Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Kitchen Culture

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Summer 2022, it seemed like everyone and their cult leader was *devouring* the TV show The Bear: an inside look at the hierarchical, co-dependent, misfit-ridden, sometimes downright abusive—but also totally transcendent—“cult” of restaurant kitchen culture. This week, Amanda and Isa are chatting with Matty Matheson, a big-time chef and cast member of the show, for a no holds barred analysis of the culty power dynamics and rituals found in the world of knives, remoulades, shift drinks, “family meal,” and everyone screaming “behind!!!!” Get Tickets to Isa's Live Comedy Shows Here: https://linktr.ee/isaamedinaa Attend Amanda's Live Book Events: http://amandamontell.com/events/ Thank to our sponsors: Dipsea: Dipsea is offering an extended 30 day free trial at: DipseaStories.com/CULT Honey: Get Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/cult. ​BetterHelp: ​When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp​.​com​/​CULT today to get 10% off your first month​. Daily Harvest: Go to DAILYHARVEST​.​com​/​cult to get up to forty dollars off your first box! 

My name is Serena and I'm calling from Nashville and the cultiest thing about working in restaurants is how normalized and encouraged it is to work from open to close nearly every day of the week. Whether you're sick or have a family or it's a holiday, it's expected for you to be there. Hi, I'm Ayanna from Wilmington. The singular most cultish thing in my opinion is people especially cooks and chefs always saying we do it to make people happy. It's usually not the case. They do it to stroke their own egos and all the other cultish things that happen stem from people needing that. There is someone they're emulating and they endure abuse to do so and only socialize with other restaurant people and they do not know how to exist in the outside world and they

become blind to the problematic and toxic behavior that is rife in that industry. There's always this weird undercurrent of relationship whether you're like pleasing your manager or whether your manager doesn't like you it like actually has a really big impact on what it's like to work there. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian and I'm Amanda Montell author of the book Cultish the Language and Fanaticism. Every week on our show we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture from the troubled teen industry to the Kardashians to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult but is it really? To join our cult and see culty

memes and behind the scenes pics follow us on Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult pod. I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, where you can find all the information on where to see me do live stand-up comedy. I'm going to be performing in San Francisco on Thursday October 20th. I'm going to be in Los Angeles on Saturday October 22nd, New York City on November 26th baby. So go to my Instagram to see information on where to see me live or tell me where to perform because I do see that and I'm going to try to go to Australia but it's far babes. So that's my Instagram at Issa Medina, ISAA, M-E-D-I-N-A-A. Also Amanda here. I want to let you know that I have some really fun culty events coming up for my book Cultish. I'm going to be speaking in DC in October 2022. I'm

going to be in Salt Lake City in November. I'm going to be in LA so you can find the info for that at my website amandamontell.com slash events or on my Instagram. I hope to see you there. And feel free to check us out on YouTube where you can watch our show or if you want to support us further you can hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com sounds like a cult. One of our favorite sponsors of all time is Dipsy which offers 100 of short sexy audio stories designed by women for women. Dipsy is offering an extended 30-day free trial at dipsystories.com slash cult. That's 30 days of full access for free when you go to Dipsystories.com slash cult. Today's episode is sponsored by Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. If you don't already have Honey you

could be straight up missing out and by getting it you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this show. I'd never recommend something I don't use. Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash cult. That's joinhoney.com slash cult. Now a word from our sponsor BetterHelp, easy and affordable online therapy. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com slash cult today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash cult. Daily Harvest delivers delicious food built on organic fruits and vegetables, chews from smoothies, flatbreads, harvest bowls and more all ready to enjoy in minutes. You deserve one less thing to worry about. Let Daily Harvest take care of the fruits and veggies

for you. Go to dailyharvest.com slash cult to get up to 40 dollars off your first box. That's dailyharvest.com slash cult for up to 40 dollars off your first box. Dailyharvest.com slash cult. Today we are covering the cult of kitchen culture and we're not talking about your mother's kitchen, not your grandmother's kitchen or your father's kitchen. Yes, or your grandfather's kitchen. You're absolutely right. That not your mother's axiom, a little sexist. It is and I don't know if we're going to touch on this later, but I do find it so insane that like kitchen culture is predominantly male. When people are always telling women to go back into the kitchen, I'm like, oh, okay, in the one place we can do it professionally, you don't accept us. Yes,

because money and glory comes with cooking professionally and women are supposed to suffer in labor and silence. Anyway, if you couldn't guess, we're talking about the culture of restaurant kitchens, specifically fine dining kitchens. One of the main things that kitchen culture and cults have in common from my perspective is that cults often offer this sort of family and community for those who feel unwelcome in mainstream society. They often target people who are seeking a sense of belonging, but they're also very exclusive and have these barriers to entry and exit that make participants feel like they're some part of an exalted class. And there's a lot of that going on with the people who join the cult of restaurant kitchens.

Kitchen culture, specifically the kind we're going to be talking about today, which is the culture at fine dining restaurants or establishments, breaks down and bonds people in ways that are so similar to the way that cults do it. And a lot of people who end up working in restaurants are similar to the sorts of misfits that kind of wind up in cults. Getting a restaurant job is very much a thing you can do when you are between gigs or when you are looking for your next gig. Or when you don't have a fucking master's degree. Yeah. And when I think of chefs, even who work in some of the fanciest restaurants, I picture these sort of biker dudes, people with a ton of tattoos and like scars on their face. I guess they are working with knives.

