Working too much is Stupid.

People LOVE the story that cooks and chefs murder themselves with hours and hours of work, obsessively pouring their very souls out on the daily in service of a fine meal. Movies like “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and shows like “The Bear” paint a picture of passionate culinary artist absolutely losing their damn minds over the smallest details, and the people love it.

Grinding, hustling…whatever you call it, I call it a waste of my life. One thing that I’ve looked for in a big way for myself and for my team is having work-life balance. Don’t get me wrong, the team, especially the kitchen crew, work long hours, but at the very least we’ve got them down to four days a week with three days off in a row. Same for the front of the house. That allows the crew to have days to recover, get chores done, and still have some fun time for themselves.

When I was coming up in the kitchen, I didn’t get much balance at all. For about a decade in my twenties, I kept my head down and work the common five or six days a week. Especially working in New York, it wouldn’t be unusual to work sixteen hour days. Most days were around twelve hours. Of course, I’d only be paid for eight.

We convinced ourselves that if we just worked hard enough for long enough we’d get better. Turns out, we did. But we were also sick all of the time, had “culo de chango” ( don’t ask, please) all the time, and were pretty much always grumpy and exhausted.

Later in life, I tried out sports a couple of times. I’ve tried bike racing (was terrible at it) and competitive powerlifting (not as terrible). One thing I learned from doing sports is that recovery is as important as the hard work. Eating well, staying hydrated, and getting good sleep is all necessary for you to get better at your sport. Why would the physically taxing work in the kitchen be any different? How can grinding yourself into dust each week help you get better?

The magical thinking of most chefs is that their passion will burn hot enough to keep the furnace hot. But I can tell you from experience: that hot fires burns hot for a while, but then it burns out. So chefs go to work for ungodly hours, then smoke cigarettes and drink to drunkedness almost every night and then wonder why they feel awful all the time.

I think all of us chefs and cooks could do everyone a great service if we started to work less by either learning to be more efficient or sizing down their menus to a manageable size. Maybe you need to close one day a week. Maybe you need to open an hour later or close an hour earlier. Take a look at your numbers and ask yourself if it’s absolutely worth it to take on the workload you have. Sometimes you’re actually losing money being open, I’ve found. It’s worth looking at to see if you can make your life a little easier.

Some chefs are squirming reading this. But listen: this is your one life. That’s it! And after this, who knows what’s in store? Personally, I think I’m going to just cease to exist and enter the void, so I’m not too keen on spending every waking hour in the kitchen. I have bikes to ride, hikes to hike, time to spend with my daughter and wife, and all the other great life things that bring me joy besides the stove.

Recently, I’ve sort of graduated into an exec chef mode. I manage the business but most of the kitchen work I’ve done lately is some research and development stuff. Today, for example, I reworked a tuile recipe that was giving us issues and started some “stinky tofu” for a cool vegan cheese recipe I learned from Ian at Pietramala. That was pretty much it. The lion’s share of the work in the kitchen is handled by my Chef de Cuisine, Saxon Stites and his talented crew of cooks: Kai and Sebastian. This was weird for me for a while, but I’m getting used to it. I don’t plan on doing this forever, but for now my wife needs extra help with our toddler and that takes priority over me being at the restaurant. This move would have been unimaginable to me when I was in my twenties, and I’m thankful that I can do this now.

What motivated me was really truly understanding my mortality for the first time. My grandmother’s death, along with a few other situations really sent the message home. So now, without guilt or shame, I am looking for that life balance, and it’s amazing.

So yeah, working too much is stupid if you don’t have to. Capitalism is ridiculous, and our way of life has been seemingly designed by a group of sociopaths bent on making all of us miserable. Some people have to work super hard to support their families, and those people who do it out of necessity are fucking amazing and strong people. It sucks they have to. If you’re working your ass off because you love it, hats off to you. But if you work in a kitchen all hours out of some sort of guilt or shame or a sense of obligation to the craft, I ask you reconsider and go get some hobbies to round out your life.

If any of you chefs want to come for a bike ride, give me a ring.