuisine
Chapter 5. The Economical Cook: Organization as Business
Chapter 6. Aesthetic Constraints
Chapter 7. The Aesthetics of Kitchen Discourse
Chapter 8. The Organization and Aesthetics of Culinary Life
Appendix. Ethnography in the Kitchen: Issues and Cases
Preface
Eroticism is the most intense of passions while Gastronomy is the most extended…. Although both are made up of combinations and connections—bodies and substances—in Love the number of combinations is limited and pleasure tends to climax in an instant. while in Gastrosophy the number of combinations is infinite; pleasure, instead of tending toward concentration, tends to propagate and extend itself through taste and savoring.
—Octavio Paz
Gender roles ensnare us all. In the early years of my marriage, when my wife and I were graduate students, she did the housework. When, at last, we both obtained “real jobs,” she insisted that I assume more responsibilities. Like many males who share household tasks, I chose those that permitted the most freedom, creativity, and personal satisfaction: I decided to learn to cook. Of all chores, cooking seemed least onerous. But, even so, that justification was not sufficient; I needed a rationale to avoid “wasting” time in the kitchen—transforming life into work, just as my work was leisure. As a sociologist interested in art, I could learn to cook and observe professional cooks, a group that had not been examined ethnographically. I cannily transformed household chores into professional engagement. My cooking skills expanded to where I enjoyed eating what I had cooked: no small achievement in view of those first hot, harsh evenings at the stove.
Finally I had learned enough that I would not be thought hopelessly and laughably inept if I shared space with professional cooks. At that point I took a giant step from my kitchen into the “real world” of the food production industry. I decided to learn how students learn and are taught to cook professionally. I received permission from two state-run technical-vocational institutes in the Twin Cities metropolitan area to observe their cooking programs. I was accepted, even welcomed. I attended one almost every day and became reasonably proficient in the skills that entry-level cooks must acquire, becoming socialized to the tricks of the trade. I developed a theory of the development of occupational aesthetics.
My experiences at these schools led to restaurant kitchens. I was welcomed cordially and hopefully, and I was given access that permitted me to explore organizational culture and structure, grounded in interactionist and interpretivist sociology. My informants were convinced that the world outside the kitchen walls did not understand their working conditions and did not appreciate their skills or the pressures and troubles they experienced. They believed that the public thought of them as drunken and loud, as bums. Most cooks were pleased that a fair academic outsider would tell the truth about them or would at least experience their working conditions.
It is widely accepted in the kitchens of academe that there is no one truth. While my views are my own, I hope to present one set of truths about cooks that will be close enough for them to recognize,