The first thing a kitchen teaches is respect. Not the glossy kind in cookbooks. Respect for the ingredients, because they will betray you if you are careless. Respect for the craft, because it does not forgive hangovers or heartbreak. And respect for the hierarchy, because at the bottom you are nothing. No one says your name until the day you make a mistake, and then everyone does.

And if you worked under our French sous chef in the 90s, you never knew where that lesson might take you.

He marched commis chefs into the woods to hunt mushrooms. He dragged them to the abattoir to watch Daisy the cow’s final bow. Alive at breakfast, butchered by lunch. He sent them into muddy fields to dig potatoes like convicts in a Russian novel.

Potatoes? Fine. Mushrooms? A stroll in the woods. The abattoir? Forget it. I did not need to see my dinner blinking at me before it hit the plate.

The Summons

It was 10:30 at night. I had just finished my shift, proud of my kingdom, the mop, the spud peeler, the onion bucket.

“Ashtooon!”

The voice rolled from his office, unmistakably French and dramatic, like a detective summoning a suspect.

“Yes, chef.”

“Tomorrow, we are to learn ze respect for food, n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, chef. Very excited.” Lies.

“Are we going for morel mushrooms?”

“Non, you eediot. It is not ze seazon.”

“Potatoes then?”

He snapped his book shut.“Potatoes? Mon dieu.”

The silence sharpened. Then he leaned forward.

“You weel bring… your bathing suit.”

And that was that. Swimming suit? At dawn? That night I imagined horrors: synchronised swimming with carrots, waltzing with lobsters in my trunks, buttered wrestling before a judging panel.

The Drive

Six in the morning. October air sharp as a butcher’s knife. The Fiat he drove was no bigger than a sardine tin, and every gear change made the clutch groan like a dying donkey.

I fastened my seat belt. Before I could speak, he cut me off.

“I am not a morning person. Of a morning, I say goodbye to last night’s entertainment, I greet my espresso and my cigarette. No conversation.”

He was true to his word. The ashtray overflowed with stubs. Smoke filled the car, window cracked just enough to keep the windscreen clear. By the time we reached the coast, I was smoked harder than the bacon we dished up at breakfast. Nervous bacon.

The Shore

The sea tore itself against the rocks, each wave exploding like breaking glass. Salt hung in the air, sharp as vinegar on a wound.

“Today,” he declared, lifting a dented bucket like Exhibit A, “we collect ze mouzels. From ze cliffs. From ze rocks. Ashton, are you a good swimmer?”

At sixteen and a half, you said yes to things you did not mean.“I love swimming,” I lied.

And then, in one swoop, he stripped. Turquoise Speedos. It looked like Tiffany’s had gift wrapped a ferret. He had a body like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Meanwhile, there was me in saggy Bermuda shorts, clinging on like they were about to be donated to the tide. A scarecrow on holiday. Sagging off me like a wet tent. Honest to God, I was treading water and holding onto them for dear life. That was the real respect lesson, respecting your modesty in front of seagulls.

He bounded up the rocks like Tarzan, ripping mussels free and hurling them down.“Catch, Ashton!”

A few landed in the bucket. A few smacked my shoulders. One bounced off my skull.

The tide gnawed at me. Teeth clattered, lungs clutched for breath, seaweed cuffed my legs. Then came the wave.

It rose green and furious, a wall taller than me, foaming with spite. It slammed down, ripped the bucket from my hand, dragged me under. Salt filled my throat, chest locked tight. In the roar I thought, this is it. Sixteen and a half, drowned for shellfish.

And yet, as the current tossed me, I caught sight of the mussels wedged against the rocks, clinging with impossible strength, black shells unyielding in the storm. I clawed upward, surfaced choking, shorts halfway down, hair plastered to my eyes. I spat seawater and thought, hold on like the mussels. Hold bloody on.

Above me he stood on the rocks, Speedos gleaming, moustache twitching like he had solved a case.“You see, Ashtooon. Zis… zis is how you learn respect for ze ingredients.”

The Return

We trudged back to the Fiat, bruised and dripping. The bucket, somehow half full, sloshed with mussels. They rattled like castanets, mocking my near drowning.

Back at the hotel, the warmth hit like a furnace, steaming the seawater from my clothes until I smelled like an abandoned fishmonger. He set the bucket on the stainless counter with a metallic clatter. A thin trail of seawater spread across the surface, carrying the faint stink of kelp.

He looked at me, towel over my shoulders, shorts still clinging.“Ashtooon. Go. Put on your whites. You are a chef now, not a swimmer.”

I changed, starch stiff against my skin, cloth scratching salt from my neck. When I returned, he nodded once, then turned back to the stove.

The Lesson

He worked with the calm of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. With the flat of his knife he scraped butter into the pan. It landed with a sigh, melting into a golden pool that smelled of pasture and salt air, a hymn to cows and coastlines. Shallots followed, tumbling like dice, sharp and sweet.

Then the wine. A splash only, yet it hissed like an offended dowager, filling the air with the memory of grapes on a sunlit hillside. Mussels tipped in next, clattering like loose change on marble. Steam rose, thick and briny, curling upward as if the sea itself were exhaling.

Garlic, parsley, pepper. Each gesture borrowed from the ghosts of chefs before him. The kitchen was suddenly transformed, not a room of steel and tile but a chapel of aroma, consecrated by heat and time.

I sat in my chef whites, starch stiff, broth warm in my chest. I prised one mussel from its black shell and slipped it past my lips. Plump, saline, faintly sweet, it was as if the sea had chosen this one moment to forgive me. Then the bread, torn and honest, dipped until sodden, heavy with broth. I bit. The flavour was not simply food. It was lesson, sermon, revelation.

He leaned back, cigarette smouldering between his fingers.“Ashtooon. Zis is it. Food is never just what is on ze plate. It is pain and cold water and hands blistered in ze fields. It is fishermen up before dawn, farmers who never sleep, cooks who bleed into ze stock. You taste all of zat here. And if you do not respect it, you should get out of my kitchen.”

He stubbed the cigarette into the tray and let the silence swell. The only sound was the mussels, shells shifting with tiny clicks, like they were laughing softly at both of us.

The Reflection

At sixteen and a half, I thought respect came from peeling faster than the next boy, from keeping your head down in the steam and the noise. But that morning, freezing in the tide, shorts slipping, lungs burning with salt, I learned that respect was something else. It was chaos. It was pain and laughter. It was a Frenchman in turquoise Speedos, with the eyes of a hawk, preaching through smoke about farmers, fishermen, and butter.

And somehow, in all of that, you came away not just respecting the mussels, but respecting the way food arrives at the back door of a restaurant. The tide, the field, the hands that worked unseen.

Even now, years later, when I stand peeling onions or mopping grease, I still hear it. The soft clicking of mussel shells, laughing from the bucket. Full Recipe:https://www.jonashton.com/post/moules-frites-recipe