Yeah, I always just, I mean, immediately jump to Anthony Bourdain look-alikes and like these people who had either a substance abuse issues or a hard time growing up. How do you say that? A difficult childhood. Yeah. It's one of the few industries where you really can still work your way up from the bottom. Like you can start as a hostess and then become a server and then become a manager or you can start as a dishwasher and then move your way up. And you don't see that a lot in other industries these days. It's true. But to that point, there is this very specific, unquestioned hierarchical structure in kitchens that reminds me of the military in a lot of ways. And as it turns out, was sort of derived from military hierarchies. I don't think I've ever

asked you this. Have you ever worked in a kitchen? Did you ever work in a restaurant? The closest I've ever gotten to working at a restaurant is I worked at a Froyo shop in high school. Oh, I see that for you. I love Froyo. I worked at it for like a year and a half. And after that, I didn't have Froyo for like three years, but I'm back on my Froyo game. I mean, if my favorite Froyo brand sponsored the podcast, that's when I really feel like we will have made it. That would be amazing. How do you send Froyo over the mail? I don't know. Or probably just a gift card. Then I also worked at the concession stand at the pool. These are such girl next-door jobs. That's where my love for hot dogs comes from. I love hot dogs. That's actually something

that you should know about me. I think they're such an easy snack. You can microwave them, you can boil them, you can grill them. What's your favorite hot dog topping? Because I know mine. People think it's weird, but I do put mayo on my hot dog. I put mayo, mustard, ketchup, and onions, and crumbled up chips. It's so good. Oh my God. That's how you do it in Colombia. Okay. We love hot dogs over the last thing on hot dogs is that I love a baseball game hot dog, you know, like wrapped in tinfoil. Well, it's cultural. We'll get into this analysis later, but one of the reasons why I think kitchen culture is so intense is because food is so fraught. Like food represents so much to us. It's not just sustenance for your body, it's your culture,

it's your identity, and certainly in restaurant culture, it's your livelihood, it's your legacy, as we all know and have seen in Ratatouille. Food is that moment where the critic in the movie puts the Ratatouille in his mouth and it like, it like, suctions him into his childhood and reminds him of that moment. Absolutely. That's what food does. Have you ever worked in a restaurant, Amanda? Yeah, yeah. I worked in restaurants. My favorite job in high school was I was the front of house hostess at Bertucci's. Did they have that where you grew up? No. Like family Italian restaurant. It's in like Maryland and New Jersey and stuff. I could see that though, because I feel like also a lot of people who want to pursue the arts have it in their mind that at some point they will have

to work at a restaurant for sure. You were almost like in character of like, I need to work at a restaurant. I was like cosplaying starving artists. Yeah. But I was not starving because when you worked there, you got unlimited free rolls. Oh my god, that sounds amazing. The rolls were amazing. I actually like wanted to work at a restaurant in high school because a lot of my friends did. They worked at something grill, you know, like suburb vibes. My dad and my mom, they wouldn't let me work at a restaurant because they were like, we didn't move to this country for you to work at a restaurant. They were like, focus on your homework and your work and like get into a good school. When I did the fro yo thing, I only was able to do it because I had a stress fracture,

so I couldn't run cross country that year. Your like extra curricular activities were planned out so strategically. My parents were just like, keep yourself busy, make some money, accomplish much. We'll see you later. Yeah. Well, my dad in college, he worked at Wendy's. He hated that job. And so he was like, I want to give you a life where like, you don't have to work at Wendy's. Oh, that makes sense. My dad, as some listeners know, spent his teen years in a cult against his will. And the job he had there was like his one beacon of hope. So I definitely came of age with the philosophy that labor can be a bright light in the darkness. But in college, as a hostess in a very swanky, pretentious, head up its rear fucking hotel restaurant

in New York City. I remember when I applied to work there, I'm 18 years old. In the interview, the fucking drinking his own cult leader, Kool-Aid owner of the restaurant asked me, do you think you can handle working in a restaurant this cool? My job there was literally just to like take room service orders and point people toward the bathroom. So I don't know what his deal was, whether he was trying to haze me or not. But that very exclusive, pretentious, fratty, but also badass energy is what I think of when I think of these fine dining establishments. I think the juxtaposition of chefs and other kitchen workers at these fine dining establishments being so rough around the edges while everything in front of house is so pristine actually seems

very culty. Oh, definitely, because it's this very obvious personification of ends justify the means. The implication being that this intense, sometimes abusive aggression backstage is necessary to achieve that ultimate perfection. There's this sort of exclusive secret culture happening behind the scenes. Yeah, that you can only be a part of if you join the cult and pay your dues. We always wanted to do the cult of kitchen culture because people have told us to and also it's just culty. But then this summer, the show The Bear came out, we as well as all of society became obsessed. We devoured it, so to speak. Yeah, we were like, yes, chef, yes, chef, no chef, baby. Everyone's like in bed asking people to like spend time with us. Everyone's been doing chef dirty talk this

summer. Or is that just me? So when we thought of kitchen culture, we were like, we have to talk to someone who's been on the show, but we wanted to someone who's also worked in kitchen. A real chef. So because we can't cover it all on our own, later in the episode, we're going to be talking to a very special guest who not only acted in the show The Bear, but is a very real and very successful chef who consulted on The Bear to make sure that the show was representing kitchen culture accurately. The Bear is obviously explosively popular right now, but it isn't the first time that the cult of kitchen culture has cropped up in the zeitgeist. The book Kitchen Confidential was first published in 2000. It became a New York Times bestseller, and that was one of the first

pieces of pop cultural media that showed the sort of ugly, culty underbelly of the culinary world. Also, a lot of people don't know this, but there was a TV show, a sitcom, a scripted show called Kitchen Confidential based on Anthony Bourdain's book. It only got one season because it was horrible, but Bradley Cooper played the lead. And it was essentially based off of Anthony Bourdain's life, this chef who has sex in the kitchen. It just never took off in the way that his unscripted shows did. Well, now we have The Bear. So we're good. It is worth noting that since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been this sort of new reckoning within the culinary industry in an attempt to make it less destructively culty. And we do talk about that with our guests, but let's get into some

