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Eric Ripert feels shouty chefs are sending the wrong message to young cooks and staying calm is key to good leadership in the kitchen.
Speaking to ABC News, the chef and co-owner of three star Le Bernardin in Manhattan said: “We shouldn’t be proud of chefs who are screaming in the kitchen ... maybe screaming and being abusive is not the right way to manage. Maybe a good leader shouldn’t be like that.”
Kitchen Nightmares
He also took a shot at probably the most famous shouty chef of all: “I’m always thinking about that TV show Hell’s Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares and that promotes this behaviour of screaming at people, insulting them and humiliating them. This is not something that should be on TV actually. And it’s sending the wrong message. We have to fight that.”
Spiritual
In the extensive interview, which you can watch in full here as part of the "10% Happier" podcast series with Dan Harris, Ripert describes how Buddhism helps guide his working practices, having come to the religion by chance after picking up a book on Tibet at the airport on his way to the US in 1989. Ripert now spends one to two hours every morning meditating and studying its teachings. He says discovering his spirituality helped him grow from an angry young man (he speaks in detail about his difficult childhood in his recent memoir 32 Yolks) into one of the best chefs in the world.
Read Eric Ripert's Advice for Young Chefs
