For many foodies, becoming a professional chef is a little bit like running away to join the circus. It seems impossible, the kind of bold, crazy move that is compelling simply because it is so unlikely. On the other hand, after hearing dinner guests repeatedly praise your cooking and loudly declaring that you should open a restaurant, it is easy to get lost in daydreams of culinary glory, imagining yourself joyfully preparing outstanding food, day after day, for a dining room full of excited, appreciative customers.

To get a better feel for the realities of the cooking trade, I talked to David Herr, a former engineer who followed the ultimate foodie dream and became a professional chef. For him, the path to culinary contentment began with a job that was, increasingly, becoming unenjoyable. After 20 years in the structural engineering field, he found that "Work was drying up, I was burning out, and I wanted something new. Since cooking was an innate part of my life, I decided that that was what I wanted to do next." After a great deal of research, David determined that his best route would be to enter a chef training program at either the Culinary Institute of America or New York City's French Culinary Institute. After a great deal of consideration, he decided to go with The French Culinary Institute, as its six-month program was shorter and cost less than CIA's 2-year course of study.



David and his wife Liz moved to New York City, where he became a student and she resumed her accounting practice. After finishing the program, he found that he, like most recent cooking school graduates, had a hard time finding work. Ultimately, he offered to work for free at "A two-star restaurant" in Rockefeller Center. Instead, they hired him on for $1 per day. It was grueling: as he recalls, "They threw me in the mix at Christmas, when the restaurant was at its busiest." He quickly became accustomed to receiving criticism at the hands of the sous chef, and recalls that he quickly learned to throw himself completely into his cooking: "Once, I slashed my finger open. It was a pretty deep cut, so I excused myself, taped it up, slipped on a rubber glove, and got back to work immediately."

Over time, David's improved skills and greater mastery of his craft translated into better and better jobs. Finally, he found himself working at another two-star restaurant, located in Lincoln Center. However, the job was seasonal, which meant that he had to find summer work. Checking out the employment board at French Culinary, he found work as a private chef for a family in New York. The job involved shopping for the family and preparing dinner a few days a week. He ended up enjoying it so much that, when the Lincoln Center restaurant re-opened, he didn't return.

Today, he continues to work as a private chef, and generally has between three and five clients. He works for roughly 30 hours per week, and has found that he likes being his own boss. While he makes a great deal less than he did as an engineer, his job satisfaction has grown by leaps and bounds. Best of all, he gets paid for indulging one of his favorite past times!