fast facts. What are some events in recent history that have brought the cultiness of kitchen culture into the wider cultural zeitgeist? Oh, baby, we got some for you. I mean, one topic that people just want us to cover independently is the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. Oh my God. In the summer of 2020, the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen got exposed for exploiting their chefs of color. Also that summer in 2020, a super well-known LA restaurant named Squirrel, overrated, overrated and down the street from both of us. It got exposed for questionable food handling practices and mistreating their employees. And then in early 2021, the New York Times did an expose on the toxic work environment at Willows Inn. So these are just

some recent moments that have inspired that new reckoning of confronting kitchen culture and whether it is toxic or not. But of course, a cult cannot change its ways overnight. And so there are still these culty aspects. So let's get into our analysis of the cult of kitchen culture. Hi, my name is Isabella. And I think the cultiest part about the restaurant industry is how little they care about their employees. So I worked in a rolled ice cream cafe. The AC turned off. It was like 90 degrees and having to take breaks because we felt like we were going to pass out. One of the cultiest aspects of the service industry is the trauma bonding. After a very, very tough shift, people will feel closer together and more of a family. It turns into like those

are the only people that you hang out with or really care about. I've had multiple jobs where my manager tried to act like my parent and give me these life advice and how to be a better version of myself, even though during rushes, I would find them sitting in the office or just picking the absolute easiest job possible. So of course, as we always mention, cults often have a charismatic leader. And that's the chef in restaurants. They are sort of exalted as these enlightened geniuses that you're never supposed to question. Yeah. And we see that with Iowa Dibery's character Sidney and the bear who works at the restaurant, the beef, so she can have the opportunity just to work under Karmie, this genius chef who happens to be working at a low budget diner. She essentially

has to like fall to her knees and worship him in order to prove herself. So it's not just the people who work in the kitchen who worship the chef. It's also the patrons of the restaurant, the people who eat at the restaurant, the diners, compliments to the chef. Thank you so much to the chef. They don't think of the whole team that is behind the meal that they just ate. There is this reputation now of chefs as visionary geniuses. That image of chefs rose in large part because the culture that Anthony Bourdain portrayed in his books, glamorizing that image of the chef who works so hard and puts his blood, sweat and tears and all his artistic vision into his food, that can lead to glamorizing abuse going on in the kitchen because it's this ends justify the means

philosophy of like anything that's necessary to execute his vision. And that cult leaderish image of the chef gives diners something to talk about. It gives them a figurehead to worship themselves. Yeah. And I think it's important to highlight the glorification of this toxic culture was in the early 2000s, which was a time when there weren't like many anti-bullying campaigns yet. Having to suck it up and deal with it was still the culture at large. It's like when you're an adult, you just have to deal with it. You have to deal with abuse or if your parents hit you when you were a kid, it just made you stronger. That was in the zeitgeist. That's how people spoke. You're so right. It's very Gen X latchkey kid, suck it up, raise yourself. Literally,

if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Yeah. And now I think things are changing not just because the culture around bullying is changing and toxicity and people are going to therapy and things like that. But I also think probably because of the push to diversify kitchens more. Kitchens used to be like so homogenous, a lot of like white men. And now people who created a lot of the meals that had been brought to the forefront by white men are now getting in the kitchen. Minorities and women and people of color are now getting to be leaders in the kitchen. So it's a chicken or the egg situation. Were these environments toxic because there weren't any women or people of color? Or did people of color and women not want to work in these kitchens

because they were toxic? Yeah. That is a question to be asked in so many of these cult like industries and groups that are helmed by these exalted white men from Silicon Valley to fine dining. Chefs often detail abuse that they perpetuated in restaurants and still go on to be widely revered. When you say that immediately, I just think of Gordon Ramsay. I think of the chef who yells at everyone and has no patience and you're scared to be in the kitchen with them. I mean, he also has an accent. So it's like, okay, yell at me, daddy. You know what I mean? Yell at me in my favorite accent. I'm going to continue to misbehave. Yeah. Although it is weird because like he is a father now. I think I'm closer in age to his daughter than I am him. So I'm like, okay, don't yell at me. That's why

he's daddy. Yeah. These moves to diversify kitchens are so recent of 2019. Booked by the famous chef Jean Georges called My Life in 12 Recipes told the story of locking a dishwasher in the walk-in and beating him up as punishment for taking a break while a critic was in the restaurant. So he's essentially bragging about that in a very cult leaderish manner. Yeah, I don't like that. It seems toxic. It seems narcissistic and quite frankly, it's just not smart. I mean, we talk about this with our guests later, but it's like you have to appreciate every person in that kitchen because they bring a lot of value to the line, to the kitchen community. If you don't have a dishwasher, you don't have clean plates. And so you don't have something to

put your food on. It really is so culty that this violent chaotic energy is just what's expected. And because you were the victim of it once, you then perpetuate it and you think it can't be any other way. It sounds a lot like fraternities and sororities. If I was hazed, I'm going to haze. And it also is very narcissist because it's this idea of the chef's thinking, the only thing making this restaurant as good as it is is me. And I am irreplaceable. But as we now know, due to the internet, everyone is replaceable. So value your team because you're just as replaceable as they are. Speaking of the structure of the kitchen, just like cults, kitchens need to have a hierarchy in order for power to be distributed the way that the cult

leader wants. If you're expected to pay or do so, you can rise in the ranks. The structure and control head chefs have over line cooks breaks them down to keep them in line and thinking that the only way out is to work harder and follow order to move up. Yeah. I mean, if you work on the line, you likely don't make that much money and you simply cannot afford to quit or be fired. So it forces you to stay in line even when you're being abused. In 2018, the average annual wage for restaurant cooks was around $27,000 a year. A quote from a restaurant industry employee in an Eater article said, the only way I could see out of this financial insecurity was to move up. I needed to climb the ladder and to do that, I couldn't ruffle feathers. And again, to reiterate,

