The Healthy Chef Vol. 1 Issue 4 Andrew Nienke
Obsessive, drunk, driven, workhorse, neurotic; these are some of the many things I’ve been called in my life. My second favorite thing I was ever called was Chef. My least favorite thing was burnout. All these things are true though. I started working in the restaurant industry in the late 90’s. I got a job as a dishwasher, on that first day all the things I wanted in my life didn’t matter anymore. I had found my true calling. My passion had been ignited in a way that I didn’t think was possible or really understand at the time. Over time I grew as a cook and learned to use my natural “gifts” as best as I could. My anxiety turned into my never being able to relax, nothing ever being good enough, working long hours, being super organized and just driving myself to always being better.
My depression turned to self doubt, driving me to not seeing that I would ever be as good as the cats around me, leading to always seeing myself as not good enough and always seeing an unhealthy imagined competition going on. I worked under some amazing award winning chefs, alongside some of the most knowledgeable chefs imaginable and had some crazy talented people working for me in wonderous kitchens doing amazing food. Looking back I know I was an amazing cook, I was a pretty fucking good chef too. My neurosis was serving me in a good way for a long while, at least on the surface. Underneath, though the cracks in my foundation started to show.
I only had one goal for so long, an unachievable goal from my broken perspective, being as good as my mentors and peers, started to break me down. I started drinking more. I had always partied, drinks after the shift, “sleepovers” with random ladies who would bless me with their company, the occasional blow bender. It was the early 2000’s, being a cook was starting to become a respectable thing. Celebrity chefs were starting to become household names, people were becoming aware of my craft. The masochistic culture of the industry I loved fit perfect with my self view and the things that were deeply wrong with my lifestyle and emotional state of mind at the time. Nothing is ever good enough, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t working hard enough, more, more, more, ect……
The end came about after my first child was born. For the first time I actually had someplace better to be. Where before, my “gifts” served to enable me now those cracks really started to rupture. I had to take time off, at home I just worried about things going on at work and at home I worried about the restaurant. So I was shitty at both being a chef and father, never being able to focus or be in the moment for either. I started to drink, I guess subconsciously, to turn it all off and check out. Which led to both work and home suffering more, which led to more drinking, you get the cycle. The last day I was ever drunk I was drunk at work, tugging off the kitchen whiskey.
Little did I know that the staff had noticed me doing this for a while. Well this day, the more, more, more that I had been feeling for years got the better of me. A FOH manager called me out, he was right to do so. To this day I shoot him a message on February 17th to thank him. I had to call my boss, a man who mentored me and was my culinary hero and very best kitchen friend and tell him about it. Then I had to go home and tell my wife. The two people who more than anyone in the world, I didn’t want to disappoint. They both called me an idiot, but both love me and supported me. That was almost 6 years ago. Since then I have stopped cooking, I have begrudgingly accepted the label of burnout. In the late 90’s and early 00’s I judged those old cats who were grumpy, had been cooking for 20+ years but didn’t really give a shit. In my young mind I was never going to become on of those………..then I did.
In hindsight I realize that I was never prepared emotionally or psychologically for the meat grinder that is professional cooking, let’s be frank, not many people are. All through my career I was the workhorse there wasn’t any talk of self care or mental health or taking care of your life. Just the new technique or new ingredient or the new hostess. Now a few years removed I’m starting to understand, I’m seeing a therapist, taking my depression/anxiety medication, spending time with my sons and wife and just generally taking care of myself. I’m not sure I would have gotten so far in my career had I focused on those things early in my career, but my career would have been longer for sure. So now I sit, a burnout, and three things are crystal clear to me, number 1, I miss cooking, creating and running a kitchen more than anything in the world, number 2, I would have died, probably by my own hand, if I had continued working the way I was working and number 3, my favorite thing in the world to be called is Dad.
Everybody’s favorite burnout,
Andy “Ginger” Nienke
