I’ve been a Great British Menu fan for years, and Sally has been a contestant on it a three times now. A friend who also watches the show got me her book for my birthday, and I’ve really enjoyed it.
You always hear that professional kitchens are very male heavy environments, but this book really painted a picture of what it’s like to be in one.
The book starts with her aged around 18 and with zero interest in food, going through to a hospitality degree, doing her placement at the Savoy, transferring to Claridge’s when the Savoy closes for refurbishment, and working her way up through various kitchens until she’s running her own. She’s good at explaining most things, to the point of too much repetition occasionally, but it means you nearly never feel alienated. There’s the occasional French term used but I just looked them up, and it’s not often!
There were a couple of times she made comments that did make me feel a bit lesser, for example “I considered dinner at Pizza Express an upmarket night out” – er, yup I still do! She also refers a couple of times to things that make her now smile at her naivety, but they are things that most readers would have no clue about, having not worked in a professional kitchen. A comment about “the most demanding customers – the ones who don’t dine out unless it’s a ‘special occasion'” also grated a bit…
This all said, they were few and far between, and as I said, most things she explained excellently.
I loved reading about how she wanted to run her kitchen as a place where people are just treated better.
– Where you don’t feel terrified of being told off for doing something wrong, but instead where someone else would step in and help.
– Where people don’t work 16 hour shifts (the idea that people do 16 hour shifts blew my mind!).
– Where some shifts are adjusted so that people who need to do the school run can still work in a kitchen.
– Where no one is allowed in the kitchen before the start time, where in her earlier roles, if you were less than an hour early, you were considered late!
– Where people help each other carry large pots instead of watching them struggle.
– Where someone can reduce their hours when pregnant rather than have to give up work entirely.
In short, where it’s not a “badge of honour” to have a horrendous work-life balance. Her aims are really fantastic, and she’s achieving them.
A lot of the book is sharing the experiences she had that led to her wanting to make these changes, so you hear some truly awful things, but more than anything I just found it interesting to read, to learn about a way of life SO different from mine!
Great British Menu only got the briefest of glancing mentions, which was a shame. Not that she was negative about it, she spoke of the business it brought (or would have brought, had it not been for Covid) to her restaurant. To be honest, very little of her life outside of kitchens was covered at all (maybe because so much of her life was IN kitchens!) so I guess maybe she deemed it outside the focus of the book.
She did however cover Covid, and what it was like for those working in hospitality – you can still hear a lot of bitterness in her voice about the decisions the government made, particularly early on, advising people not to eat in restaurants, but doing nothing to support those working in them, and later when things reopened, making them close at 10pm.
Definitely worth a read if you want to learn what it’s really like in the kitchens that make your (or at least, fancy people’s) food. And really encouraging in regards to how things are changing for the better in some kitchens, albeit still with a long way to go overall.
ineke.co.uk 