a lot of the time, the people who get involved in kitchen culture and the restaurant industry are people who might not have a degree. They don't have a fallback plan. And so they're kind of very cultishly imprisoned in this industry, in this kitchen. You're going to be like, how did you relate this to mean girls? But it reminds me of when someone plays a character for so long that they become the character. I think a lot of these people who start in toxic kitchens probably tell themselves, you know what, I'm just not going to ruffle any feathers because I need to get to the top. And then when I get to the top, I'm going to change the culture, the benevolent dictator. Yeah. And so when you get to the top, you've been doing it for so long

that it's just who you become. Yeah, of course. When Lindsay Lohan was pretending to be the mean girl and she just became the mean girl. Yeah, you're cold hard plastic. And she was like, I just, I didn't know who I was anymore. Totally, totally. I love that comparison. I'm never mad at a mean girl's reference. Yeah. There's also a very specific hierarchical system in the kitchen industry called the brigade system, where each level has one head and each role within a level will report to that head. Yeah. And I just learned this off the show, the bear, but not all kitchens use that system. Right. It's seen as one of the like stricter systems and antiquated because it is so hierarchical. And it's French. And it's French.

Oh my God. Speaking of round of two, it takes place in France. And the character of Colette has a line that I love so much where she's like interrupting a press conference and she's like, I hate to be ruled, but we're French. That brigade system is what gave the militaristic structure to kitchens in general. It's weird because it is a community, but it feels like when the system is so strict, people are demeaned for asking people to teach them new things. They're scared to ask for help. And so I think that creates a culture where individuals aren't growing as people. So then the kitchen isn't growing as a whole. Like any industry descent and diversification is ultimately good for art and progress. Yeah. And it's just very

cult leader-ish that this industry oftentimes doesn't make any room for that. It's better to teach a person to fish. It's that saying. Teach a man to fish, then you don't have to hang out with him or look at his fishing pictures. On hinge. On hinge. Yeah. Oh God, no, we need to stop teaching men to fish. Stop teaching men to fish. Okay. Creating a community where you feel worthless for asking questions and you have fear and intimidation reminds me a lot of Hollywood assistance. You know, it's like you're told that you need to like know everything about your boss, but you're not allowed to ask too many questions. This toxic space where you have to tiptoe around to people, but it's like how can you be the best employee if you are scared to ask questions? This

is why we get so many suggestions for this podcast is because every cult-ish industry will remind you of the cult-ish industry that you've been a part of. So long story short, we just have to do the cult of Hollywood assistance at some point. Because I was one. So you can like get it out of your system. Yeah. The way that I did when we did the cult of theater kids, it was very cathartic. Yeah. The thing that I think is actually maybe cultiest about kitchen culture is how they demand inordinate amounts of time and dedication to the industry. There is this expectation that you will do anything because chefing is really a spiritual calling, not just a job, not just an art form. Additionally, because you're spending

all of your time in the restaurant, you're partying with them at night, you're maybe getting fucked up with them, you like sleep in, get up, do it again. These are the only people that you're seeing. This is the only language and culture that you're participating in, and so then it becomes completely normalized to you. You're isolated from the outside world. Yeah. It becomes your family. You can't distinguish the line between what's right and what's wrong, and that's where it gets so blurry. Like a toxic family, like a fundamentalist Mormon family. Yeah. Calling any professional team a family has, I think, been widely established as problematic at this point, but because restaurant culture is so all-consuming and so codependent, kitchen dynamics can get really incestuous

outside the restaurant too. I saw this meme the other day that said bartenders or chefs will say, I know a special place and then take you to the walk-in. I remember at that restaurant that I worked in in New York City, after your shift, you have your shift drinks, and it's really late at night. Everybody's all up in each other's business. Like you were just screaming and sweating and swearing together, and now you're getting kind of tipsy and hooking up later and doing blow. I mean, it's obviously not that intense in every single restaurant, but anyone who's read the book, sweet bitter, knows what I'm talking about. Yeah. And that's true in a lot of different ways in the way that you don't question older family members. Like a lot of people who work at restaurant

don't question their superiors. I have a friend who works at a small restaurant here in LA. I'm like, I want to go, but the food is so expensive. And she's like, it's really expensive because it has to be because they aren't making a profit. And I understand that it's hard to make a profit in small, personally owned restaurants, but they were charging $20 for broccoli. You can still turn a profit on that by charging less. So maybe question your superiors a little bit more. Yeah. The defensiveness is something that you see in a lot of these cult-like groups because it's not as if she doesn't have a point, but also you have a point and the unwillingness to engage in that dialogue without getting super defensive of her higher ups might be symptomatic

of some cultish dynamics. And speaking of it being an art form, I keep using this word, but it really is that je ne sais quoi about food that makes it like amazing. And so I feel like chefs can get away with so much because this is art. Only my hands could put this together. If in this analogy, food is God, they're the profit. They're like, I and only I have a direct line to God. You can have God. There's a new pizza place downtown from the chef's table guy. Oh. With like the best pizza in America. And they opened one downtown. We should go. Oh, we should go. So we have been teetering around the name of our guest, but we are so excited to introduce him. We're going to be talking to Maddie Matheson, a Canadian chef, restaurateur,

and he also played Neil in the bear. He was executive chef of parts and labor, a restaurant located in Toronto. I mean, he's hilarious and just like seems like a fun hang. We cannot wait for you to hear this conversation. So before we get into our sponsors for the day, Issa here, I wanted to let you all know about some standup comedy shows I'm going to be doing all over the country. I'm going to be doing a really fun live show called the cult of standup comedy with Issa Medina and friends where I'm going to be performing live standup comedy baby. And I'm going to bring up some really special, funny comedy guests. You really don't want to miss it. I'm going to be in San Francisco

