If at first you don’t succeed: Why failing is a must
Kitchen life as a professional cook isn’t easy, in fact — it’s so damn hard. I take comfort in knowing the chefs that have trailblazed the way for the current generations have had to deal with the same challenges and struggles that we all do as professional cooks. Hopefully, next time the boss chews you out, the line gets crushed beyond belief on a Tuesday night, or your significant other grows frustrated with your career and the crazy hours, you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy! That is what cooking is all about.
We go through our careers and things happen to us. Those experiences made me what I am. There are many times in my life, when I could've thrown in the towel, many times in my life when I was on the floor, holing my head looking down.... and when you're on the floor, never allow anybody to pick you up. It doesn't matter how long you stay there, make sure you pick yourself up and dust yourself down. Whatever happens, whether you go home today or you don't go home today, that's irrelevant. What's relevant, is you take the knowledge from the experience and you grow as a person. A great restaurant doesn't distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes but by how well they handle those mistakes.
To me, there's no great chef without a great team!
Good Luck!