Waking up one day and deciding to change careers is not, simply, a simple process. Leaving behind a life project and starting another from scratch can be a leap into the void, especially in the world of cooking, with its characteristic frenetic pace that leaves no room for pauses. Although in restaurants we find chefs who have practiced this profession from the beginning, it is also possible to find artists, chemists, biologists, communicators and even former athletes who now make a living behind the stove, after deciding to make a 180 degrees to their lives to pursue the dream of cooking.
“I never saw cooking as a profession.” With these words, Pachi Rodríguez, chef at the Barcelona restaurant Âme, explains how, although he always felt a deep passion for cooking, he was initially guided by chemistry as a professional path. He assures that “my fascination with science comes from childhood, I always wanted to understand everything,” which led him to begin a career in biochemistry in the United States, which he later opted for the field of pure chemistry. But after working for a few years as a project manager in a bank, “I saw bureaucratic issues in science that I didn't like. “Work didn’t make me happy.”
Professional dissatisfaction is one of the factors that drives the protagonists of this report to seek new horizons. Like Rodríguez, David Andrés, chef at the Via Veneto restaurant, left architecture and professional hockey behind (after being crowned European champion twice as captain of the Spanish team) to dedicate himself to cooking: “He had everything “The world thought I was perfect, but sitting in an office was difficult for me,” he says. This led him to change direction, even though he “had never cooked until I was 21.”
This radical professional change is not unusual in the world of cooking. But where does the motivation come from to make such a turn? The answer almost always lies in the family environment: “Gastronomic culture has always been the great passion of my family,” explains Andrés, who assures in this interview that a dinner with his family at the Àbac Restaurant was revealing for his future. In the case of Rodríguez, “the men in my family have always cooked, and my father expressed love through good food.” But the passion for cooking can also be innate. This is the case of Núria Molino, who left advertising and marketing to train at the Hofmann Hospitality School: “I have been a gourmet since I was three years old. At that age I was already asking my grandmother for specific cooking things, she already knew what she wanted to eat and how I liked it to be cooked for me.” Like her, pastry chef Maria Laura Holguín explains that “for as long as I can remember, I have been cooking,” which motivated her to train in gastronomy after having studied audiovisual communication.
Leaving behind a career to pursue the dream of cooking can be a complete change. Making this decision not only directly impacts those who decide to become a chef, but also generates diverse reactions in their friends, colleagues and family. “My work colleagues thought he was crazy,” explains Rodríguez. Likewise, it was difficult to accept for Molino's parents, who remembers that "for my father it was like saying something catastrophic, as if I told him that he was drugging me or something like that." Andrés' friends did not have a favorable reaction either: “It was difficult for them to accept that he left hockey and architecture, they asked me why he left everything. But time proved me right,” he says.
Although many people close to these chefs faced this change in a negative way, their support has also been essential to achieving the dream of living behind the stove: “My family always supported me a lot because they saw that I was happy in the kitchen. Without their support, this would not have been possible,” says Rodríguez. This is also the case of Holguín, who explains that this decision did not surprise his parents: “I had total support because they saw that it was something I liked.” Andrés' father, who was forced to abandon his medical career to take charge of the family business, also showed a positive attitude towards his son's decision: “My father has always instilled in us that it is better to take a step back.” to do what makes us happy,” recalls the cook.
But fulfilling the dream of devoting yourself to cooking also brings new challenges and difficulties, especially for those who have never faced the kitchen. “It was hard to look back and think about where she came from. Everything was going very well and suddenly I decided to make this change to something that I had no idea about because I had never cooked,” Andrés recalls. And adapting to the rhythm and dynamics of a kitchen is not an easy task: “I came from a nine to five office schedule. It was difficult to go from having stability to shock due to the amount of work that the world of cooking requires,” explains Rodríguez. Furthermore, he adds that “I was surprised by the hardness of the work, especially since you are exposed to burns and cuts.”
The demands of kitchen work require a high level of responsibility and commitment, which had a strong impact on Holguín when she decided to leave her job in communications to dedicate herself to cooking: “As a cook you sacrifice a lot of family time. During that time I felt like I had no life, I stopped living.” This even led her to reconsider her decision: “It's an internal struggle because I love working in the kitchen, but for me family time is more important,” she says.
Script twists like this can be seen as a big leap into the void, without a clear horizon. For Molino, one of the main concerns when making this decision was “what will they say,” especially because at 29 years old I was left without working, and that is frowned upon.” Furthermore, linked to the intensity of the work, Holguín has come to think that he “would have preferred cooking to be more of a hobby. “I think I made the wrong decision by stopping my career as a communicator, as I lost valuable years of professional experience,” he concludes.
But starting from scratch in the kitchen is also seen as the realization of a dream to pursue a passion. This is the case of Rodríguez, who assures that “although my other job was better paid and had fewer hours, it was not worth it because I was not passionate about it. Now there is not a day when I wake up and feel dread going to work, but rather I feel satisfaction from what I do.” Furthermore, taking this leap can forge the best destiny for people like Andrés: “If I had to rate the change, I would give it a 10. Not only because it has given me a job, but because it also gave me the opportunity to meet my wife. , which is the best thing that happened to me in my life.”
