You can tell because of the smell; this is the home of that world-famous restaurateur. You know, the blond, tousled-hair chef with boyish good looks, and a friendly manner—until you cross him, and then he becomes an acidic-mouthed sewer rat.
You’ve seen him on TV. He claims to have saved many restaurant businesses from disaster and can do the same for you. He glibly promises to find investors and takes you to a shark tank, but you end up in a piranha pool where they strip the flesh off your bones.
I know he has promised to feed you ideas and techniques, to put meat on the bones of your business, but really, you should never have trusted him.
He did the same to us when we came to learn at the elbow of a master. We were fresh-faced interns with the boundless energy of the naïve, but once in his restaurant, he worked us to the bone.
First, his words emaciated us. Then the sting of a thousand cuts butchered our self-confidence. Finally, his daily diatribes ground us down, leaving only the bare bones of our self-respect.
We didn’t see the signs that should have warned us. The hype of his success clouded our eyes and taste buds. But all that fell away when his restaurant closed. Then we saw that the spell of his pretty cookbooks, overcomplex recipes, and elegant plating, all were superficial. His food wasn’t satisfying. Maybe it had too much salt or too much acid—I don’t know. It just ran through us like water.
He did this to us — but we escaped before his ultimate indignity.
Listen, you can hear him curse and swear as he orders his minions out into the wild to find new ingredients and undiscovered essentials for his new Halloween recipe. He says he is depending on you to contribute to his new signature dish. But hang on, Gretel, we’ll break in and save you! We won’t let him turn you into bone soup.
Come with us; we’ll start new careers like your brother Hansel, as dogcatchers.