story by Merrill Shindler
Back in the day, if you wanted to be a chef, you needed to know how to boil water, to have a good set of knives, and to be able to tell a chicken part from a fish filet. Some talent didn’t hurt either. And probably, it was good if you owned chef’s whites, and a toque. But these days, those basics seem to have become options. For what the modern chef really needs, are some totally awesome tattoos. Major ink. Skin markings that make a statement.
Just consider the thread found on the web site everytattoo.com, where a young culinarian writes: “Hi. I just graduated from a culinary school, and I want to get a tattoo to show off my love of baking. I have looked at chef tattoos, but most of them are for cooking chefs, and I am a pastry chef, which means I bake. I need some ideas. Please help.”
She got lots of answers, suggesting everything from knives (too obvious) to Pyrex casseroles (cool, but not germane to baking), to cupcakes—which really appealed to the baker. She wrote: “Cupcakes are cool. But do you think they’re too popular? I’m not really into a tattoo that everyone has. I want one that someone will say, ‘Wow! I’ve never seen that!'”
Which pretty well defines the tattoo craze that has swept through the world of cooking over the past decade. A craze so intense and creative that it’s inspired photo spreads in no less a forum than the New York Times Sunday Magazine. And there are literally hundreds of photos of chef tattoos on Pinterest—which is probably just a drop of ink in a heavily tatted bucket.
There are even tattoo artists who are acknowledged masters of the subtleties of tatting chefs—Mark Mahoney of the Shamrock Social Club tattoo shop in Hollywood isn’t doing Angelina Jolie, he’s doing chefs. He says he’s done a lot of chefs over the years. But sadly, he can’t remember the first. What he does remember is how different and creative their designs tend to be. Chefs don’t have butterflies tattooed on their ankles. Says one Shamrock Social Club regular, “My tats make me who I am.”
Heavily inked chef Jason Travi says, “I don’t remember why I started. I had one day off a week, and I decided I’d use that day to get a tattoo. I got it on my back. And it hurt something terrible. The next day I went to work. I was cooking at Spago in Beverly Hills. And I don’t know how chef Lee Hefter knew. But all through the meal prep, he kept slapping me on the back—right on the tattoo. That hurt. But I liked the look. It allowed me to make a statement. But because it was hidden, it was a statement only a few knew about. A tattoo is like cooking—the ideas come to you, and you don’t know if they’ll work. But with a tattoo, they have to work. Because tats are forever.”
Many chefs opt for knives tattooed on their forearms—Octavio Becerra wears a knife on his forearm long enough to eviscerate a buffalo, while Robbie Lewis has four small knives, each different. Rick Tramonto has a whimsical scene of utensils dashing along one arm, heading for a puzzled-looking plate; he also has tattoos that read “Faith” and “Chef”—the latter just in case you didn’t know. Jill Barron shows off her love of pork with the word “PORK” tattooed on her lower lip. Perhaps most uniquely, Nino Mancari has a portrait of Alice Waters tattooed on his arm.
Los Angeles restaurateur Richard Drapkin—whose kitchen staff seems to spend as much time at the tattoo parlor as in the kitchen—says that “a tattoo is by definition a continuous drumming or tapping. There is no single group I have ever worked with that marches to its own drummer like chefs. They are by nature passionate, artistic iconoclasts, and they have an absolute need for expression. In these times when we’ve been ‘Starbucked’ into uniformity, the chef’s tats and their cuisine are an attempt to stand apart.”
And to stand above as well. Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio has a tattoo on one bicep of a light bulb with the word “Genius” above it. But the last word belongs to Los Angeles pastry chef Zoe Nathan. Tattooed on her forearm in script are the words: “Let the beauty we love…be what we do.”
