I want to be a chef, but

[MrCents]

And pretty much seafood in general.

Cooking professionally is pretty much the chosen career path I wish to take, however I have had reservations whether or not being allergic to seafood will have an impact on my performance.

I'm only allergic to seafood if I actually eat it, but I can touch it etc and I am fine. And I have a fairly slow allergic reaction so it's not as if I'd just keel over and die instantly; it normally takes about 10 mins.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of issue, and could anyone offer any advice of how this may affect my future career?

Cheers

[Bond Girl]

Not a public knowledge, but a fact nonetheless. A chef at an very upscale seafood restaurant is allergic to shellfish. Last I check, he's still at his job. So, no reason why you can't do it.

[Daniel Rogov]

I cannot help but think that if you cannot taste the dishes and sauce prepared in your kitchen that you will soon go astray. Only possible solution that I can think of is to open an establishment that is fish and seafood free....

[Jeebus]

I have been cooking for 15 years, I have a shellfish and certain fish allergies (not fatal). While it can be a pain it will in no way stop you from acheiving anything.

[Fat Guy]

Thomas Keller says he has never tasted his signature dish, "oysters and pearls." So, you know, it's certainly possible to be a great chef without tasting everything.

Anyway, it's not as though line cooks taste the individual portions of fish they serve. Those are whole pieces, so you can't cut off a little piece to taste it. You judge doneness by time, temperature, touch, smell, sight, even sound -- but you don't taste fish portions any more than you'd be tasting a person's steak. What you need to taste are the sauces, risottos, stuff like that, and while the allergy may still limit a few of the things you can taste it's not the end of the world.

[stolincuervo]

As I am allergic to kitties, but reside with three of my own and tolerate three others of my sig other, then the three at my mother's (oh my! I never noticed the trio of 3's! lol). But I've through the years grown a level of some tolerance.

Wear food prep gloves. My friend does when she has to prep the mango salsa at her place of employ and she's allergic to mangoes. Learn how fish appears and "acts" when cooked to that medium to medium well (whatever is the chef's preference).

Take precautions and take extra notes. All should fare a wee bit better.

Good luck!

[KatieLoeb]

A former employer of mine is allergic to lobster and shrimp so he wears gloves when he prepares them. Hasn't slowed him down one bit.

[MrCents]

Thanks for the advice guys!

[SuzySushi]

One food professional I know developed an allergy to fish/shellfish after she'd written several cookbooks (ironically, one about fish). It threw her for a loop for a bit, but she bounced back by segueing into food industry consulting work (which doesn't require her to taste dishes, as she used to do as a cooking teacher/caterer), and she even came out with another cookbook last year.

[Daniel Rogov]

Hey guys.....let's wait one moment. True, as a line cook one does not have to taste the dishes that go out to tables but what happens, heaven forbid, if one wants to develop a new dish or revise an old one and that dish happens to have fish/seafood in it?

And sorry, I don't buy the Keller story about his never having tasted one of his signature dishes.

[Busboy]

Randomly bumped into one of DC's top local chefs, Robert Wiedmaier of Marcel's, on a cooking show. He was ostensibly teaching his sons to cook fish and kept saying "if you're not tasting, you're not cooking." I don't see how you can rise to the top of the profession without honoring that dictum.

[Timh]

I agree that a chef must taste everything, all of the time, and that the fish and shellfish allergy shouldn't keep one from pursuing the profession. But handling seafood is part of the job too, feeling texture, sniffing everyday to check for qualityand the degrading of is part of the discipline.

[gfweb]

Factors to consider.

One person with allergies may be very different from another in what they can tolerate. So the experience of one chef is no guarantee regarding you.

Your allergy might worsen (or improve) with repeated exposure at work.

Not all things labeled as allergic are allergies in the true sense.

What happens when you eat fish?

[SoxMunkey]

When I was in culinary school, I had a chef instructor who had a seafood allergy. He was also my Garde Manger instructor and this did not stop him or slow him down a bit. He could tell if the seafood was done by looking at it and touching it. He never had to taste it, and he never missed a beat. There are plenty of chefs who have all types of allergies. I am lactose intolerant, but I don't let that get in my way. Although just tastings are good enough for me, I haven't let it stop me from being a chef. Good luck!!

[Fat Guy]

Hey guys.....let's wait one moment.  True, as a line cook one does not have to taste the dishes that go out to tables but what happens, heaven forbid, if one wants to develop a new dish or revise an old one and that dish happens to have fish/seafood in it? 

And sorry, I don't buy the Keller story about his never having tasted one of his signature dishes.

←

Just for the record, this is the relevant excerpt from Michael Ruhlman's "Soul of a Chef":

I said, "Putting an oyster in tapioca is not a logical thing to do."

"For me it was," he said.

"How?"

"Tapioca, pearls," he said. "Where do pearls come from? Pearls come from oysters, right? So to me it's completely logical. How does is taste to you?"

I asked, "What do you think?"

"I've never tasted it," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"I know that's not a good thing for me to say," he confessed. "But I know it tastes good. You don't have to stick your hand in fire to know it's hot." And he headed out of the kitchen towards the walk-in.

