Slapped with a wet fish, stabbed in the calves - chefs reveal kitchen rage

Chef Gordon Ramsay.

A group of leading French chefs, including the head of the Elysee Palace, are calling for an end to the culture of violence that they say is a stain on the kitchens of the country's top restaurants.

Television shows such as Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen have long shown that kitchen pressures can lead to insults, and sometimes flying plates.

But the group of French chefs, including Guillaume Gomez - head cook at the French presidential palace - have declared it is time to "lift the lid on the law of silence" over physical violence, sexual harassment and bullying prevalent in some of the country's finest eating places.

They called on "all great French cooks to solemnly stand up against violence" by signing their manifesto, called Touche Pas A Mon Commis (Hands Off My Range Chef).

Gerard Cagna, a former Michelin two-starred chef who wrote the manifesto, said the era in which violent and humiliating "rites of passage" were concocted for assistants new to a kitchen must be pronounced over.

The call followed a violent incident earlier this year at Le Pre Catalan, a Paris restaurant with three Michelin stars, in which a chef de partie deliberately, and repeatedly, scalded his kitchen assistant with a white-hot spoon on the arm.

Frederic Anton, the head chef, fired the culprit, saying that although he recognised the pressures his kitchen staff were under, gratuitous violence was unacceptable and he had to go.

When the gastronomy magazine Atabula reported the incident and called on cooks to "lift the lid" on such practices, it received a torrent of reaction from sous chefs and assistants.

Chef du Palais de L'Elysee Guillaume Gomez. Photo / Getty Images

Their tales of abuse ranged from a "slap in the face with a wet fish" every time one got the animal's name wrong to being "stabbed in the calves" with a kitchen knife, as well as scalded, slapped and humiliated on a daily basis.

One recounted how he and his colleagues had taken to wearing shin guards to withstand the daily kicking they would be given by their superior.

"These torturers must be told they are destroying lives," said an ex-kitchen assistant of a one-starred Michelin restaurant, who had tried to commit suicide.

Mr Cagnon said the report had "brought tears to my eyes" and transported him to his early career at one well-known Paris restaurant, where he received a "huge smack in the back" while washing mushrooms. He resisted the temptation to punch his superior in the face, saying it would have "ended his career". Instead, he "cried like a baby".

The subject was the focus of a major debate at the Sciences Po university in Paris on Monday night in which chefs met restaurant critics.

While most chefs agreed that violence was unacceptable, they underlined that the would-be cooks should be aware that the profession was not for the faint-hearted and required huge physical and mental endurance.

"I am 45 years old, I started at 15. Yes, I have received a few kicks, yes I have taken a rack of lamb to the head," said Christian Etchebest, a chef often seen on French television. "It was for my own good. We have a very tough job, you need mental strength."

Franck Pinay-Rabaroust, the editor of Atabula, said: "There's a battle to rise through the ranks. Top chefs are increasingly absent from their kitchens so second-in-commands have to make their mark and show who's strongest. There's lots of testosterone."

Vincent Crepel, 30, who runs Porte 12, a restaurant that opened in September in Paris to critical acclaim, said that top chefs were like "Olympic athletes" with "no margin for error". That coupled with long days meant things could quickly get "electric" in the kitchen.

Increasingly, he said, young chefs tempted by the glamour of cookery on television were given positions of responsibility with "no managerial skills".

But he said the advent of more female kitchen staff and "open kitchens" with windows on to the dining room was helping to improve the ambience. "Everything can be seen and heard so you have to control yourselves and be more diplomatic," he said. "Welcome to the era of the naked chef."