Who's Cooking Dinner?

There are four culinary schools in Charlotte. So why is there a shortage of cooks in the city’s restaurants?

- Cat Carter

A SWINGING DOOR FLIES OPEN toward the 300 East dining room momentarily, long enough for me to glimpse a tall guy in a skull cap reach for something on a high shelf. He is young, and he is sweating.

I learn later that he is a prep cook named Michael Murphy, one of thousands in our city’s restaurants who are not chefs in the strictest sense, in that they are not in charge of the kitchen. But they’re still cooks. They tend to kitchen pantries, unpack and sort deliveries, work the sauté station, and man the grill. They break down meats, clean up at the end of shift, and chop vegetables, over and over.

They rarely (if ever) make the covers of magazines, or even the pages inside. Outside of accidental glimpses such as this one or at a few restaurants with open kitchens, we never see them. Our ability to enjoy a good meal outside of the home, however, relies upon them showing up to work.

Have a pint or two after hours with a chef, and he or she might get to telling you about time “on the line.” The line is the place in the kitchen where the cooking gets done, and is often the place for winnowing out the less serious cooks. The pace is fast, the heat is intense, and the demands are unrelenting. The chef’s story will surely have the weary but proud timbre of a soldier’s tale.

Lately, chefs in Charlotte have had trouble staffing their lines. You might assume that a city with four culinary schools could supply enough resources for the city’s restaurant scene. But here and in many other cities across the country, the pace of restaurant openings is outpacing the number of cooks available—reliable ones such as Murphy, who has been at 300 East for two years, a relatively long time for that position.