Thursday, October 20th. I'm going to be in Los Angeles Saturday, October 22nd. And I'm going to be in New York City Saturday, November 26th, baby. So go to my Instagram to buy tickets. Tickets are live at Issa Medina, ISAA, M-E-D-I-N-A, or my website, IsabellaMedinaMate.com. Is-A-B-E-L-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-M-A-T-E.com where you can get more information on how to see me live. You know what friends need to talk about more when they get together? What? They're fantasies. Oh, yeah. You know? That's fun fodder for female friendly conversation. Yeah, definitely. But where do you get those ideas? That's where Dipsy comes in. That is where Dipsy comes in. Dipsy is an app full of hundreds of

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listeners who you are and how you're connected to the cult of kitchen culture? I'm Maddie Matheson. I'm a part of restaurants. I've only kind of worked in restaurants my entire life, except for like some small shitty jobs in early high school. So like most of my life, I've only worked in restaurants. I'm devoted to feeding people. And we enjoy eating. We do, especially you. We appreciate it. Eating is pretty good. Eating has always been the human pastime. I just had a peanut butter and jelly on my way here. It was delicious. That's a nice sandwich. Underrated, I believe. On white bread or like a whole grain? White bread. Admittedly, it was un-uncrustable. When we say the cult of kitchen culture, how do you interpret that? In

other words, intuitively, what do you think restaurant kitchens and cults have in common? Well, I think there's a lot of common traits. And most restaurants, there's usually a chef or somebody in charge of that restaurant that usually has ultimate power. Most businesses have a boss. And I think that chefs most of the time have a very large ego and higher power or godlike ego or Superman type ego, niches and all that stuff. And then people want to be a part of those cultures, be a part of those restaurants. I want to go work here. I want to be a part of that without knowing exactly what that could be. It's like twin peaks, like the bugs crawling in the fucking dirt and you find a finger. You don't really know what it really is until you

get in there and you're like, oh, is this what I thought it was? I thought we're all just like smoking weed, hanging out, looking at flowers and fucking. I don't know if that's what this is. And so I think restaurants and cults probably have a lot in common and then they're praised and then they're hated and then they're built up and they're destroyed and falsehoods or romanticisms around them. And I'm always like, anyone can walk off the street and become a chef. You can go and work. You can start as a dishwasher, work your way up and you don't need some degree. It's a place of the fringe, the neglected. It's a place for a lot of people that can go and just get a job and you can make money. You can be anything and then just be like, I'm going to go serve tables

and you make money that night, cash. There's so much folklore around restaurants and I don't know, it's all quite sickening, you know? You really hit the nail on the head. You were like, I thought we were all looking at flowers, smoking weed and fucking and like that could describe any cult in history or just like a kitchen. That's absolutely right. And there is like so much sexiness to kitchen culture. I mean, you're feeding people that's very intimate, but then like the dynamics that emerge between and amongst everyone who works in the kitchen can get like fun and destructive. You mentioned that you started, you know, really early on like working at restaurants and then slowly developed your career. Could you tell us the story of how you were inducted into the

cult of kitchen culture and how you really rose through the ranks? You know, I went to culinary school just because it was the only school I got accepted to. I applied to four different colleges for four different things. I got accepted to Humber College in Toronto and I went because mostly I just wanted to go to Toronto. I wanted to go to the city. I come from a small town. I just wanted to go to like hardcore and bunk shows, get out of like my shitty little farm town, which now I live in and have a farm, which is a funny full circle thing, but went to culinary school and then I wasn't really good at anything in high school. I didn't really care for high school. I had a lot of friends. I liked doing drugs and getting drunk on the weekends and having

parties and doing all that kind of shit. I always just did literally just enough to get by. I didn't care. I knew like, I'm like, I'm not going to be a scientist. I'm not, you know, like I'm not going to be an engineer. I'm not going to be any of these things that my parents thought I was going to be. And I don't think they had high hopes to begin with really, but I think in culinary school, I found that I, um, I was good at something naturally. I was always just like the class clown, as you, I'm sure you can imagine. That was my safe place, you know, making fun of authority, I guess, in front of large groups of people. Culinary school was like, oh, I can do this. I could make a stock. I could debone a chicken. I could make a remoulade. I could make hollandaise

relatively easy. It didn't seem too stressful to pour clarified butter into eggs and whip it up. You're like a pilot. You know, you could have like this life and all these interests and stuff. But when you're in the plane, you have like really steady hands. Yeah. Well, I certainly do now. I've had a long history of opening and closing restaurants and working in some of the best restaurants in Toronto. I even dropped out even though I was good at it, because I was like, you know, punk enough, didn't need a piece of paper to tell me what to do. So, you know, I dropped out of college and then just went on tour with my friend's band, got a job at like this bistro, which happened to be the best bistro in Toronto. And there was

like this magical place. It was all types of people. Well, the feelings of acceptance and transcendence that you're describing that you found when you first entered culinary school in your first kitchen and then having exposure to like this eclectic group of people that you maybe didn't have access to before, it really does sound like a lot of the cult origin stories. This one. The biggest thing that I remember the different types of people. When you're young, you have like what high school was like, what college was like, and then all of a sudden you're in the world. When you go to work, it doesn't matter if you're cool or if you listen to Dead Moon or The Smiths or whatever. Like when you go into restaurants, all of a sudden you're like,

oh, this person is like this actor and this person sings jazz. And all of a sudden at a young age still be open up to all these different people. And even like working with different line cooks, you're working like, you know, still to this day, one of my best friends is Rang, who was like the chef there at Les Select. Why the fuck would I be friends with some like 50 year old Vietnamese guy? You know, and it all of a sudden just opens up. I don't know, it gives you kind of empathy, human empathy and understanding and being like, oh, just because you're not the same as me, makes you just as cool or whatever. It's just like, you're just hanging out cooking and working 12 hour days and then you go and drink and you're out after hours and then you're back at somebody's

apartment and you go to bed at 8am and then you're back at the restaurant at 11 and you do that for years and you're like, this is my this is my team, you know, bunch of freaks. Yeah, it's a true community. It like blows your world open, but then at the same time, it also becomes your whole world and that can be insular too. Yeah, I worked on the Anthony Bourdain documentary. He had addiction before and then he switched from one cult of like drugs to the cult of like kitchen culture almost and use that as like a replacement and then he switched to the traveling thing. You replace one lifestyle with another. There's a void. We want something to fill that void so badly, whether it's drugs or a community or we're chasing something. Yeah, void, the emptiness.

