Overview

Three months before I started my DV (design verification) role I decided to try and get hired as a line cook for the summer. I'd just graduated and only started my engineering job in August. There were two options for what to do in-between, 1) travel and 2) work as a line cook. Travel is the standard thing to do after graduation and I was heavily considering either a trip to China, Italy or southern France. All three places have beautiful scenery and I'd get to eat great food. Working as a cook, on the other hand, is hard. 10+ hour shifts on your feet, in a hot and stressful environment.

That being said, I've always wanted to do it. The difference between home cooking and professional cooking is like the difference between a software project you code yourself, and working as a SWE at meta. I wanted to learn to cook professionally, where you're held to an external standard.

The tiebreak came down to time needed. Travel could be fit into my PTO once I start working, and if for some reason I really wanted to take an extended length trip, I could work remotely. Being a line cook requires at least a season of full-time availability. That uninterrupted length of time I would not have again for ... quite a while. So I decided to try and get a line cook job at a more upscale restaurant. The backup plan if I failed was to book a last-minute trip in July.

I also decided it'd be interesting to document this process: what it takes, what I learn and how it goes. So here we are.

Groundwork | Phase -1

For some context, when I set this goal I had zero kitchen experience. I hadn't been to culinary school. I was as green as a prospective cook could be. The recruiting process for getting hired as a cook is through a practical interview known as a stage, where a candidate comes in for about half a shift and works alongside the kitchen team. I like to think of myself as a pretty decent home cook, so I thought I had a chance as long as I could pass the resume screen.

At the beginning of this, I was both unfamiliar with the hiring pipeline, and the Chicago food scene. Quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing or where to even begin. So I tapped AI for help. Turns out, AI is actually quite useful at distilling information in unfamiliar areas, not just writing code. Culinary Agents is the LinkedIn of hospitality, and unlike tech recruiting where you need to make a separate workday account for every company, it's actually centralized. A lot of restaurants use it. How tech ended up with the less efficient system, I'm not sure. After getting a list of chef-driven restaurants from my fancy next-word predictor (LLMs), I made a very empty culinary resume, a Culinary Agents profile and started applying. At the same time I also sent cold emails to the restaurants directly, saying why I was interested in that particular place and asking to stage. Emailing directly can be a higher-signal way to getting a foot in the door.

The steps here were simple. They did not feel easy. These restaurants are some of the most well known ones in Chicago; cooks from the top culinary schools apply here. And here I was, completely underqualified, no connections in the industry, asking them to stage in their kitchens and give me a shot for a line cook position. If I'm being transparent, I was expecting to get ghosted everywhere back when I was applying. But there was no "I'll do it later, when I'm more ready". There was no time for excuses, and I don't mean that metaphorically, I mean it literally. After this summer, I wouldn't have back to back months of free time until I retired from engineering. It was now or never.

Staging | Phase 0

My First Stage

Then came my first stage. Lula cafe responded to the line cook position I'd applied to, asking me to come stage. This was quite surprising for two reasons. Firstly, as Lula cafe is very well known with a Michelin bib gourmand -- quality food at a certain price point, as opposed to a $200/pp Michelin star tasting menu, and secondly as green people are usually hired into prep cooks and not line cooks. Prep cooks come in in the mornings to prep everything the line cooks will use during service. To prepare, I bought a pair of kitchen shoes; the tread is different to that of normal boots, as the latter are designed for outdoor traction. In hindsight doing this before I got an actual offer was not necessary, but I digress. The day of, I put on a black t-shirt and jeans then took the train there, having no idea what to expect.

The stage started with a tour of the kitchen and a pre-shift meeting, then it was off to prep work. I shucked fava beans for 90-ish minutes while talking with the other cooks doing prep. Then there was tasting, where the line cooks made each dish on the menu and chef tasted everything to double check, and staff meal, where I chatted with the cooks and got to know them more. After that was dinner service. Being completely green, I wasn't on the line itself at any point, but I did get to observe and ask the line cooks questions, while doing other prep tasks right next to the line. Before the dinner rush truly hit my stage ended, and the cook who was supervising me took me back downstairs, gave me a timeline for next steps and sent me on my way.

About a week later, I was told they had went with another candidate. For my first stage I thought it'd went well; I was vibing with the cooks and even lightly discussed philosophy with one -- if he disagreed with "if you turn your passion into your job, it'll no longer be your passion"). But from a technical standpoint I'd (understandably) only been given prep tasks, which is somewhat already a soft rejection for a line cook role.

"I haven't stepped foot in a professional kitchen before" was no longer true after staging at Lula. So it was time to follow up with all the other places I'd emailed. My initial plan was to show up in the dead-zone of when the restaurant is open, 14:00-16:00, to try to talk to a chef and pitch myself. However, it turns out that these more upscale places are either dinner only or closed between lunch and dinner. So that was out. Instead I tried calling during that dead-zone. Sometimes someone picked up, other times it went to voice mail. In addition, I also followed up via email with my updated resume to the various places. While I was still very green, there's a noticeable difference a) I've never done this before ever, and b) a well known kitchen thought I was worth evaluating.

