Where Mentorship Still Lives
Classical mentorship is increasingly confined to a handful of industries, and the kitchen trenches are one place where the institution retains many of its layered meanings, some of which have been lost elsewhere over time. In many modern professions, much of what once fell to mentors is now regimented and systematized within human resources departments, orientation programs, and buddy systems. As a result, mentorship can seem obsolete or diminished in value, a vestigial tradition of a bygone era.
But mentorship remains comparatively essential in individual pursuits. Athletes in mano-a-mano sports like tennis; freelance writers and authors; actors and other theater folk; musicians; and, yes, cooks.
Think of mentorship as the American cousin of Europe’s generations-old guild and apprenticeship systems. Those formal constructs offer(ed) regimented, on-the-job professional culinary training, of which mentorship is a component. The notion of, and need for, mentors in an industry that invites practitioners to chart their own bespoke courses proved so essential that those relationships formed outside the career frameworks some countries provide for culinarians. The organic and voluntary nature of these bonds suffuses the chef’s journey, both mentor and mentee, with mythical heft.
These remain roles in which people—often very young people—are thrust into unfamiliar lands and confronted by challenges unique to their chosen field. For instance, a cook with eyes trained on chefdom sets off on a journey, often a largely unplanned one, that will bring them into contact with angels and devils, temptations and tribulations, and may send them to foreign lands, each with its own customs and culture. The aspiring chef’s quest—their odyssey—is for the knowledge, skills, and worldliness that will enable them to someday become a chef, and a mentor’s counsel is essential to navigating those rough seas.
Does that sound a bit baroque? A bit too fantastical?
If so, well, hold your centaurs, because the word mentor hails from a character in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, just as paparazzi are named for the exuberantly invasive celebrity photographer Paparazzo in Federico Fellini’s roman à clef 8½.
In other words, the very concept of mentorship plugs directly into ancient mythological tradition.
The Original Mentor
In Homer’s poem, Odysseus charges his friend Mentor with advising his son, Telemachus. The work’s narrative fuse is lit when the goddess Athena, disguised as Mentor, encourages Telemachus to venture out in search of his long-lost father. As the story unspools, Mentor (Athena) also warns Telemachus of ulteriorly motivated suitors, provides him a ship and a crew, and tips him off to a planned ambush. (Fun fact: In Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming The Odyssey, Athena, played by Zendaya, performs those services undisguised.)
Here in the mortal world, it is helpful, though not always easy, to differentiate between a good or great boss and a mentor.
A definition of a mentor in the culinary arts might include someone who:
takes a special interest in their mentee;
teaches and guides them in ways that exceed the usual parameters of on-the-job training;
continues to advise them after the term of employment has concluded; and
offers insights, introductions, and, in some cases, even investment that helps set them up for future success.
A chef-mentor, for example, might patiently demonstrate intricate knife, cooking, and plating techniques to a young charge. Or they might serve as a mentee’s unofficial career counselor, offering advice and introductions to people and opportunities. They might look over partnership or employment contracts or provide guidance on how to talk to the media, and when “no comment” will do. (If we’re being really honest, a mentor might be a detained cook’s wee-hours phone call from a police precinct, or the one who delivers them to a recovery program.) Or they might do all of those things, and more.
One of mentorship’s many charms is that it occurs organically. A chef sees something in a new hire and assumes a sort of big sibling or parental role in their life. And just as a grown person may refer to their parents as “Mom” and “Dad” deep into adulthood, a mentee often refers to their mentor as “My Chef” for the rest of their lives.
Just as Telemachus needed Mentor to navigate all aspects of his adventure, young cooks require mentorship. Who else but a mentor will tell you that, yes, so-and-so chef is tough to work for, but it is worth enduring their gruffness for a year or two because you will move on with an enviable skill set? Or that if you want to learn pasta, they will set you up with a fabled nonna in the foothills of Tuscany? Or that they will be sure you are looked after on an eating tour of Thailand, a country whose food resonates with you and which you think may someday figure prominently in your own?
When Mentorship Changes a Life
The late, great chef David Bouley flourished under the mentorship of nouvelle cuisine titan Roger Vergé, who found the young American to be the hardest-working cook he had ever seen.
That observation led Vergé to personally school Bouley, even in such fundamental tasks as the proper way to simmer carrots to prepare a sublime purée. In time, Vergé began dispatching his young charge to other restaurants in other cities and countries, curating an employment curriculum of sorts that included stints with Paul Bocuse and Frédy Girardet.
“Vergé was the person who really rolled out my future,” Bouley once said. Not only did the French chef arrange jobs for Bouley with other European chefs, but he also personally drove him to the airport, told him what to expect in each gig, and then appointed him chef of a San Francisco project to which he consulted, Sutter 500.
The mythical edge of mentorship was casually underscored about 15 years ago, during Season 2 of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, when Jonathan Waxman, the legendary California chef best known today as the honcho of New York City’s Barbuto, was nicknamed Obi-Wan after the elder Jedi in the Star Wars films. Star Wars creator George Lucas, as any film geek could tell you, was heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell’s examination of narrative conventions in The Power of Myth, neatly stitching these threads together.
I find it not just appropriate, but helpful, to consider culinary mentorship against outsized examples from narrative storytelling, because the exaggerated nature of mythological elders makes manifest the deep formative impact of a mentor. It is the tough-love instruction of Pai Mei, the kung fu master who schools Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, that empowers our heroine to break out of a buried coffin, pluck out Elle Driver’s remaining eye, and defeat Bill himself with a nifty exploding heart technique. It is Vito Corleone’s final admonition to Michael that saves him from a set-up after the don suffers a fatal heart attack. And it is the lessons Andy learns from Miranda in The Devil Wears Prada that prepare her for the career landmines ahead.
And so, this is the first of a three-part paean to mentorship, the deeply human, strictly voluntary, always uncompensated, generations-old, and often unnamed tradition that helps make the culinary world go round.
Dining and Cooking