Don’t follow your passion - Chef Rupert Pitt

Chef Rupert Pitt - The White Hart Inn Bath

If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen - #2

The belief is that working for Michelin Chefs is like entering a military hierarchy where big egos shout, swear and hurl food at you. In reality they lead magnificently creative teams in dangerous and stressful situations often without any formal leadership training.

At 54, Sheila Struyck vacated her seat in the Boardroom of a French multinational and finished a 9 months French chefs-training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Here are fresh views of Chefs on leadership and innovation. What is it about following your passion that annoys her so?

Ingredients for the omelet with wild asparagus

Talking to Rupert Pitt, ex-Chef and co-owner of the White Hart Inn in Bath, I finally figure out why ‘Wow, you really follow your passion’ always rubs me the wrong way. Though I am sure it is meant as a compliment about my recent training as a Chef at Le Cordon Bleu - a culinary institute at 55.

Omelette with wild asparagus foraged that morning, a simple bifteca a la pancha (á pointe) and -of course - crème Catalan. Chef Pitt picks the simplest and most ‘local’ dishes. Sa Papil.la in Esclanya is a family run rustic farmhouse, using the recipes of their abuela (grandmother). Our first restaurant visit since the easing of the clock-down here in Catalunya. For peace of mind we lunch outdoors, under the veranda. The sun hides in greyness this February day, so we are dressed in layers to take on and off - like onions. We are definitely not like cows dancing into the meadows after their indoors winters. Just before the first lockdown, we met for the first and last time. Chef Pitt had retired the day before and moved here to join his long time love Denise - a catering professional.

“people who focus only on their passion are more likely to give up”

The Michelin Guide states The White Hart is an ‘appealing pub with a local following and a neighbourhood feel. Generous portions of hearty cooking; smaller tapas plates are also popular.’ Denise warns me: ‘Rups does not talk in a big way about his career, he never had any formal training. He ran a quiet kitchen, no shouting or bullying. There was however a big sign: keep it simple.’

Like most Chefs whom I interview about leadership, Rupert seems puzzled: ‘Mind you, we paid our staff really well. More than ourselves. I did live for free in the apartment on the top floor, which was a perk’.

He believes that taking good care of your kitchen staff is the key to great food: ‘They all stayed five years or longer, so working side by side they would exactly know my expectations. We did not recruit people with formal training. I’d start them off with the staff meal -the family style dish that is eaten jointly before service starts. I could personally test whether they can cook’.

What about innovation, creating new dishes? ‘Being a small team, this we did together. We knew our seasons and the local producers, read recipe books, watched shows and discussed ideas during service. We had a paper on the whiteboard to jot them down. A promising dish was tested out as a ‘Special’ and improved.

How did he maintain high quality in a team that did not change? How did it not become stale? Chef Pitt rolled up the sleeves of his whites the highest. ‘They would organise the rota between themselves. I would take the Sundays and unpopular shifts. We fed them well, paid them generously, picked them up when down or drunk and kept them out of trouble. The kitchen staff had the right to slow down the waiters, if they felt that the quality would suffer by a too fast a pace. We took great pride in every plate so they deserved to have the time to prepare them well.’

Our lunch is simple and delicious. The crème Catalan -a tried and tested creme brûlée resembling dish, made with milk and cornstarch instead of cream - arrives with its hint of orange. Simple yet surprising. Does he miss the kitchen? ‘No, I can cook any day but hardly do so. I miss the energy, the team effort, the hard work, the stress and the release once the dinners were served. I would do it all over again.’

“Mind you we never made any money, but we also didn’t lose any. I’do it all over again”

His famous rustic pesto sums up Chef Pitts’s leadership style. Getting the right consistency is a matter of concentration and hard work, since it is chopped by hand, not the machine. And also on the few days he was not there, it would be executed well. He achieved that by working harder than anyone else and rewarding dedication from his staff to perfect the dishes.

Stanford researchers Dweck, Walton and O’ Keefe prove that ‘people think that a deeply internalized interest—a passion—provides constant motivation and inspiration; thus engaging in the interest should come relatively easily, with minimal difficulty or frustration. Yet people who focus only on their passion are more likely to give up when faced with challenges or roadblocks than people who are making connections between different fields.

Chef Pitt is passionate about his ingredients, staff and their development, he does not ‘love to cook’ He shows me why ‘follow your passion’ is wrong advice. It unrealisticly implies an easy path and ignores all the hard work, dedication and set-backs it entails when you want to get extremely good at what you are good at.