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may as well stop snacking on crap while you're at it. You don't need that bag of chips between meals, do you? You're probably not even enjoying it. Save your appetite for something good! Take a little more time! All that rage and frustration, that hollow feeling so many of us feel—for so many good reasons— can be filled up with something better than a soggy disk of ground-up assholes and elbows. Eat for nourishment, yes, but eat for pleasure. Stop settling for less. That way, if we ever do have to get in there and "smoke evildoers out of their holes," at the very least, we'll be able to squeeze in after them.
A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS NOBODY ASKED FOR

    if you can catch a chef in a quiet, reflective moment over a drink, and ask what the worst aspects of the job are, you will probably get the following answer: "The heat, the pressure, the fast pace, the isolation from normal society, the long hours, the pain, the relentless, never-ending demands of the profession."
    If you wait awhile, maybe two more drinks, and ask again— this time inquiring about the best parts of being a chef—more often than not, the chef will pause, take another sip of beer, smile . . . and give you exactly the same answer.
    This is something you might keep in mind at the very beginning of your cooking career, chained to a sink in a crowded sub-cellar, doing nothing more glamorous, hour after hour after hour, than scraping vegetables or washing shellfish: It doesn't really get any better. In fact, I know a number of accomplished chefs and sauciers who suffer from what we call "dishwasher syndrome," meaning that at every available moment between delicately spooning foamy sauces over pan-seared scallops and foie gras, or bullying waiters, they sneak over to the dish station and spend a few happy, carefree moments washing dishes. This is not as bizarre as one might think. Many of us yearn for those relatively carefree days when it was a simple matter of putting dirty plates into one end of a machine and then watching them emerge clean and perfect from the other side. Similarly, I have seen owners of multiunit restaurant empires blissfully sweeping
    A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS NOBODY ASKED FOR
    the kitchen floor, temporarily enjoying a Zen-like state of calm, of focused, quantifiable toil far from the multitasking and responsibility of management hell.
    Cooking is, and always has been, a cult of pain. Those of us who've spent any time in the business actually like it that way. Unless we've gone Kurtz-like over the edge into madness, and started believing, for instance, that we are no longer cooks but spokespersons for supermarket chains, or forces of nature responsible for elevating the eating habits of a nation, then we know who we are: the same people we have always been. We are the backstairs help. We are in the service industry, meaning that when rich people come into our restaurants we cook for them. When our customers play, we work. When our customers sleep, we play. We know (or should know) that we are not like our customers, never will be like our customers, and don't want to be, even if we put down a nice score now and again. The people in our dining rooms are different from us. We are the other thing —and we like it like that. We may be glorified servants, catering to the whims of those usually wealthier than us (I mean, who among us could afford to eat in our own restaurants regularly?), but we are tougher, meaner, stronger, more reliable, and well aware of the fact that we can do something with our hands, our senses, the accumulated wisdom of thousands of meals served, that they can't. When you're tired after a hard day in the kitchen, and some manicured stockbroker is taking up too much room on the subway, you have no problem telling the stupid prick to shove over. You deserve it! He doesn't.
    Does this sound macho? It isn't. Men, women, anyone who works in a professional kitchen should feel the same way. They work harder, under more difficult