Don’t Date A Chef
Everything You Think Will Be Great Will Actually Suck.
The Chef’s Coat holds the number 3 rank of sexiest attire for “men in uniform”.
But the fantasy will not match reality at all. You’re better off buying your mortgage-firm boyfriend a chef’s coat and asking him to lick compound butter out of your buttcheeks.
Because dating a chef is fucking hard, and you probably can’t hang if you aren’t in the industry. Here’s why:
1. Your schedule likely doesn’t match our schedule ever
I haven’t gotten home before 10:15PM on a single shift since I’ve re-entered ChefLife.
When I do, I usually smell like a mishmash of garlic, hot oil, vinegar, rage-sweat and Energy Drink Burps. I have to immediately dump my clothing into a laundry hamper and get a shower.
So it’s almost 11 before I’m finally even cleaned up enough to be a person, and by then I have to get to bed ASAP in order to be at the restaurant first thing in the morning.
Every weekend.
Your bank job and my ChefLife are not gonna have a good time together, unless you like a post-coital drive back to your own place on a Tuesday night.
At least I can send you home with snacks. As long as I stole them from work, because…
2. We Are NOT Trying To Work After Work
Dating a Chef is less culinary brilliance at home than it is either microwaved leftovers from the restaurant or something from GrubHub.
We just dealt with ungrateful customers and incompetent server staff for 8–13 hours straight, so it’s highly unlikely we want to come home, clean ourselves up, and then make you a Frenched Rack of Lamb.
You’re getting whatever we could sneak into a to-go box from work. Probably something with a low food cost.
Or we can feed you something delivered from DoorDash. Because who doesn’t love a $60 delivered meal of soggy quesadillas and cold street corn?
You might like prefer the idea of bringing stolen dishes home to you, but in order to appreciate that…
3. You Gotta Be Cool With Crime
Either we are committing them, or being an accessory to them, or hanging out with coworkers who DEFINITELY commit them.
My crackhead/meth-head/some-kind-of-shady-uppers-head coworker has snuck out to the dumpster to “get his mind right” MULTIPLE TIMES during this busy December we had.
I sometimes give him a ride home because Surprise: junkies often don’t have a license.
So once a week, for about 20 minutes, I’m likely driving with an Instant Felony in my car. That is, if I don’t have my own Instant Felonies in my car already for my own personal use.
Dating a Chef may require you to keep a few hundred dollars in cash for potential Bail Money. That’s hard to explain to your parents, but even harder than that is the fact that…
4. We Are Socially Inept Perverts That Would Be Shot On Sight By An HR Director
My favorite joke in my kitchen is “Would you like to put my freshly-shaved pecker in your mouth?”
Relax, it’s a play on “shaved pecorino”, a garnish we use on some of our dishes.
But that’s how our brain works, for 40+ hours a week. It doesn’t turn off.
Do you honestly expect us to become politically correct saints when we are pimped out to your mother to help prep thanksgiving dinner? Absolutely fucking not.
She’s gonna say “can you help me stuff the turkey?” and before you know it, your mother is going to be judging you for your dating choices.
And don’t get us started on “that’s what she said” jokes. Or “deez nuts”. Holy shit, we are pathological about those two phrases.
But there is one phrase we hate more than anything in the world, and every single person we’ve ever dated can’t help themselves from uttering it…
5. “What’s Your Favorite Thing To Cook?” Makes Us Hate You
Every Chef on a first date has heard it, and we die a little on the inside when we do.
Not only does that question prove just how little you understand the life we live, but it’s also just a really goddamn stupid question.
I like cooking tons of things, and what my “favorite thing” is can vary from week-to-week. Sometimes I’m all about a good steak. Sometimes it’s cajun shrimp penne. Recently I’ve gotten dick-hard about plating up burrata appetizers because I can make those plates look really fucking pretty.
If you’ve ever asked The Dumb Questions and gotten an answer besides “french fries”, it’s only because we’re still trying to sleep with you for variety’s sake. That’s because, lastly…
6. We’ve Fucked At Least ONE Coworker
You cool with being Eskimo Siblings with someone we spend a majority of our time with? No? Tough shit.
It’s no mystery that Front Of House workers tend to be pretty. Pretty people sell more shit and make more money.
We spend days working together with them. Every week. In a unique environment that outsiders never seem to fully comprehend or connect with.
Then we party together. Drink together. Sleep together. It’s damn near as inevitable as gravity.
Can you deal with that? Waiting for your Chef boo-thang to come home from a long and stressful day working and bantering alongside someone who has tasted their Tube Steak Tartare?
You’re crazy if you can. Which is necessary for dating a Chef. But trust me, us Chefs find crazy to be HOT. That’s why we fucked the coworker in the walk-in cooler and ate house-made Bleu Cheese dressing off her tits.
Because she’s just as depraved, unrested, stressed and strung out as we are.
If you want to compete with that, you best bring your A-Game. We’ll bring the Bleu Cheese dressing.
Chef4Fingers is a lecherous whore who has lost count of co-workers he‘s covered in his special sauce during his career. He can be found here on Medium, or on Twitter as TheChef4Fingers