I always were like a fucking like a rope bridge floating over some fucking giant crevice crevasse or whatever the fuck. You're just this like stupid little rope floating over the nothingness looking over and you think you can just fill it and you got your pockets are filled with only so much junk. Nothing changes. You're still out there alone on that little dangly rope that's moving constantly. Speaking to like the addiction stuff, I'm certainly a workaholic. I have like 55 fucking companies. One of those things where it's just like I stopped doing drugs and drinking and all that stuff started traveling and doing all that. And it is like one of those things where it's just like if you're not doing the work spiritually and doing all that kind of stuff

like anything, it's very difficult to find true balance of any sort when you're trying to live any type of dynamic kind of life or a simple life. Like it's very difficult to do anything. I think a lot of people when they join a certain community, whether it's a cult or not, they think like, oh, this is it. Like this is going to solve everything. And it was promised to solve everything. But you're right. Even if you're kind of just sitting still, life is constantly changing around you. And the second you think you have balance, it's it's fleeting. I guess restaurants kind of remind me of like social media. In a way, you only see the front of the restaurant. You see like the front of the room. You see like the finished product. Everything

came together and everything's running smoothly because the servers are like at peace with you at your table. But then behind the restaurant, social media, it's like all of our lives are so hectic and chaos. But no one's showing that aspect or all the hard work that came to lead to like the front of the restaurant. Food's interesting. No matter what, when those doors open, everyone needs to be ready. It's a game every day. And everyone is there to judge you. Everyone is there to hopefully enjoy you. Some people are coming in to hate you. It is like social media. And it really doesn't matter what kind of day anybody was having. Now we're learning that it does matter how people are feeling. And it does matter how

we deal with that and how we can support people when you're coming into spaces and you're having a bummer day. People don't give a fuck. Like if you went into a dining room, okay, everything's going to be 10% off. But that is going to make everyone's life in the back a little bit worse because then we won't be able to pay benefits. And everybody sitting down, if we gave you 10% off, would you really care? Would you take the 10% off? Or would you make the 30 people that made all your food tonight have a little bit happier lives? Just a little bit, not much. I'm sure a lot of people would be like, I'd take 10% off. I'm just eating a salad. You know, I'm just eating a salad. I'm eating a cheeseburger. Like what do you want from me?

It's a tough thing. That type of business, if you're a perfect business operator, you're still profiting at like a 10% margin. I do feel guilty every time I go out and eat at a restaurant because I have a vague idea of how terribly the financial income business structure is there. With that being said, do you want to explain the hierarchical structure of the kitchen, what purpose it serves, how you keep morale high under those circumstances? You know, the chef usually would be either the face of the cult or the actual cult leader. The biggest secret that nobody really understands either is that most front facing chefs aren't even probably majority owners of their restaurant. Yeah, like they're still not the ultimate leader.

Like the higher power is the financier. Right. It's a wild little game out here right now. At what point did you start taking it seriously? Was it a point where you kind of fell into like someone else's cult? It's an interesting thing because I never worked under one particular chef that I really believed in, I should say. Also, I became a chef at 26. I liked working. The hours never really bugged me. I can drink and get a fucking bag of coke after and hang the fuck out and smoke cigs with my friends and tell stories about your childhood till six, seven a.m. then like I'm fucking in it. I feel like it's very similar to the life of a stand-up comic. It really is just these people are enjoying themselves and then it creates a career. I also think it's

interesting that you sort of represent the type of person who strikes out on their own and starts their own cult because they realize they don't want to drink someone else's Kool-Aid, so to speak. I think of the analogy with corporate culture. Like there are people who start working at a startup in Silicon Valley and they're like, I really want to realize the CEO's vision. And then there are the people who are like, fuck it, I'm going to start my own startup. And that's sort of like the cult leader type. I was dumb enough to jump. I'm dumb enough to jump every day. I'll start a business right now. Is it really dumb though? Like what do you think that quality is? I don't think it's dumb. I think it's funny. You're like, I'll start a business right now.

I'll walk out the door and I'll start another one. I'll fucking leave this podcast right now. You're like, I'll start a fucking podcast. I'll start a rival podcast. I don't know. I'm over podcasts, but not doing them, doing my own. Shout out to Powerful Truth Angels. Shout out to Two Terms Still Holding It Down. Nothing is sustainable about it. I ran as hard as I could. I don't think I tricked anybody into like opening a restaurant for me. A restaurant was already happening, Odd Fellows, and I kind of jumped in on it in the last like month and cooked a menu and they hired me to be the chef and it was a very small team. It was just like me and two cooks and like we had a dishwasher on the weekends. That restaurant in itself is very culty because

there wasn't a person that was fucking over 30 that worked there. There'd be like all of us just like sleeping upstairs in the apartment and like no one would sleep and we were just partying. We'd be hanging on the roof, throwing beer cans at people and like we didn't give a fuck and people would walk in and we made really good food. That's kind of like life though. I feel like you just realized it at an earlier age because you jumped. No one ever knows what they're doing. You know, everyone's jumping every day even like working in corporate America. Like that's a decision you make every day and people think that there's so much security in a corporate job but you could get fired tomorrow. It's the illusion of control that people hang on to so tightly.

