The chef of Noma (one of the best restaurants in the world) resigns amid talks of abuse and unhealthy kitchen culture
There has been a lot of conversation lately about the culture inside restaurant kitchens. For many people the stories are shocking. For those of us who have spent years in this industry, they are painfully familiar.
For a long time, restaurants celebrated a kind of toughness that came at the expense of the people doing the work. Long hours were expected. Ten-hour days were considered normal, moreover they were the expectation as a salaried employee. Breaks were rare. Meals happened whenever someone could grab a bite standing up.
It was treated as dedication. In reality, it was an unhealthy way to live.
I have seen cooks work through their lunch breaks, clock out and continue cooking because the tickets kept coming. I have worked in places that were chronically understaffed, especially at the management level, where the only way to keep things moving was to push harder and stay longer.
I remember being called out for not working ten hours in a day. No one mentioned the days that stretched to fourteen. No one acknowledged the hours without a break, or the expectation that one person could manage multiple units with very little support.
And I wasn’t even the one standing on the line, where the intensity rises even higher.
When people live inside that kind of pressure for years, the effects show up everywhere. Poor sleep. Poor diet. No time to move your body or take care of your mental health. Eventually the imbalance spills over into burnout, emotional volatility, and too often substance abuse.
The industry has talked about passion for decades. It has not talked nearly enough about balance.
What I have learned over time is that working more hours does not actually make people better at their jobs. After six or eight hours, the returns diminish quickly. Energy drops, focus fades, patience disappears. What starts as productivity slowly turns into exhaustion.
And exhaustion becomes a lifestyle.
When I created allmine, I wanted to build something different. A place where the expectation is that people work hard, but also live well.
No one here is expected to work more than eight hours. If they do, they are paid for it. Breaks are part of the day. People eat. People step outside. People go home with enough energy left to have a life.
Life outside of work matters.
Our kitchen is open, and one of the comments we hear most often from guests is how happy the team looks. That observation means more to me than almost any review. When the people cooking the food feel good, it shows up in the way they move, the way they interact, and ultimately in the food itself.
Between tickets you will hear people comparing workouts, talking about the gym they went to that morning, or mixing a protein shake before service. It has become part of the culture here. Taking care of yourself, staying sharp, showing up with energy. A kitchen full of people who respect their bodies works differently.
Cooking is physical work. Hospitality is emotional work. You cannot sustain either if your body and your mind are constantly running on empty.
For a long time the industry believed greatness required sacrifice. The long hours, the chaos, the unhealthy habits were all treated as part of the price.
I believe the opposite is true.
When people sleep well, eat well, move their bodies, and have time to live outside the restaurant, they show up better. They think more clearly. They treat each other better. They take pride in their craft.
And the food tastes better too.
Taking care of ourselves should never have been the radical idea. But in restaurants, for a long time, it was.
At allmine, we are choosing a different way.
With love always,
Roxana
P.S. Thursdays are squat days and although I showed up tired, I have a badass coach who encouraged me to get the work done and I got to do two reps at #145. If you know, you know.
