Giving thanks to catering

Former restaurant chefs and line cooks find rewards in the catering business.


At 27 years old, after a “come-to-Jesus” moment about What I Really Wanted to be Doing With My Life, I decided to turn my cooking avocation into vocation. But even with my limited knowledge of what I would be ultimately getting myself into, I knew I was a relative senior citizen in this industry. I was terrified to approach a restaurant in search of a real job. And so, I turned to catering. If those who can’t do, teach, do those who can’t cook, cater? While I’d answer that question with a resounding “No,” it does seem that catering enjoys all the status of a redheaded stepchild amongst “real” chefs and cooks.

After a couple years of catering and personal cooking in private homes, I went on to several jobs in “real” kitchens, including many rigorous line cooking positions as well as a sous position at a well-known bistro. But these days, I’m back to catering. I’m not about to tell you my age, but it’s been over two years since my last line cooking position and I’m not about to go back. Not ever, unless I’m on the verge of starvation. Then, I’d have to think about it. If I needed a walker at 29, these days I might as well be 6 feet under. So are catering kitchens where old chefs and line cooks go to die?

Not hardly. But, it may be where savvy ones go to enjoy their adulthoods. At 30-something, I’m personally grateful for an alternative to sweaty, punishing 10-hour line shifts at $12 an hour. And thanks to catering, I still enjoy the singular pleasure of a chef’s knife in my hand and an apron around my waist, despite my failing knees (which I can attribute to years of line cooking.)

The company for which I work, Thyme to Entertain, is made up entirely of former restaurant chefs and cooks. Proprietor Nate Lane ran a number of successful restaurants for the duration of his 20s, including Table of Contents (one of the Twin Cities original destination restaurants), Red Fish Blue, Tangled Up in Blue and Zeno Café. Finally, after a decade, he turned in his restaurant credentials, as it were.

“As much as I loved to cook, as an executive chef, I wasn’t cooking anymore. I most definitely get more satisfaction out of catering because I get to work hands-on with our clients. Every menu is different. In restaurants you have a staff that relays all of your passion.”

And while an affinity for the kitchen drives him, Lane says the benefits aren’t bad either. “Owning a restaurant, it’s just more difficult financially. On a snowy day when no one is out, you still have to have your restaurant open. With catering, you only have to spend money when you’re making money. I mean, we just went through a huge economic downturn, and we’re still in business. How many restaurants closed during that time?”

So does all this mean that catering work is a panacea for the jaded restaurant professional? “I still have to work 14 hour days,” Lane says. “And, I miss the adrenaline rush, because of course I’m an adrenaline junkie. But, I don’t miss babysitting dummies, and today for instance, it’s noon on a Saturday and I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

My colleague Asher Green (not his real name), who also works for Thyme to Entertain and has many years of line cooking under his belt, cites the random nature of catering jobs as a benefit. “I like the unpredictability of the schedule, the kitchen space, whether it’s going to be on-site or off-site, all of these things keep me on my toes. I mean, am I going to have electricity? Am I going to have to drain my car engine and use it as some type of furnace? I also like creating menus. It’s not just seasonal, not just weekly, but it’s daily. I can really keep on top of what’s going on in food on a daily basis.”

In fact, Green says, creativity by no means suffers in the catering world. “In a restaurant, your plate is usually your vehicle,” he says. “But here, the vehicle has to be edible too. Whether it’s an endive leaf, a chicharone, a tuile. …Which are all things that I’ve experienced in restaurant work, so I can apply all of that knowledge here as well.”

Green says that while he feels he still has things to learn from restaurant cooking, he will most likely get those things from staging, and not working in restaurants. “At this point in my life, with catering, I’m self-employed and I have flexibility in my schedule. Besides, I’ve never seen myself working as a restaurant chef because I’m not management material. With this, I’m in the back, in the kitchen, and all I have to manage is my temperatures.”

As for the notion that catering cooking isn’t “real” cooking? Green chalks that sentiment up to a sort of reverse compensation. “Restaurant cooks have such inequity in money. Machismo can really act as some sort of compensation—which is where the power struggle between front-of-house and back-of-house comes in. Cooks who are working 10-hour days are still making less than servers who are working 4 or 5. Irreverence is another kind of compensation. You know, if I’m not making (money) I’ll be damned if I’m going to censor myself. So yes, I think the machismo is a subtle brand of that.”

But none of this, says Green, is meant to imply that there is a “better” or “worse” when it comes to these sister industries. It’s only different. For instance, hospitality is a major factor in catering work. “If you’re not willing or able to change your spatial relationship to the client, it may not be work for you,” he says. After all, there’s a reason they call it catering.

“I still have all of the troubles of any other chef,” Lane says. “Ordering food and having the truck show up late and all of that, but in the end, we have to make everything look smooth. I don’t want to say it’s all smoke and mirrors, but if we weren’t able to do that, we’d be failures at what we do. I feel that I’m making a connection here. I can talk to people about where their food is coming from. If they say they hate beets and by the end of the night you’ve transformed them and they can’t wait to go home and make beets. Food is not just about consumption, and I get a real chance to showcase that.”