But let me ask because I've been always so curious about this. The power structure in kitchens reminds me of the military but it also reminds me of cult. Why do you think there is that unchecked unquestioned hierarchy where like you just have to do what the chef says? I think it comes from like not medieval fucking times but you know like it comes from like early 1900s and shit like a scoffier. They had to be roasting quails perfectly and making pativiers, cakes and things and feeding kings and queens and all these things and like something happens and like someone's in trouble. If you take one recipe and give five people that thing you will have five outcomes probably. Right. You know, it's very difficult to get people to cook the same way

and the nuances. Where else is usually not high? It's usually a facade and it's masked with alcoholism and drugs and other things that can come along with being in restaurants but now it's very different because I left restaurants for like six, seven years and I just did all my vice shit and traveled around and write books and do all that stuff. So it was just like I went and had a whole other life and then now I'm back into restaurants. I learned what not to do my entire career and now it's like I get to work with amazing people to do it right or at least understand what we think is right and then work towards still a moving goal post but at least have infrastructure around that to create places that are spiritually, financially, career moving positives. You don't always have

to have the answers. Like that's the thing that's amazing where live performance problem solving is such an amazing thing to do. I don't know the answer. Why don't we talk about it and I'm sure with five of us here we're going to figure something out that makes sense for the group. It sounds to me it's so important that you like took that time off and stepped away because you mentioned there are so many things that make you hectic in a kitchen and there's that history of the French brigade but I also think the timeliness of every meal has to be exactly the same. I don't even make my own meals the same and the fact that like chefs have to do it the same for an audience is insane. Just think everyone has to have everything ready. You have to have

every single thing consistent. LOL. I tried to make duck confit for my parents on Christmas. I ruined Christmas. We got into a huge fight obviously over the duck over just cooking and like I was stressed so I can't imagine in a real kitchen at a real restaurant. It's funny that you talk about amputating because you talking about some of those origins in France it's like you sometimes see in kitchen culture now people are so afraid to disobey the chef. Early France they literally might have gotten the guillotine. Those stakes have really carried over into today. If a chef is yelling at any moment that means that they've lost control and they don't know how to articulate how to speak and communicate to their teams.

So that's another thing that a lot of chefs or mostly men are pretty bad communicators. How do you communicate with 10, 12, 5, 2, 1 other person constantly telling them what you want to do or what they want to do, understand what they want to do then you can help them even because a sous chef's job is to give everything to that chef or that chef to cuisine what they need every day and to understand and to set them up for success and then the person underneath them is there to set that person up for success and all of a sudden that chain is broken and then you look and you're like you just fucked me. The pressure is unfortunate but that the pressure is the person sitting on that table doesn't give a fuck. The way that you describe it it

almost sounds like the customer is the ultimate cult leader. If the customer were just a little bit more empathetic. Customer's always right. Where the fuck does that come from? People think that like they've been told by society from some fucking thing in the 50s that the customer's always right just because you're paying doesn't mean that you're right. The customer's always right falls into this category of a cult language technique that all cult leaders use called a thought terminating cliche where once you say it the conversation shuts down no dissent no questioning can follow like the customer's always right the end fall in line. The way you described it having to do the same meal every time I just wanted to say and you kind of become desensitized or it's kind of like

changing the wheels in a car it reminds me a lot of stand-up just because a lot of stand-ups kind of become like desensitized to their own material so that they can deliver it in the exact same way every time but it's that same thing of like the meal is kind of a joke it can hit different with every audience. I think all good creatives treat it like a trade. Yeah you have to. You think that you're special because you can use your knife better than the person next to you you'll be fantastic if you can teach that person how to bring was that carrot if you give them a couple minutes of your time and instead of looking at them like they're fucking some imbecile why don't you lift them up that'll make you a better person it'll make them a better person it'll put better

mise en place into the fucking kitchen we're all in this and we are all here to try to help each other be better every single day. A lot of people think that every restaurant is probably toxic you're constantly trying because I think people are toxic it is one of those things where we are the variable somebody can come in with a bad mood and that bad mood sets everybody else off everyone let's take a break let's take a moment let's air it out let's do a little namaste day jimmy why are you upset it's like a kindergarten talking circle and speaking of those moving variables and the hierarchy and the positions do you think that there are any like hidden positions along the hierarchy or secret unspoken powerful positions like you never fuck with the dishwashers

you know and ordain was obviously a big fan of that and and they're they are the heart and soul they work extremely hard they do a lot of jobs that they're not supposed to do you have to feed them well you take care of you give them whatever they need they ask for a raise give them a raise because they're important for the vibe too it feels like they're not just a dishwasher they're part of the community and so if they ask for something you want to respect that i'd rather a line cook walk offline than than have my dishwasher leave i'll tell you that much are there any initiation rituals that new members of the cult of kitchens have to go through for acceptance all that stuff is part of what everyone's trying to leave behind back in the day at this

one restaurant like there definitely was a late night club called man's club everyone could be in man's club it wasn't just for men but you had to burn yourself with a knife and so we all have scars front of house back of house whoever was hanging out the latest we'd be like man's club tonight you had to burn it every time anyone was like man's club and then we'd all get the candle out and heat up the butter knife and you'd heat it up because i have them all over me but oh my god it's literally worse than xium that's from early 2000s like that was like an og spot all different walks of life and everyone like loved it seems like everyone was proud of them because it shows that you're a part of the cult we would do it at parties and like even my wife has them

oh my god it trickles to the family we were just at this like wedding one time and we were all talking about it and we're all yacked out we're in the bathroom we're like let's do it we did the bride we did like a whole crew we did this whole thing where we just burned everyone with butter knives that is the cultiest shit i've ever heard that's so funny the fact that it's trickling to the family is giving like amway you know it's the family business do it to all your friends i love that you guys like did it at a place that was like celebratory you were like a wedding fuck it let's fucking do it they were still there like get it she's in her like wedding dress yeah it was a funny thing so we're gonna ask you one more question and then we're gonna play a little

