Humans Of The Kitchen

My name is Helen Perez. I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

I originally had plans to start college for a career unrelated to food and beverage. However, a few months before graduating high school, my sister passed away, and I decided to hold off on school and get a job until I no longer felt depressed. I found a job at a marketplace with a deli.

Nine months in, I met a Chef who would tell me stories of what it was like to work in a kitchen. During my downtime at the marketplace, I would go into the deli and ask the chef to show me how to cut correctly and make sauces for the sandwiches, the flatbreads, and the whole chicken. I eventually requested to switch to a full-time prep cook. I didn’t love it at first. The days were long, and my body hurt, but I loved creating. Cooking saved me. I saw beauty in life again following my sister’s passing.

In 2019, I was given a job opportunity by a chef. She was a female chef with two James Beard awards, something I didn’t know about before entering her kitchen. I learned to do everything from scratch. I taught myself knife skills on my days off. I read about the food I was making. I saw how a woman chef held so much power through food. Within that year, they awarded me the back of the house employee of the year award.

What keeps me in the industry is my desire to grow. I tried leaving the industry once, and nothing compared to the feeling I get when I’m there. I hope mental health becomes more significant in the kitchen. I feel we get so caught up in “perfection” that we fail to realize people have emotions and are not working machines.

Humility and grit will get you further than any talent you have. Cook from the heart. Be patient. Some masterpieces take years to make.

I am from France. I have been in the restaurant business for a very long time. While living in Paris, I owned a restaurant for 2 years.

I moved to Miami back in 2003. Once I settled in, I opened a restaurant in Aventura called, A Weber Cafe. After 10 years I wanted to take a break, so I closed the restaurant and went in search of something new to do. I heard a local bakery was hiring so I checked it out and long story short, I’ve now been here for 6 years. I love the restaurant business. I couldn’t imagine myself working behind a desk or doing anything different.

I’m often asked what the difference is between owning your own business and working for somebody. The answer is: when you work for somebody (that has a great work ethic) you sleep better vs at my restaurant I worked from 10 am until 3 am the next day! I wouldn’t change those 10 years that I owned a restaurant, they were amazing, but eventually, I had to choose between spending time at home with my family or at the restaurant. When you own your own business, the problems follow you, whereas when you work for someone else you can leave the problems at your workplace.

I think the food business is the best in the world because that’s how you meet the most people and that’s where you have a lot of interaction with people. It’s like being in show business.

Everybody loves food.

I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. My dad is Filipino, and my mom is a mix of Italian and German.

Growing up in Cleveland, cooking or eating homemade meals isn’t part of the culture. My mom, who was single and working as a nurse trying to put herself through school, would get us McDonald’s or Craft Mac n Cheese. The only time I got exposed to real food was through my grandparents, who would make all kinds of Filipino food when they would watch me.

But that still didn’t spark my love of food or the desire to dive into cooking. It wasn’t until I got suspended in middle school that life took me in that direction. After my suspension, my dad–who had been divorced from my mother since I was a kid–thought the punishment was stupid and said that if I didn’t go to school, I would have to work.

At 12 years old, I started working as a pastry prep cook, and I liked earning money so much that I kept working part-time through middle and high school. Afterward, I got a job at a great Pizza place. There I met many people who were really into food. That pushed me to follow this career.

When I first got out of high school, I went looking for another restaurant, but back then, there were fewer choices, especially as a young cook. I’m 25 now, and since my start, there have been many changes in the industry. They’ve been for the best, in my opinion. Now, a new restaurant opens in Miami almost every year, trying to push quality food and the culture of caring about what you’re doing in the kitchen, and now it’s a lot easier to get a start.

It’s also important who you surround yourself with. All of my friends love food in one way or another, and the people you have around you will either build you up or down.

I started in the kitchen about a year ago, but the reality is that I’ve always loved cooking. The reason I never pursued it was because I used to work with my dad on his farm. He sells meat to businesses, so we would take the meat to the slaughterhouse where they would then distribute it.

I mainly worked with the cattle on the farm, milking them. I used to make a cheese we call “queso palmito”.

The place I’m currently working at gave me the opportunity to cook. I’m officially on the grill station. It’s a bit strange because I didn’t cook a lot before, but I do know a lot about meats.

It’s a beautiful thing because we have all this knowledge and people come and ask us about what we’re doing so they can learn more. It feels great to share the knowledge, meet new people and get to know what they like. It’s one of my favorite parts about cooking

Christian Guzman reporting and 📸 from La Fortuna, San Carlos, Costa Rica.

Five years ago, I met Vanessa in a kitchen where I was the Executive Chef, and she was the Pastry Chef. After many hours working together in a big corporate hotel kitchen, we found love.
Today we are married!

