Making It : Success in the Commercial Kitchen / Ellen T. Meiser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meiser, Ellen T., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cooking--Vocational guidance.

Cooking.

Cooks--Interviews.

Cooks.

Success in business.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2025]

Summary:

The restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige. Yet with over four million cooks and food-preparation workers employed in America’s restaurants, not everyone makes it to the high-status position of chef. What factors determine who rises the ranks in this fiercely competitive pressure-cooker environment? Making It explores how the career path of restaurant workers depends on their accumulation of kitchen capital, a cultural asset based not only on their ability to cook but also on how well they can fit into the workplace culture and negotiate its hierarchical structures. After spending 120 hours working in a restaurant kitchen and interviewing fifty chefs and cooks from fine-dining establishments and greasy-spoon diners across the country, sociologist Ellen Meiser discovers many strategies for accumulating kitchen capital. For some, it involves education and the performance of expertise; others climb the ranks by controlling their own emotions or exerting control over coworkers. Making It offers a close and personal look at how knowledge, power, and interpersonal skills come together to determine who succeeds and who fails in the high-pressure world of the restaurant kitchen.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Dramatis Personae

Introduction

1. Setting the Table

2. Learning How to "Make It

3. Embodied Skills: Movement, Scars, and Taste

4. Emotions in the Heat of the Kitchen

5. Dominating Others

6. Well, Have You Made It?

Appendix: Research Methods

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Index

About the Author.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781978840157

1978840152

OCLC:

1456759226