Tuesday Tastemaker #32
Happy Tuesday, Reader!
I’ve been watching the most recent season of Top Chef lately, and I finally made it to… dundunDUNNNN… Restaurant Wars.
Each season, once there are eight contestants left, they split into two teams of four to create an entire pop-up restaurant in 24 hours. It’s always the most stressful and dramatic episode of the season. But it’s also one of the best and most exciting.
In the middle of prep, Tristan, a fan favorite who’s been killing it all season, gets a call: His dad had a stroke and is in a coma. The camera looks on from a respectful distance as he drops onto a bench with the weight you only feel when you just got the worst news.
Then, he goes back into the kitchen and keeps cooking.
“I was told to stay,” he says.
So he cooks.
And he wins.
At Judges’ Table, he says, “my dad passed away,” and the judges are SHOOK. (How did they not know? I don’t understand reality tv.)
The judges cry. All the other chefs cry.
And I’m sobbing on my couch, because I had a really tough week and this hit way too close to home, and then I think…
“This would make a good email.”
Tristan stayed on Top Chef because being a chef is his dream.
He’s sacrificed his evenings and weekends, FOREVER. He sweats. He cries. He has singed fingertips and he probably never eats as well as his customers do. He’s been pushing back against the “classic” French and Italian culinary traditions, making a new path for Afro-Caribbean cuisine, no doubt enduring constant microagressions and outright racism and toxic masculinity the whole time.
Top Chef is a huge get. It’s the only reality show of its kind that carries a level of prestige and recognition. If you’re a chef and you get a spot on the show, it’s very good for your career. Period.
Tristan has a good shot of winning the whole season (I’m not done yet, no spoilers plz), which is even better for your career.
He needed to stay. His parents wanted him to stay. So he stayed.
I’ve had jobs before, back when I was workin’ for The Man, that have suddenly seemed so pointless and insulting in the face of some real life shit. Like death.
Life is more important than work, right?
That’s what all those 80s movies taught us. That’s what I grew up on. Get too sucked into your work, and you miss all the truly important stuff.
But those movies aren’t about obsessed chefs or creative service providers or solopreneurs. And I would like to offer an updated narrative for 2025:
- I work for myself so that I can have a life *and* do as much work as I want.
This morning I took a walk and worked out, then I jumped in the pool with my workout clothes on. I was at my desk by 11, and I got everything done today that was on my list, AND I made dinner! You can have it all!
- Those detached 80s dads had stupid jobs that actually didn’t matter. My work—and yours—does.
You and I are putting original human work into the world. We created something that didn’t used to exist. The world needs artists. It needs people who live true to their values. It needs people—as many as possible—to feel like they’re fulfilling their purpose.
It needs joy.
And I don’t know about you, but I get a fuckton of joy out of my work. If I could pay my rent in joy, I would be so stinkin’ rich.
So when someone dies, I feel it, because I’ve built a life that allows me the space to feel things.
And then I go back to work.
Other People Doing Cool Things
In case you missed it, my friend Eunice (and CRAFT alum) is currently enrolling for her Storyteller Summer Camp. I'm doing one of my Coffee Break breakdowns of this page in this Sunday's email!
Also, Saturday was the 40th anniversary of The Goonies, which I watched for the 87,000th time this weekend.
What does that have to do with Eunice??
Storyteller Summer Camp is at THAT SAME BEACH.
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