Yet he mentions another kind of violence: insidious, psychological. When a chef’s demanding nature becomes a tyranny, an obsession. When the pressure in the kitchen is spread beyond its walls by those who suffer it, who activate its perverse mechanism, who sometimes preempt it and, in doing so, amplify it. It is this management through pressure that, mixed with rivalry, leads to things being blown out of proportion: For example, when you arrive at work at eight a.m. as you were asked to and you find out that everyone’s been there since seven, working flat out. So, the next day, what do you do? You get there at seven, too. There is one thing, though, he makes clear, looking me straight in the eye: I’ve never yelled “Yes, chef!” when I’ve been given an instruction or an order, never. I remember a documentary on a prestigious restaurant in a famous Parisian hotel whose sound track might have been recorded at a military academy—West Point, for example, where young men in uniform yell “Yes, sir!” in response to each order shouted in their face.

Mauro gets up and turns off the TV as the countdown continues on the screen—we won’t find out tonight the identity of the best chef of the season, the name of the person who will pocket the hundred thousand euros and the approval of a jury of Michelin-starred chefs. Mauro turns to me and freezes: But the worst kind of violence in this job, you know, the worst of all, in my opinion, is that the restaurant expects you to sacrifice everything for it, to give it your whole life.

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OLD-FASHIONED BLANQUETTE DE VEAU, RASPBERRY ZABAIONE