Sidework

Suddenly it feels like a lot of people are writing about chefs no longer being regular chefs, at least not in the sweaty, stressed-out, hot-brick-and-mortar way of Carmy on The Bear. What are they apparently doing? Consulting, brand building, collaborating, tour guiding, farming, writing and—most notably—Instagram-TikTok-YouTubing. But a lot less of the traditional cheffing.

In his newsletter, The Dispatch, Ben Leibmann recently wrote that “the idea of what it means to be a ‘chef’ isn't what it used to be.” For anyone who’s plugged into social media and the new generation of food stars you find there, that seems fair (and the case with lots of professions—journalism, music, crafts, fashion, and more). Through the phone screen, we’re satiated by personality, relatability, the illusion of deliciousness, and a no-stakes relationship. And these content creators are making a living of it. Though Liebmann allows that “restaurants aren’t dead,” the professional shift he’s making a case for is that “fewer chefs seem to want them.”

For a piece for Eater LA last month, Rebecca Roland detailed the career path of a few content creator-chefs who—with culinary backgrounds ranging from completely self-taught to seasoned line cook—have parlayed social media fame into collabs, pop-ups and full-fledged restaurants. They may intersect with restaurants but as guest stars, not fixtures—“Budonoki feat. h woo” to use a rap album analogy. As Leibmann puts it: “The brick-and-mortar space becomes a temporary manifestation of an omni-channel presence.” And yet, the restaurant path remains on the table for some. Brandon Skier, one of the subjects of the article, seems open to it: “I wouldn’t go back into a kitchen to work for someone else, probably…But to be my own boss —definitely.” Tuệ Nguyễn, aka Tway da Bae, did just that with the opening of Đi Đi in LosAngeles. So, do fewer chefs in fact want restaurants?

Frank Bruni also attempted to mine this vein in a recent article, “Why So Many Chefs Don’t Want Restaurants Anymore.” Bruni wrote some of the most entertaining New York Times restaurant reviews ever, but this think-piece feels like a nothing-burger. The unsurprising insight is that a generation of successful chefs, now in their late 40s and 50s, have found ways to no longer chef as they used to back when costs were lower, fame more linear, and knees still limber. It’s heartening to know that Seamus Mullen, Anita Lo and others have found late-career versions of success outside of kitchens. But Bruni’s points of culinary reference mostly illustrate that he’s not tuned into the current generation chefs and restaurateurs operating in NYC (and that’s no slight—how could one be, out of the reviewer’s seat for more than a decade?)

David Helbraun, co-founder of Helbraun Levey—probably the premier hospitality industry law firm in NYC—points out the simple physical piece that Bruni missed. “Chefs are like professional athletes,” he says. “They play until their 30s, maybe 40s. You can’t work in a kitchen beyond your 40s. That’s when you start thinking of other things you can do.” The well-known chefs-in-second-acts in Bruni’s article are following career trajectories that make perfect sense for them as humans with physical, financial and mental health to look out for. Meanwhile, Bruni sounds a bit like a guy bemoaning that Reggie Miller isn’t on the court anymore. But something else sticks in the craw.

Namely, how does all this reconcile with the real business of feeding people in restaurants? One of Helbraun Levey’s recent newsletters includes insights from commercial brokers on NYC’s restaurant real estate and “key money” market. To wit: “The hospitality market feels scorching hot right now…there's a significant shortage of quality space…it feels as if the great turnover post-Covid has sort of fallen into place with tons of newer concepts hitting their stride.” If fewer chefs want restaurants, who’s developing menus, training the teams, managing ordering and inventories, overseeing service periods, and all of the too-many things that chefs would do in the businesses apparently hoovering up commercial spaces? (Unless they’re all becoming Wonder locations, which would be both possible and unfortunate.)

Helbraun feels that the disconnect here is partly explained by the growing shift “from chef to restaurateur,” in the sense of both who and how. Chefs are pivoting to a restaurateur approach and doing so earlier in their careers—learning the full scope of the business, opening places without a “status” chef in the kitchen, “trying to make the restaurant the star,” and then expanding. The same dynamic—hitching brand values to the overall restaurant rather than to the fame of a name chef—is also being driven by new owner-operators who come from other sides of the industry.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics cites 187,100 “chef and head cook” jobs in the United States in 2023—a category defined as positions that “oversee the daily food preparation at restaurants and other places where food is served” [emphasis mine]—with a growth forecast of 8% over the next decade. Mullen, Lo, Chang—they’re probably all out of this category now and good for them and their knees. H Woo Lee and Brandon Skier—they’re probably not there either, but as content chefs still early in their careers, for very different reasons. They’re finding a different way in, not an elegant way out. These culinary creators seem like a new profession for which we need better terminology, otherwise we have a conundrum: hot new restaurants keep opening, the culinary workforce is growing, but chefs apparently aren’t cheffing.

As stodgy as it sounds, the BLS’s “restaurants and other places where food is served” definition is kind of spot-on. There’s something fundamentally different about being in the business of creating stylish, snappy cooking videos for digital consumption by millions versus being in the business of serving meals to people every night in a restaurant, and managing the human and physical infrastructure required to do so. Maybe the phenomenon that Roland, Liebmann and Bruni are finding in the culinary profession isn’t evidence of fewer chefs—young, veteran, famous, or less so—wanting restaurants. Maybe it’s that there are simply more culinary professions now and more people who are described as chefs because the gestures, materials, and outfits are close enough, even though the job is something else entirely. Again, that’s no slight—they’re business people, media stars, tour curators, ranchers, consultants and more. We don’t have to think of them in the same category as chefs nor fret about the future of restaurants or the profession on their account for them to be culturally consequential.