Being the Best Commis Chef

A commis chef is a junior chef. It is the lowest rank in the kitchen and where all chefs start out. Indeed, in better kitchens, even an experienced chef who joins the brigade will be demoted to become a commis so he or she can learn the business they have joined from the bottom.

It’s important to remember that this job title is not a reflection of who you are. It should be worn with pride. The lessons learnt as a commis are the foundations of your career.

A good commis has a single objective: to learn the basic skills. But these basic skills are not cooking. They are an assemblage of all the skills that make up a chef. Perhaps the most important of all these skills is the wisdom of compartmentalisation. That’s a long word and needs to be broken down into what it really means: the ability to do one job at a time even when everything around you is falling apart - or seems to be.