Spending 14-hour days in command of a restaurant kitchen can take a toll, both physically and emotionally. So when it’s time to move on, where do chefs go?
It turns out, not very far. In most cases, successful chefs do not retire in the traditional sense. Instead, they often begin a second act, where they re-invent themselves – in classrooms, lower-key kitchens, or at different kinds of food-industry jobs. Rarely does a dedicated chef completely shut the door on the culinary world.
“There’s definitely an addictive aspect to the restaurant business,” says Richard Hanna, an instructor at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena.
Hanna, 47, has been an executive chef for restaurants and owns Mission Bistro, a corporate food service company, but a high point of his second act is teaching. He finds students are eager to learn from an experienced chef, and “I’ve been doing this so long I have 3 different ways I can show them” any cooking challenge.
There’s no question that standing in front of a class is less taxing than toiling over a hot stove. Feet, knees and backs typically bear the brunt of the long days that chefs spend lifting, bending and running in kitchens.
“I have seen people quit because their body can’t do it anymore,” says Remi Lauvand, executive chef at Café Pierre in Manhattan Beach. “It’s painful for them, because they’re still passionate about the job, but once you have a really bad back – and usually it’s the back that gives out first – it’s very hard.”
In some cases, it’s more about the emotional stress of a fast-paced kitchen. Even a young chef can feel this pressure, says Hans-Trevor Gossmann, 39, who started working as a teenager and has had jobs in restaurants in New York, California and Germany.
“I always enjoyed the energy of the kitchen but not so much that I’m willing to sacrifice other parts of my life. I decided at one point, what can I do that I can still feel challenged?”
For his second act, Gossmann found a way to remain in the food business, as a distributor and salesman for San Diego-based Hamilton Meats, which serves many restaurants in Los Angeles.
Having cooked in high-end restaurants, he knows not to broadcast that fact: “The most important thing I learned in my current role is not to go into any kitchen saying, ‘I’m a former chef.’ Chefs are proud. They don’t want to be told what to do by anybody.”
Gossmann says the routine of his new job is much better for his family. The long hours and stresses of being a chef did not fit in with his goals of a healthy life style and being there for his wife and kids.
Another chef who echoes those sentiments is Stephane Beaucamp, 38, who worked in Los Angeles restaurants and as a caterer for 10 years, including a stint as executive chef at Vermont and the adjacent Rockwell lounge in Los Feliz.
“My life was so intense, I was worried I was going to have a heart attack. I used to have pain in my chest and headaches from stress,” says Beaucamp.
He also experienced guilt over missing important family events. A low point occurred last December, when Beaucamp’s young son was excited about having his father watch him perform at a holiday assembly.
A few days before the school program, a TV celebrity reserved Rockwell for a Christmas party, scheduled the same day as the assembly. With 300 people coming, the chef had to be present.
“To see the look of my son when I told him I couldn’t be at the show, it broke my heart,” recalls Beaucamp. “I remember coming home and saying to my wife, ‘this can’t be my life.’ I didn’t want to be the kind of dad who promises something and doesn’t do it.”
Around that time Beaucamp’s wife visited family in Texas. She came home from the trip enthusiastic and suggested they consider moving.
“I thought, Texas? I don’t know,” says Beaucamp, who was raised and educated in France.
But his wife persisted, even researching jobs online. When she found an ad for a chef’s job at the acclaimed Lake Austin Spa Resort, she told him “this is the place.” With its emphasis on local and organic food, she was sure her husband would fit in. And compared with the frenetic restaurant pace, cooking for 60 spa guests promised to be a mellower routine.
“I discovered it’s what I was looking for,” says Beaucamp. His chest pains and headaches have disappeared and he sleeps better. Instead of a long drive to work, he commutes by bicycle.
Best of all, he is home most nights in time to do homework with his son and play soccer with him in the backyard.
“Our life completely changed. My son is really happy. When I asked him, are you glad we moved, he says yes, because now I have time with him. We know we did the right thing.”
When Beaucamp came on board at the resort in March, he was handed the reins by Terry Conlan, who had been the executive chef there for more than 20 years.
Conlan, 65, who worked as a restaurant chef before joining the spa, is looking forward to his next phase: “There’s a bit of whimsy in it. As wonderful as my job was – they were very, very good to me and I couldn’t have asked for a better career – it’s still really consuming…I’m not getting any younger and there are things I want to do.”
Conlan will still teach cooking to spa guests and at food markets. And he’s contemplating other avenues in Austin’s active food scene, such as the city’s supper club movement. He also plans to go to every home and away game of the University of Texas baseball team, the Longhorns.
“Right now I’m in intermission. I haven’t started the second act yet,” he says.
For some chefs, the second act is forced on them. Evi Berge had no intention of slowing down when she lost the lease on her Northridge restaurant, Canopy of the Sky Café, in 1998.
Berge, who also spent 8 years as head chef at Inn of the Seventh Ray in Topanga, received offers from other eateries, including Follow Your Heart in Canoga Park. Instead of embarking on a full-time job, Berge proposed creating a weekly dinner special for the vegetarian restaurant. Thus was born the popular “Wednesdays with Evi.”
The arrangement allows Berge to spend time with her grandchildren and work on a cookbook.
“It’s definitely less pressure,” says Berge. “I’m responsible for making the meal but then I go home. When you own your own place, it’s like having 20 children at once and no babysitter.”
Follow Your Heart waitress Katherina Guigliano says there are diehard customers, from all over Los Angeles, who arrive at 4 p.m. each Wednesday. They sit and wait 30 minutes, until they can order the special, which sometimes sells out.
Berge never could have imagined how rewarding this second act would be, when she had to leave behind her own restaurant kitchen.
“In the beginning it seemed very sad. After a while I realized what a blessing it was, because I recovered my life,” says Berge.
Emily Dwass is a Los Angeles-based free-lance writer. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and other publications.