Will Work For Food?

How can I sum up the life of a stagiare in a French restaurant? I think the following phrases do it well: long hours and no pay.

While some stagiares are paid (a few centimes an hour, mind you), many of us stagger along without a paycheck just happy to be learning as much as possible in our short stints at a French restaurant. I'm not saying that we aren't compensated in some ways. For example, we are fed twice a day every day. Surely that has some value. At the very least for me it means I'm not out spending money on food. At the most, I had hoped it would mean scrumptious French meals prepared by the talented chefs working at the restaurant.

One month in and I'm beginning to think maybe I was hoping for a bit too much. Why? Well, because a restaurant is a business and the green (or in Europe blue, pink and other monopoly looking colors) bottom line is what matters. This means that the staff eats whatever can be pulled together from food that will go bad if otherwise not eaten. I'm not complaining about this, just simply stating the situation. In fact, I've learned a lot about how to recreate leftovers to make a totally new dish - a skill that is desperately needed in today's economy.

Outside of the one old-school French meal (veal in sauce) that the head chef made for dinner one night, we typically dine on things like pasta, rice, leftover veggies, potato casseroles, and lots of red meat. Here is where I question my decision to essentially work for food, which is what I am currently doing.

In my mind, I hold the French to a high culinary standard. I envision them dining with silverware, drinking copious amounts of red wine and eating sophisticated meals followed by cheese courses and the requisite cigarette. So when I saw my French coworkers squirting ketchup (yes, Heinz ketchup) on almost everything they ate, Sacré Bleu! - I almost died of disbelief. And no, I don't mean that they put ketchup on things like French Fries (because they put mayo on that). I mean that they put ungodly amounts of the red condiment on pasta, rice, meat, and even pizza. It totally blows my culinary mind and my perfect vision of every day French meals.

For now, I simply shake my head when offered the ketchup bottle and instead sprinkle some olive oil on my plain spaghetti. Maybe it makes me an outsider, but so be it. I am determined to keep my vision of French culture and cuisine intact.