game and then we'll wrap up if you could snap your finger and change something about kitchen culture to make it less culty would you do that and if so how uh yeah 100 you would just change the mentality that you're worthless if you fucking burn a piece of bread you're not worthless you made a mistake and now do it again and i think like that is the thing that becomes toxic is the way that people are handled that particular situation when you do something wrong rather handled with aggression handled with empathy because most of the time if you were if you fucked up you'd be berated verbally and physically what's the opposite you gas somebody up be like hey that was a big mistake let's try to do that again because every single day you're cutting

onions you know you're you're you're slicing onions all day and i sliced the onions wrong and chef comes over yells at me for slicing my onions wrong what if they just gave me a little ounce of positivity instead of like calling me a fucking donkey yeah yeah there's just no reason why the culture has to be so militant and so sometimes abusive it's just not necessary entirely abusive imagine calling somebody you're working next to somebody and they they fuck up and you're like you're a fucking idiot why did you just do that like you're doing a podcast and somebody's like you just talked to your microphone too fucking close and the fucking spark and you fucking made a fucking stupid movie fucking idiot there's just no reason for the culture to be that

and it's like passing abuse from one generation on to the next we just like need you to break it up batty yeah we're gonna jump to a game it's called yes chef we're going to read a list of very culty scenarios that were on the bear that were in different things on the bear and you're gonna have to say whether or not you have personally witnessed or experienced one of those culty scenarios in real life and if so you'll just say yes chef and if not you'll say no chef right right number one being verbally berated slash sworn at slash verbally assaulted by the head chef while having to continue plating food yes chef getting into a fistfight with someone in the middle of a shift yes chef oh my god having a chef quit in the middle of a huge rush

yes chef done a back alley meat deal because your original supplier did not come through you no no chef okay traded vintage clothing for ingredients i would trade other things i would trade i used to trade meals for drugs put off processing your emotions or traumas because you are too busy with the kitchen yes chef thrown up before work every morning from anxiety no chef i would iron clad respect i figure there are other ways but i'm sorry yeah there's a lot of other ways i wasn't a barfer have an employee sell drugs out by the dumpsters yes chef had a boss slap something you made directly out of your hands yes chef failed a health inspection because

someone left a pack of cigarettes on the gas range no chef last one had to deal with everything in the restaurant breaking all throughout the course of the day the toilet bursting power going out walk-in freezer repair costs for five thousand dollars ain't some way or another yes chef yeah okay so the long and short of it is that the bear is 100 accurate yeah i think it's any small business i think it's it is one of those things where it is um there's a lot of stuff that you have to do to run a small family owned business there's no real financial stable backer or hedge fund or some bullshit and you're in there working putting your head down trying to deal with everything leading and trying to do everything you won't be able to do everything or lead yeah

and it's a snake eating its own tail yeah and you're you'll get lost you need a lot of amazing people to make a restaurant run soundly not just a chef the chef there's yes chef bullshit is the biggest bullshit in the world when i walk into my restaurants i'm maddie i'm not the chef once again i want to know what everybody thinks how everybody feels i want to know all of that once we collectively figure out how to make a dish better that is our biggest concern as a collective what is the best that we can do to make our food the best i guess ideally in a kitchen the food should be the cult leader it should be we i bow i bow to flavor it's the one true thing in the world our perspective and our perception of what we believe that dish is is going to be

different every single time yeah somebody eats it yeah thank you so much for joining us uh if folks want to follow your cult where can they find you uh just maddie matheson i think most stuff i'm not too sure it doesn't matter don't follow me don't follow somebody else i love it i mean thank you so much for coming on this podcast we had such a fun time talking to you just such big fans of your work truly this has been fun most of the podcasts i do are just like pee pee poo poo podcast to do something that is actually put together it's it's very well produced hi i'm sam i'm from philly and i think the coldest thing about working in a restaurant is the phrase if there's time to lean there's time to clean because god forbid a service worker sit down

the money the hours like the whole culture of it it's nearly impossible to get out or if you try to work a normal job with it it's hard and it's almost devastating at some points of it i had a chef that would get so mad screaming you belittle you call your rename in the book even throw knives in the kitchen you missed up a kitchen ticket if somebody in the back line messed up the food but at the end of the night at that bar when we ponied up for our after shift drinks we were all family all right isa out of these three cult categories live your life watch your back and get the fuck out what do we think about the cult of kitchen culture i think it is a solid watch your back gotta be yeah easy peasy lemon squeezy watch your back there might be your onions

might be burning behind yeah it's the behind all the cult language in kitchen culture is low key so fun yeah it really does make you feel like you're a part of something special and greater than yourself yeah if you watch the bear and a week after you weren't in the kitchen with like your roommates or your friends being like behind yes chef my roommates and i literally spoke to each other like that for two weeks straight and i think the reason it's so solid leo watch your back is because like nonprofits you know there can be good kitchens out there we saw that with maddie saying if you are a good chef you never yell at someone or you never lose your temper and hopefully like that kind of culture is changing yeah you're open to feedback you're open to

questioning you don't want people to worship you and say yes chef and hopefully chefs like maddie will now it sounds like we worship him but yeah we kind of do hopefully you know chefs like maddie will start setting the tone for the rest of the industry yeah well i'm hungry but that is our show thanks so much for listening we'll be back on the new cult next week but in the meantime stay culty but not too culty sounds like a cult is created hosted and produced by Amanda Montel and isa medina michael dorfman is our editor our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by kasey colb thank you to our intern slash production assistant noemi griffin subscribe to sounds like a cult wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode and if you

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