My First Interview

After following up via email to Mott St, I got an interview scheduled with them. It was only an hour (as opposed to 4+ hours for a stage), and at the start of dinner service so I wasn't sure what to expect. I showed up in all blacks, changed and got a tour of the kitchen. Then chef said I'd be working on the line for an hour for dinner service as the interview. In other words, I was being told I'd be making food for guests under time pressure for the very first time. I was understandably a bit nervous. Or rather, excited (it's the same emotion in reality).

Since I was new I was put on the garmo (garde manger) station. Traditionally garmo is responsible for cold appetizers, but I've come to learn it's really a catch-all for "misc". Service started, and as orders began trickling in the line cook supervising me taught me how to make the 3 dishes garmo was responsible for: imperial rolls, chicken katsu and crispy tofu. The next time that dish came up, the cook guided me as I made the dish instead of me observing. Then it was on me to make the dish from memory. The third time a dish came up, I was asking the cook a bunch of questions as I made it. I still had questions the fourth time a dish came up.

It's important to note here that I'd' say I have a poor short-term memory. Now I don't know if it was the adrenaline, that a dish's components weren't just route memorization (a, b, c, d, e, f in a dish make logical sense together) or some mysterious third factor -- but by the fifth time a dish came up it had clicked. The rest of the hour I split the station with the garmo cook as I independently made some of the dishes, and also asked questions about the dish components themselves (e.g. what kind of tofu is used in the crispy tofu). After the initial learning curve, working the station was actually quite easy. Of course there's a large caveat that I wasn't there during dinner rush, but still. I'd went from zero experience to making food for guests in a week. The hour ended, chef had a quick conversation with me that suggested I passed and said he'd email me EOD.

My Second Stage

The next stage at Avec I got from a phone call to their original west loop location. Someone from FOH (front of house, customer facing staff) answered and actually passed my info along to the hiring team. Later that day I got an email from the exec chef at Avec west loop saying they would be happy to host me for a stage, but that they were currently under construction so lacked the space. He then connected me with their river north location and I set up a stage. This stage was 4 hours as well, except entirely during dinner. Extrapolating from Mott St, I was expecting to be on garmo through an almost full service. That expectation proved correct. I showed up in all blacks, changed and got a tour of the kitchen as usual. The stage started with staff meal then it was into dinner service.

Like at Mott St, as the orders started trickling in, the garmo line cook showed me how to make each dish. Unlike at Mott St, garmo here handled cold apps (endive salad, poached asparagus, crudo), hot apps (falafel, branzino) and was also responsible for plating around 5 desserts. So more than double the dishes. Keep in mind this is my first full dinner service. I repeated the order back to him to try and help myself remember what went where. The garmo line cook's mise (station prep setup), was also helpful as the components needed for a dish were adjacent to each other and in the correct order already.

I started taking the responsibility of more dishes as the night went on: falafel, poached asparagus, crudo and the desserts. There was definitely a steeper learning curve here than at Mott St. A small part of it was technical, e.g. initially I struggled a bit to plate the amba yogurt for the falafel correctly, but the majority of it was just lack of experience. Learning 5-6 dishes on the fly is hard so I was still asking the garmo line cook confirmation questions, e.g. "the asparagus salad only has olive oil correct" while working, but the bigger hole was just speed. In the middle of a rush, e.g. 3 orders of poached asparagus, 2 of falafel, and 2 desserts, I dropped the falafel, plated the desserts then the asparagus but by that time the falafel was taking too long. There were two or three times like this where the garmo cook had to step in to keep me from truly falling behind, but other than that I handled myself. It felt fast but actually was quite fun. It was my first service, granted I was the second person on a station, and I was actually handling myself.

I neared the end of my stage, and exec chef pulled me aside for a conversation which basically boiled down to 'I don't know if you could survive Sat night if you thought this was fast'. It was simply an issue from lack of speed (which comes from experience). It wasn't a hard rejection however as he offered prep or lunch service instead if something opened up. However at this point, Mott St had offered me the position of garmo line cook so I was definitely leaning towards taking that instead.

My Third Stage

The last stage came without me having to follow up at all. Mott St wanted an answer by Friday, and Thursday at noon I got a call asking me to come stage for line cook at The Publican. The stage ran Friday from 14:00 - 18:00, so after my previous one, I was expecting half prep half line on garmo. Or if it's too busy to put a newbie on a station on the line on Friday, at least observing the line. Neither were true. I was parked in the corner doing prep tasks the entire 4+ hours and barely had a chance to interact with the cooks at all. In the one hour I'd spent at Mott St, I knew more about the team than the four hours here. I went into the stage expecting I'd have to ask chef for an answer on the spot, since Mott St wanted an answer today. I left the stage without doing that as I didn't care if it was a yes or no.

When I started this a few weeks ago, I was not expecting to actually get anywhere. Happily, I was wrong. Unlike tech where a strong resume and degree are effectively hard requirements, it seems like a good amount of kitchens will give you a shot at an interview. We'll see how the first week goes.