COVID arrived with all its challenges, and we lost our job. We started to think about what we wanted to do. We went through many different concepts until we decided on the Mexican concept. Many of my friends encouraged us to pursue it, telling us we could add our spin to things. Although my wife and I were born in Venezuela, I briefly lived in Mexico when I was younger. I studied culinary in Mexico, and the culture always stayed with me.

We chose the name “Machine Gun” (Machine Gon), so it would sound good in English and Spanish, and the logo is our Bull Terrier.

Working on our own has been very different from the corporate restaurant world. Back in the old kitchen, we had around 25 cooks working with us. The good part is that we get to return to the kitchen and do everything with our hands, reconnecting differently with the kitchen.

In our new space, we had to learn to work together as a team since it’s just us 24/7. In the kitchen, we leave the relationship at the door and become teammates.

Up to this point, the concept has worked well for us. Ideally, we’d love to continue growing and expand the business into a complete Mexican restaurant.

I’m 32 years old. I was born and raised in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years.

I grew up in my father’s restaurant. One of 4 of my grandparents’ Chinese restaurants and the place where my love for cooking began. It was also my first kitchen job. I learned a lot about working with my family and the business side of the operation during my time there. I’ve worked every position you can in a restaurant. I started washing dishes and peeling carrots when I was young, serving in the dining room, delivering takeout, and working the line alongside my father and uncle. Eventually, I went to work at other professional kitchens and fine dining restaurants, taking with me the work ethic I learned in my father’s family restaurant—an essential factor to my success in the industry.

During those early days, I remember one time when I was 18 when I was being taught to make ice cream, and I had no idea how to make it. The Chef verbally walked me through the process and asked me to add the mixture to the Bain Marie. I didn’t know the term, and I poured the mixture directly into the simmering water. Thankfully, he was forgiving and understanding.

You have to love it to want to be in this profession. It’s a career choice that’s driven by determination and endless hard work, and perhaps, it’s less rewarding than other careers, but what it does offer is infinite creativity and the excitement of having people be excited to enjoy your food. Being able to invoke joy and emotion and tell an entire story with a well-constructed and designed menu is one of the things I love. The competitiveness, the chance to constantly evolve, gaining inspiration from other Chefs, and the creative freedom are the things that keep me here. Still, there’s a lack of health care, real-life living wages, reasonable hours, actual holidays, and respect for mental health. All crucial things, I hope, won’t continue being overseen as it has up to now.

I started cooking after my parents got divorced when I was like 14. My mom became depressed and stopped cooking for my sister and me, so I kind of picked it up when she stopped and ended up really enjoying it.

I fell in love with the idea of nourishing other people.

A day I will never forget was when our hot water pipe burst into a wall and flooded the kitchen with hot water. We probably should have closed immediately, but we had some really important guests, so we kept going, boot deep in the water to finish service. There is a lesson about perseverance in there somewhere, but in hindsight, it does seem a little silly.

Remember, you are only as strong as you can make your team.

Interview and shot by Shabnam Ferdowsi official HOTK reporter in Paris.

I started cooking when I got married. As I have a big family, I always had to cook a lot. When I moved to Paris, cooking became my profession because it was impossible to find work as a dentist. One day, I received a proposition from Refugee Food to work as an amateur chef in the restaurant “La Residence” for 6 months. I accepted the position with pleasure. There, I learned how to transform home dishes into real gastronomy.

After this experience, I was ready to start my own business, so my partner and I opened our small Georgian restaurant.

In France, the most difficult thing for foreigners is the French administration system in business. Switching careers wasn’t a problem for us because we always cooked well. The only thing left was to divide our time between family and work. Working in the food industry, we had the chance to practice the French language, and our cuisine and culture became more popular among our customers. Our most important achievement was that we were able to propose Georgian gastronomy in the style of street food. Before us, that didn’t exist.

Interview and shot by Shabnam Ferdowsi official HOTK reporter in Paris.

I started my culinary journey at 17 and graduated with a degree in hospitality and culinary. Afterwards, I worked in Michelin star restaurants and “bocateria’s” to opening my first restaurant at 25.

My restaurant served traditional Mediterranean food in a traditional kitchen with formal service for the customers, presenting them with simple dishes as something very special, but in a quiet and casual setting. All of it changed when the Russian-Ukraine war started. Price inflations ignited the restaurant wars. Everything became too expensive and I decided to leave Europe because the situation worsened day by day.

A job offer to be an Executive Chef brought me to New York. Now I’ve been living in Miami since October, and honestly? I’m happy here.

Along my journey, I believe a good restaurants depends on how you sell it and the value and story that you give to the food that people are going to buy from you. Anchovies are the same here as they are in Spain. It’s the same product, but what matters is personal perspective and unique touch you give to it.