Chefs of a Certain Age

Certain fields, most notably modeling, acting and rock ‘n’ roll, favor the young. Cooking doesn’t have such a bias. Chefs are judged according to what’s on the plate and possibly on their resumes: what restaurants they’ve worked at and what big names they’ve worked under.

Age? It’s a nonissue. Or is it?

That depends on whom you ask and what headlines you read. Certainly the glossy food magazines heap an inordinate amount of attention on young hot chefs. And most restaurant critics seem to muster far more enthusiasm of a bright new 27-year-old fresh out of culinary school than they do for, say, a 30-year veteran of the business.

“The young ones do attract more attention,” says Mimi Hebert, 59, chef-owner of Chez Mimi in Santa Monica, a cozy boi^te beloved for French classics such as steak au poivre and trout amandine. “But you’re more quiet and more settled when you’ve been in the business a while.”

In part, at least, that’s how professional cooking has changed in the last 15 years. These youngsters have entered the business at a time when chefs, now featured 24/7 on their own cable network, have achieved celebrity status.

So though the veterans may be accustomed to staying behind the stoves, the kids, hungry for their 15 minutes, do their dining room catwalks. They take time to mingle and answer questions, hoping to insert themselves in the diners’ minds: attach a face to a name; create the beginning of a buzz.

They’re eager for the big time, especially those who have graduated from prestigious cooking schools.

“Upon graduation, they say, ‘I want to be an executive chef or a sous-chef,’ ” says Roger Pigozzi, 52, former executive chef at the Regal Biltmore downtown. Pigozzi, who’d been with the hotel 14 years, quit last month to become vice president of the ONami restaurant group, a chain of Asian seafood buffet restaurants scattered throughout Southern California. The chain of six restaurants is expected to expand rapidly in the coming months.

When Pigozzi graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1969, he says, “the advice was ‘Keep your mouths shut and your eyes open and in five years, maybe you’ll be ready for a sous-chef position.’ ”

Pigozzi’s first job, after a brief stint at a modest Gloucester, Mass., seafood restaurant, was as breakfast chef in the coffee shop of the Doral Country Club, a luxury resort in Miami. He stayed at the Doral for four years, surrounded by older and more experienced French chefs. “It was like a four-year apprenticeship,” he says. Eventually he ended up in the main kitchen, a lead prep cook.

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Despite the rise of younger chefs, ageism does not seem to be a significant issue for most veteran chefs. “I never feel it,” says Hebert. “Maybe I’m a little innocent.”

In other ways, though, the effects of age are apparent. Hebert has cut back her cooking hours. “I can’t tolerate the heat of the stove like when I was younger,” she says. “I became more like a business person.” Where she used to spend 12 or 14 hours in the kitchen, she now spends three or four, mostly supervising her staff.

Pigozzi, on the other hand, says the only time he feels his age “is when I look in the mirror. But I have wondered aloud about it to my wife: When I step in front of a cooking class, how am I perceived? Are they looking for someone with an earring and a ponytail with their hat on backward?”

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Hebert and Pigozzi are lucky. Neither has had to look for a job in years. Hebert owns her own restaurant, and Pigozzi was a Biltmore fixture. He wasn’t looking to make a move, but then he received an “exceptional offer” when ONami recruited him.

Peter DeLuca, 55, has been on the job market. In fact, he’s there right now. The chef at City Pier downtown until it closed in August, he says, “A guy who has been in this industry 15 or 20 years needs to make $40,000 or $50,000 a year. He’s up against people right out of culinary [school] who will work for $28,000 just to get in the door.

“This is what a lot of veteran people are up against. I’ve encountered that a lot the few times I’ve gone out to look for jobs . . . There are too many young people out there who are pretty good who will work harder for less.”

How do veteran chefs deal with this situation? Some take jobs that might lack glamour but offer other perks, such as more free time, flexibility and bigger paychecks.

City Pier, for instance, the restaurant where DeLuca worked for the last 2 1/2 years, was open weekdays only, and only for lunch. DeLuca also has done lucrative commissary and corporate work, as both a chef and a consultant. And he has helped open several restaurants.

“It’s more intense work, but it’s usually 9 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon and not weekends.”

For now, DeLuca is enjoying some free time, but not much. He continues his relationship with the owners of City Pier as they consider, in his words, “retooling.” And he is exploring a number of other avenues in addition to the corporate work he has done in the past, from private cooking instruction to writing.

“At this age and with this experience, I don’t feel like competing in the marketplace,” says DeLuca. “I don’t really want to go back into a restaurant. But I still want to work in the culinary arena. I’m trying to be creative in creating my own niche.”

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Michel Blanchet, 51, who worked for and then succeeded the great chef Jean Bertranou at L’Ermitage from 1975 to 1991, decided to try another sort of kitchen. “I wanted to go out on my own,” he says. “Everyone, one time in his life, should take the opportunity to have a small restaurant or business.”

So, five years ago, Blanchet started a wholesale smoked fish company. Today, Michel Cordon Bleu employs six people full time and two part time.

“In some ways I miss cooking,” says Blanchet. “But I don’t miss all the problems you get in the restaurant business--like days when you’re short employees--and the bureaucratic aspects. You come to a certain age and you don’t want to have too many people to answer to.”

Blanchet says that because the company has been so successful and continues to grow, he has had little time to enjoy the difference. “Now I’m working even longer hours than I did in a restaurant.”

But if you talk to some other chefs, you get the sense that they will never remove their toques. “I’m going to die in my kitchen,” says Michel Richard, 52, founding chef at Citrus, who is now based in Washington, D.C., at his restaurant Citronelle. “Watching TV every night? How depressing. I just love my profession. I will never stop. It’s my drug.”

Even the physical demands don’t seem to get to him. “I don’t get tired because I’ve been doing it for so long.” Besides, he adds, “my kitchen is wonderful. It’s air-conditioned. It’s easy. It’s not like the kitchens you had before.”

Richard does admit that with all his young employees, he occasionally feels like “the daddy.”

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Most chefs seem to welcome the influx of young talent, even DeLuca, who has to compete with the twenty- and thirtysomethings.

“I really think this probably keeps a freshness to the business, to constantly have new people coming in,” he says. “It’s not like a bank or a steel mill. The restaurant business almost needs turnover. It’s an integral part of the business.”

On the other hand, there is something to be said for experience. Richard, for instance, complains, “Very young chefs can’t cook; it’s a problem when you’ve been eating hamburgers for 20 years. If you don’t have an educated palate, you can’t cook. It takes a long time to understand flavor.”

Agostino Sciandra, 58, executive chef at Ago in West Hollywood and Toscana in Brentwood, agrees. “A lot of young chefs just put ingredients together without much thought,” he says. “Food is a chemistry, and it has to be right. Young chefs are impatient. Too many want to go out on their own too soon. They want to run a kitchen. That’s why so many restaurants fail.

“You can be brilliant with computers, but with cooking, there are too many ingredients for a younger chef to understand them all. And cooking is alive.”