Culinary School Wants You To Know Learning to Cook Is for Badasses
I recently saw some ads that I relate to quite a bit for Mutfak Sanatları Akademisi (MSA), The Culinary Arts Academy in Istanbul, Turkey. I went to Le Cordon Bleu, a culinary school in Paris and it was tough. The fact that it was so hard was part of the allure, part of the pride of sticking it out and transforming as a result, somewhat like the military. This ad resonated in particular.
To explain why it resonated I'm going to tell you about the most badass thing I've ever done.
During our exams, my fellow students and I shared a wide countertop. Across from me was a young Japanese man named Yuto, which means Yuto became particularly familiar with how little experience I had.
The instructors knew too. It became quickly clear that all of my fellow students had worked in restaurants. No one else was just interested in being able to make dinner. Sometimes the instructors called me "Petite Paul" and enjoyed the contrast between all my effort and, say, the uneven potato monsters I made instead of the narrow seven-sided barrel shapes we were taught to make.
One day we were cooking a trout dish and I got far behind. I was not quick at chopping vegetables into absurdly small cubes, but at least I had done it during a previous exam. What I had never done was snip a fish's gills, or dealt with all the stuff inside. I went to wash my hands and when I got back to the countertop I saw that all the bones that used to be in my fish were gone. Still chopping, Yuto looked at me and smiled.
The next time I had to filet a fish was the day of our final exam. Only completely failing could've prevented me from getting my certificate.
What happened next was I made a mistake. I sliced my hand open with my knife. At first, I thought I could stop the bleeding with lots and lots of paper towels. But I was wrong and soon the instructor was going to come around my station and see a major blood situation. That's the kind of cooking that gets you a zero at Le Cordon Bleu. I hadn't scraped by for so long just to be sabotaged by my own blood.
Out of the adrenaline emerged an idea. For a moment I looked at the electric burner in front of me and winced. Then I whipped off the paper towel, took a pot of boiling water off the burner and pressed the side of my hand into the hot metal.
I finished the exam and didn't fail.
All my striving throughout culinary school created a part of me I can trust now when I'm on the brink of failure. It's a part of me that's simultaneously grateful for help and ready to solve my own problems, even if it has to be painfully badass.
These ads from MSA let a viewer extrapolate a similar kind of story based on similar values. An aspiring chef can identify with wanting to learn "bloody lessons" in an environment where you are ultimately your only hope but you're also surrounded by pointedly determined peers prone to teamwork. "It's not easy being a chef" makes the experience sound distinctive and exclusive if for no other reason than the fact that if you're the kind of person who likes things easy you won't sign up in the first place.
To explain why it resonated I'm going to tell you about the most badass thing I've ever done.
During our exams, my fellow students and I shared a wide countertop. Across from me was a young Japanese man named Yuto, which means Yuto became particularly familiar with how little experience I had.
The instructors knew too. It became quickly clear that all of my fellow students had worked in restaurants. No one else was just interested in being able to make dinner. Sometimes the instructors called me "Petite Paul" and enjoyed the contrast between all my effort and, say, the uneven potato monsters I made instead of the narrow seven-sided barrel shapes we were taught to make.
One day we were cooking a trout dish and I got far behind. I was not quick at chopping vegetables into absurdly small cubes, but at least I had done it during a previous exam. What I had never done was snip a fish's gills, or dealt with all the stuff inside. I went to wash my hands and when I got back to the countertop I saw that all the bones that used to be in my fish were gone. Still chopping, Yuto looked at me and smiled.
The next time I had to filet a fish was the day of our final exam. Only completely failing could've prevented me from getting my certificate.
What happened next was I made a mistake. I sliced my hand open with my knife. At first, I thought I could stop the bleeding with lots and lots of paper towels. But I was wrong and soon the instructor was going to come around my station and see a major blood situation. That's the kind of cooking that gets you a zero at Le Cordon Bleu. I hadn't scraped by for so long just to be sabotaged by my own blood.
Out of the adrenaline emerged an idea. For a moment I looked at the electric burner in front of me and winced. Then I whipped off the paper towel, took a pot of boiling water off the burner and pressed the side of my hand into the hot metal.
I finished the exam and didn't fail.
All my striving throughout culinary school created a part of me I can trust now when I'm on the brink of failure. It's a part of me that's simultaneously grateful for help and ready to solve my own problems, even if it has to be painfully badass.
Me, milking the "cooking is cool, but not easy" look in my Cordon Bleu jacket
These ads from MSA let a viewer extrapolate a similar kind of story based on similar values. An aspiring chef can identify with wanting to learn "bloody lessons" in an environment where you are ultimately your only hope but you're also surrounded by pointedly determined peers prone to teamwork. "It's not easy being a chef" makes the experience sound distinctive and exclusive if for no other reason than the fact that if you're the kind of person who likes things easy you won't sign up in the first place.
Behind these ads is an understanding that the audience already has ideas about how fulfilling and cool it is to be a chef. MSA wants to convince potential students that their school is the best choice when it comes to making those ideas a reality because their focus on hard work reflects and prepares for that reality. What's persuasive is that anyone who's worked in a well-run restaurant, or knows enough about how a professional kitchen works to want to work in one, knows that focus is right on.
Julia Childs, shortly after graduating from Cordon Bleu, looking like someone with skills without having to wear her Cordon Bleu jacket
The message of these ads isn't quite, "Do you have what it takes to be a chef?" Their message is more along the lines of, "We'll make you good enough to be a chef. Are you gritty enough to come to our culinary school?"
Although I was somewhat of an outsider at Cordon Bleu because my intended future didn't line up with others’, everyone who was left at the end knew we shared a common inclination to be broken down and built back up into something better through hard work. These ads evoke that continuity of passion and perseverance. MSA authentically promises long-term value creation, in part, by setting out to attract the kind of people who show up ready to follow through with their training without any expectations that life is about to get easier.
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