‘Extreme suffering’ central to culture of elite kitchens – study

Chefs in Michelin-starred restaurants tell researchers how brutality, burns and beatings are routine to ‘building respect’

Chefs have described the “extreme suffering” behind the creation of award-winning food, in candid accounts including plunging breadcrumbed hands into deep-fat fryers as an endurance test and cauterising knife cuts on stove tops.

Staff in Michelin-starred kitchens in the UK and abroad have told researchers how pain – from burns to beatings – continues to be central to building respect and to demonstrate work ethic and character. But far from running from the violence, many embraced it as part of achieving success and inhabited a sub-culture that imbued suffering with “a dark, tawdry kind of beauty”.