The uniform: a personal reminiscence

By Stephen Lunn: ACF Director, Tasmania

As a chef of 35+ years, these days I find myself reflecting a lot on what I’ve done in my career and how I’ve got to where I am today.

This leads me to the word ‘career’. When I talk to young chefs I use this word in all its joyous meaning; I don’t think you can do this trade unless you are fully committed, slightly mad, a touch eccentric, a little self-indulgent – but most of all career minded.

As I’m writing this I’m smiling, because the thought of talking with young people wanting to come into the industry who are totally interested in what you have to say is very cool. It’s also very flattering to be able to have something to say that someone wants to listen to – hopefully you are still reading this!

So I’m going to share with you a story I wrote about my very first uniform. I wrote this about six years ago and it will hopefully make it into ‘the book’  (while coming up with ideas for my book I broke topics down into chapters and this is set to be on page one. There are swear words in but they may get edited out!)

The Uniform

The day Mum and Dad bought me my very first full chef’s uniform is one that is etched in my mind forever.

Off we go down to the uniform shop to purchase one chef uniform for yours truly – yep, I'm going to be a chef, I'm going to follow in the footsteps of all those great chefs who graced the earth before me. Not that I knew who any of them were. In fact I didn’t know anyone who was a chef. No one in the family, no friends of the family, no friend’s friends – you get the picture. Where did this passion or foolishness come from? Anyway I digress, off to the shop we go – it was a family affair, we were all keen to find out what was exactly in a full chef’s uniform.

The list:

• 1 white chef’s jacket, 12 white chef’s buttons – check

• 1 pair of chef’s checks pants – check

• 1 deep blue neckerchief- check

• 1 pair black nonslip shoes – check

• 1 white apron – check

• 1 cotton tall pleated chef’s hat – check, bought two days prior as it needed to be starched

Now that all pretty seems stock standard and I'm sure these days most people would be able to tell you what chefs wear. Not in my house. Purchase made, no instructions, but how hard could it be to put this all together?

The jacket and the buttons, 12 holes – 12 buttons. Easy, no problems, but have you ever tried to squeeze one of those little round buggers through the holes in a new chef’s jacket? Nigh on impossible (I hear a collective sigh from all those chefs out there)!

As a chef of 30 years I now have the capacity to deal with this problem. As a 15 year old, with a Mum and Dad who also had no idea and had spent a lot of money on this god forsaken thing, options were slim. What do we do? Smaller buttons – nope. Keep trying until they go in – nope. Cut the holes bigger? No effing way says Dad, and I'm not going to argue with him.

Thirty minutes later – plus a lot of swearing, and I mean a lot – it was decided to knick the button holes with a sharp knife. Ahhh, it worked, thank God, because I was almost about to become a mechanic.

Now put the thing on and do it up, looking sharp.

On go the checks, a bit baggy but they’re on. Now the person who designed them should have a good hard look at themselves, they are the least flattering piece of clothing ever to be worn by man, but they are on and I'm starting to look the part.

Shoes on – even I could do that without instruction.

Three items left. First the neckerchief. A triangular piece of cloth worn around your neck to keep the sweat away and make you look professional. This I did not succeed at, in fact failed miserably would be more like it. On it goes – mmmm, deep blue. Next the apron, pretty easy as well.

Complete, I look like a chef – hang on, one thing missing. Yes, my newly starched chef’s hat.

As most people are aware, mums know how to do everything. They are born with that gift and no one will ever argue the point, it’s just the way it is. My Mum was no different, and being Dutch made her even more special, thanks to that European influence she had to know even more.

Oh how wrong I was! I thought my Dad could swear but he had nothing on Mum. Mum could bring the fear of God into you in an instant. Swearing in Dutch would have to be the scariest thing I’ve ever heard, and coming from your Mum made it ever scarier.

Getting my chef’s hat starched for two days seemed normal at the time – put a bit extra in just to be safe, that was Mum’s thinking, and I totally agreed. Soak for 36 hours, take out, let it dry outside for 24 hours. Western Australia at that time of year is quite warm. Mum, I need my hat, I’ve got the rest of my chef’s outfit on, bring me my crown, woman!

No, I didn’t say that. What I said was please Mum, may I have my chef’s hat? Well out she comes with this gleaming, bright white, pleated, tall and hard as a rock chef’s hat. I mean hard, like you could knock on it. Dad is wetting himself with laughter, I'm in shock and probably ready to cry, and Mum is steely: it’s not that bad, just snap it a bit and it will fit. We finally manage to massage my hat into some form of flexibility and up on the top of my head it goes.

To this day, as soon as my hat goes on, I am a professional chef. And you only now start to realise all of those influences my parents had on me as a young boy, and the way I now wear my uniform with pride. Mum and Dad worked very hard to get me my first uniform and this will never be forgotten.

In 1999, after winning the West Australian Most Outstanding Chef, I was cooking for Mum and Dad my Gold Medal dish that I had won in 1996 in the Salon Culinaire Ireland and I clearly remember laughing about “the uniform” with them!

I hope in some way that Mum, especially, got to realise how much that meant to me, and that she knew how thankful I am, even to this day, for what they did for me in the early days of my career.

To finish, I have never wanted to do anything else, I will be a chef till the very end. And on that last day I shall be eating duck a l’orange followed by crepes suzette. With all the chaos and madness around in 2022 it’s nice to find a happy place and I hope everyone manages to get there to the extent that they can. Enjoy your career, pack as much in as you can and embrace change – then next chapter it can be “National Culinary Team, here I come”! 😊