Thou art what thou cooketh to.

When entering a new kitchen, we tend to evaluate a lot of things while contemplating our employment there. There’s cleanliness (for me, at least) that’s a big one. How full is the walk-in, and are things covered and labeled? Nothing worse than hitting the weeds on a Friday because someone let last night’s sauces go bad or can’t find the bourbon infused demi glace. How’s the people? Everyone sternly looking at their stations, or small talk where possible? Expo? Does it exclaim and expedite or scream and dress down?

And then, there’s the music. That’s a big one for me. Chefs can be, easily, classified by their music. More often than not, mind you, our kitchen playlist is vastly different from our car and home selections. More agreeable, less extreme, and oftentimes informed not only by what we like but also by what our brigade likes.

One cold winter a few years back, I spent the most hellacious six weeks listening to Disney show tunes and happy xmas songs. I left, but not before tossing this satanic work of torture that is a five-CD Disney collection, into the Salamander on high. To this day I can not watch Arielle without smelling the faint aroma of seared foie gras and simmering espagnole entering my over-imaginative olfactory system. Another time my Sous, our pastry and garde manger chefs, along with my help as look out, locked our dish washer into an empty walk in and made him listen to Barney songs for 30 minutes in retaliation for his loudly blared Ranchera tunes all day long. And then there was that one time when Chef K dropped our CD player into the fryolator after three hours of Aerosmith, which, apparently, he hated.

So, yes, music is kind of a big deal. The wrong kind can slow down service, drown out expo (the person calling out orders), anger or aggravate the brigade, and lead to shitty food. The right kind can motivate, bring line and expo to life, influence our food, and even turn bad days into, at least, OK days.

There was this highly acclaimed restaurant in the southern United Kingdom. Schmoozing and luck, as well as a Maitre d’ who knew someone over there and was more than happy to refer me to get rid of me got me an interview. Formal, of course. Bring your whites, formal. Bring your knives formal.

I walked into the world’s most fascinating kitchen. Everything was clean, pots and pans were All-Clad, shiny and clean, and every station had its own two lowboys, spice and herb rack, toolbox, and sanitizer station with faucet and veg sink. There was a walk-in the size of a small London flat, filled to the brim with all things culinary, an experimental kitchen we were encouraged to peruse in down times and outside our shifts to develop our skills and own menu items, all of which were evaluated by our chef and had a chance to make the specials or regular menu (with a nice bonus for the inventor attached to it).

Chef and his GM took me back into their room, offered me a good one third more in monthly pay, less hours, and a chance at Sous once I’d proven myself as Chef Tournant for a few months. Too good to be true? You bet. Passing by the kitchen, already counting the weeks this new job would take to afford me a new car and a better flat, I heard it… Celine Dion blaring from speakers hidden in the ceiling.

I started my new job in a small restaurant down the street a few days later. No experimental kitchen and Chef would, more often than not, have to run across the street and quickly buy one ingredient or another we’d run out of or didn’t have enough space in our walk-in to store. We crowded each other on our tiny stations, me, Chef, and a dishwasher, that is, and shared one veg sink. And we listened to Punk all day long, chopping and dicing to the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Joy Division, Clash, and whatever else Chef had in his vast collection of tapes stored in his walk-in.

I should add, that Chef went on to become a three-star restaurateur in France a few years later, taking with him his tapes and most of the staff that had slowly trickled into his place, mostly because the music and back of the house climate was good. I called him a short while back to see if he’d have me back for a stage, and while talking to him I could hear Johnny Rotten sing from the tape deck.

Music is important. And your chef’s taste in it, tells a lot about her or him.

Oh, what brought this on? This SF Chronicle article. Guess which kitchen I’d work in (or which restaurant I’d take my friends to). :).