A chef’s real life

At 3:30 a.m., a yawning, sleepy Dustie Latiolais leaves his home in Breaux Bridge. The commute to work would be a lot easier for the 23-year-old chef if he lived in the Capital City, but Latiolais and his wife have a 10-month-old baby, and they’re surrounded by family in their native Breaux Bridge. Latiolais doesn’t mind the trip, though. He’s used to long hours from years in the restaurant business, and this gig as an executive chef at the Hilton Garden Inn is an impressive post for his age.

Latiolais, who graduated last year from Baton Rouge’s Louisiana Culinary Institute (LCI), is a prime example of what it takes for would-be chefs to succeed in the grueling world of restaurant kitchens. For most, it’s a far cry from the glamorous celebrity chef image.

“The best and worst thing that has happened to this industry is all the TV shows,” says David Tiner, an LCI chef instructor. “They’re great because they shine a spotlight on the industry. But for the most part, they’re not realistic.”

Few careers seem as glamorous as the high-level culinary arts. Today’s self-possessed kitchen demi-gods combine intense knowledge of food, artistry and attitude. They’re the men and women who boss around sous chefs and servers, write best-selling cookbooks and land spots on over-the-top television programs. The celebrity chef persona has helped enrollment in the nation’s cooking schools soar over the last decade, but life in a restaurant kitchen is much harder than most think, insiders say.

“When you’re cooking for friends and family, it’s a totally different pace from the reality of a restaurant kitchen,” Latiolais says. “You go from having time to do your best on one dish to being responsible for getting out 30 tickets at one time,” says Latiolais. “It’s not for everybody.”

Latiolais recounts an example of a tension-filled Sunday morning in early October after LSU defeated the University of Tennessee at the goal line. Dozens of dyspeptic Tennessee fans staying at the Hilton Garden Inn all wanted their breakfast at the same time before returning home.

“That was a tough one,” he says. “We’re a small kitchen, and when tickets all pile up at the same time, you just have to ask people to be patient and work each one of them.”

Latiolais is in the midst of retooling the Hilton’s menu to reflect local ingredients and seafood. He has a lot of creative control and likes the idea of advancing as a chef through the Hilton Hotel Corporation. Stability sounds good, he says, when you have a young family and you’re paying off the $35,000 loan that sent you to culinary school.

Today’s culinary schools can cost between $30,000 and $50,000—and even higher at prestigious institutions—in large part to support the food with which students experiment. This hefty price tag is often countered with low industry wages. The Bureau of Labor Index averages the annual salaries of chef and heads of kitchen positions at just under $39,000. What’s more, most culinary school graduates might expect to land impressive jobs quickly, but they’re often no different than graduates from academic colleges and universities. They face a professional terrain that demands a significant amount of stripes-earning from the bottom up.

“A lot of students come in without a sense of what the industry is really like,” Tiner says. “The one thing that all students need to understand is that culinary school is where you get the base of knowledge, but the real learning happens when you graduate and get into the industry.”

Latiolais was lucky. He found that the base of knowledge he accrued working in restaurants from a young age contributed to his ability to land a job as an executive chef.

Like many men and women working in area restaurants, his career began as a teenager. At age 14 he worked in Henderson as a busboy and dishwasher at Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf, the well-known Cajun eatery owned by his uncle, Pat Huval. Two years later he was assigned to the fry station there, and he then got a gig managing the kitchen at nearby Crawfish Town USA. The food industry seemed like his calling, Latiolais says, so he enrolled in the Louisiana Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge.

“I was surprised at how much focus there was on the basics. I was even sort of disappointed about that at first,” he says. “But now I realize how important it was to master the foods that people eat most, because that’s probably going to make or break you in a restaurant.”

Latiolais excelled in his courses, volunteered at charitable events and landed first place at the Baton Rouge American Culinary Federation’s cooking competition, student category, in 2008. Like most of his LCI classmates, Latiolais worked while progressing through the 18-month program. He took a break from Cajun fare and cooked at Tsunami for Asian experience. After graduating, he was hired by Justin Ferguson, executive chef at Stroube’s Chophouse and one of LCI’s most successful graduates, to work as a sous chef at the downtown fine dining restaurant. A few months later, he landed the job at the Hilton.

Tiner often counsels young chefs that all jobs in the food world represent opportunities to hone skills and to master the brigade-style organization of restaurant kitchens.

“Cooking is cooking wherever you are,” he says. “You’re going to have to move quickly and get orders out and know how to get things done.”

Latiolais says he draws from his past experiences daily, from sticking to a budget to evaluating what his guests like, to researching what local foods he can work into a corporate menu.

“It’s a juggling act and a ton of work,” he says. “But I love it.”