Advice for an aspiring chef?

Hey everyone, I was hoping you guys could offer some advice. A friend wants to stage in a kitchen here in Chicago. What is the best way to go about this? Should he just call up restaurants and ask for the chef? Is there anything in particular he should try to get across when asking for an opportunity? What problems or obstacles can he expect to encounter right away? He has no experience in a professional kitchen but is an avid home cook. What kinds of things can he do to prepare for being a stagiere? Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

cheers
MR

#1: Read "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain. If you still want to be a chef after that, look up Kendall College. Otherwise, when you walk into a restaurant, odds are you won't be hired for anything higher than plongeur.

Catering, on the other hand, you can DIY. But the marketing is tough, and you'll need kitchen space (look to your religious institution for rentable space).

Some other good books are Daniel Boulud, Letters to a Young Chef, and Doug Psaltis, The Seasoning of a Chef.

I'm an avid and fairly accomplished home cook, and I wouldn't want me in a professional kitchen.

On the other hand, the architect who designed my house won an evening in Charlie Trotter's kitchen, and wound up at a dessert stand. Using his training and sense of form and proportion, he started making architectural works out of the things he had to plate, and the staff started noticing what he was doing and were quite impressed (much as I was with how he had made forms out of standard construction supplies-- dessert at Trotter's, lumber at Home Depot, it's all just geometry in the end). He, on the other hand, was exhausted by the pace after an hour....

doing a stage is a great way to get a feel for what restaurant kitchens are like and most high-end restaurants are fairly used to people doing stages.

call the restaurant, ask for the chef, and tell them why you're calling. if the chef's not available, ask if you can leave a message or fax/email a resume.

make sure you tell them that you have no restaurant experience so at least they'll know that going in.

if you get the stage, wear appropriate clothes and shoes, don't count on them supplying you with a chef coat, bring your own knives, and be prepared to do what they tell you to do AND ONLY what they tell you to do. don't talk too much. don't ask a lot of questions. lay back, watch, observe, and be ready when someone throws a task at you (they'll only give you tasks that a monkey could do).