He was first in school. We have never seen such talent, discipline and desire for development in any student, – his teachers said. When I met him, I understood what they meant. He aspired to reach high, he was passionate about cooking, incredibly greedy, full of energy.

After leaving school, he took a job at a fine London restaurant owned by a chef he admired. They told him if you want, come and we will test you. With his savings, he bought a ticket, went, took a test and waited for a letter … The answer was not long in coming. He was accepted and one day started working at a Michelin-starred British restaurant.

Two years later, I met him again. He was a different person. He didn’t have the same radiance, he looked tired and haggard, he was grumpy and tried to hide – not very successfully – his disappointment. At some point, he began to confess his experiences. Working from morning to dawn, incredible demands, standing, short breaks and fast food on the leg, capsons from superiors in the culinary hierarchy, stress, pressure, crying. “I met guys in the kitchen who took off their apron one day while working, left without saying a word, and never came back,” he told me.

Many painful tales of labor “caboose” have been unearthed in relation to award-winning and well-known restaurants. Through them, the daily life of madness and merciless competition is described. Cruelty in the kitchen is nothing new. This is a practice that comes from ancient times.

What one would expect is that it’s not even cultivated to this day by younger professional chefs or cooking shows who flirt with reality TV logic to gain ratings; they become survival games, sprinkled with sugar and flour, where there is a feeling that the most … capable of everything wins.