[Timh]

So who decided on the flavor of the dish? The texture of the sauce? As a signature dish he may not taste it everyday, but I bet he ate it as he developed it. and also, as the dish is represented on TK menues, the oysters quite possibly vary in salinity so someone has to taste each batch to insure consistency.

[nibor]

So who decided on the flavor of the dish? The texture of the sauce?  As a signature dish he may not taste it everyday, but I bet he ate it as he developed it. and also, as the dish is represented on  TK menues, the oysters quite possibly vary in salinity so someone has to taste each batch to insure consistency.

←

If he reacts anything like I do, I bet he didn't taste it. Unless he was working next to a toilet or a bucket.

[Fat Guy]

I have no reason to believe either Keller or Ruhlman is lying -- why would they want to lie about something like that? It's an admission against interest, so it's hard to see why they'd make it up and say it out loud.

The fantasy of a chef tasting, re-tasting and infinitely tinkering with dishes is not necessarily the reality in a working restaurant kitchen. I've been in a lot of restaurant kitchens in the course of doing research for my books, and I've seen plenty of dishes created without tasting. For example, most every day at a nice restaurant the chef and sous chef will look at available ingredients and design specials. They don't cook and taste sample plates of those specials. They just sit there and do it on paper. They already know their sauces, their techniques, and all that. They can create dishes through assembling those components. Maybe they cook up a sample for the staff meeting at 4:45pm, but by then it's a done deal.

[JAZ]

It seems to me that there are really two issues here: whether someone with a seafood allergy can work in a kitchen effectively, and whether such a person can develop seafood dishes (part of the job of an executive chef or chef de cuisine).

I don't doubt that the first is possible; if you have a skin reaction, you can wear gloves, and as has been mentioned, you don't need to taste the food that you prepare. You wouldn't be able to taste any seafood stock or sauces made with it, but it doesn't seem that would be essential.

As for the second issue, I think that would be more difficult. I'm sure that, as Fat Guy notes, experienced chefs don't need to taste their dishes to know how they're going to turn out. But to get to that point, it seems to me that cooks do have to taste and experiment, and that's not going to be possible if you're acutely allergic.

[gfron1]

I am obviously in no way in the same realm as Keller (or Joe Blow chef for that matter), but if I can parallel this to pastries...I've made enough of the components (genoise, pastry cream, simple syrups, etc) of a final product pastry to be able to now devise pastries and have a strong sense of the outcome. But, that has come with lots of tasting of those components that lead to a final product pastry. And, I'm able to hypothesize what a variation of something I've made might be like having never tasted the final product, but the fact still remains that I've tasted the base components that led to the variation.

So when Keller says he has never eaten his signature dish - I believe that. My guess is though that he has tasted at some point - even if only once - the components that would allow him to have a reference point for the taste.

So, load up your syringe - try a bunch of fish - inject yourself, and then go on from there using your mental reference point. (Legal Disclaimer: This advice is not to be taken seriously...consult a physician before doing anything suggested by someone named gfron, fatguy, rogov, etc.)

[nikkib]

Shane Osbourn (Pied a Terre) a Michelin starred chef in London has a well documented shellfish allergy and it hasn't stopped him...

[Fat Guy]

I think the tasting thing falls into the same category of restaurant fantasy mythology as the myth of the chef always being in the kitchen and cooking all your food. We want to romanticize cooking and think of chefs as auteurs, but the reality is that chefs are chief executives who lead teams. Successful executives aren't the ones who are free of weaknesses -- everybody in the world has strengths and weaknesses. Rather, the successful executives know their weaknesses and work around them by delegating and otherwise filling the gaps in their knowledge and skills. If there's a knowledge gap about the taste of fish, you fill it through whatever means necessary: you maybe have a limited taste-memory of fish from the pre-allergy days; you study the literature and see what recipes have been made, what combinations the best chefs throughout history have settled on; you have sous-chefs you trust to tell you what fish dishes work and don't work; you accept the feedback of your educated customers and critics; you make it work. You probably don't want to become a sushi chef or the next chef at Le Bernardin or Maisons de Bricourt, but at just about any other restaurant you make it work. It's a minor disability that can be overcome.

[mojoman]

As I am allergic to kitties, but reside with three of my own and tolerate three others of my sig other, then the three at my mother's (oh my!  I never noticed the trio of 3's!  lol).  But I've through the years grown a level of some tolerance.

Wear food prep gloves.  My friend does when she has to prep the mango salsa at her place of employ and she's allergic to mangoes.  Learn how fish appears and "acts" when cooked to that medium to medium well (whatever is the chef's preference).

Take precautions and take extra notes.  All should fare a wee bit better.

Good luck!

←

I am a physician but message board dolt so I don't know how to quote multiple posts. So, I quoted the one here and will reference the one about lactose intolerance below. However, I am qualified to state that the two posts cited are irrelevant to your situation (from a medical perspective).

Most real food allergies (peanut, milk, fish) result in anaphylaxis which is life threatening, causing death by bronchospasm and eventaully hemodynamic collapse if not treated emergently. There has been some success in desensitizing patients to certain allergens like penicillin although I've not heard of someone being desensitized to a food. The only real "treatment" for anaphylaxis is the timely injection of epinephine and supportive measures (crystalloid, oxygen, etc.). Parenteral corticosteroids may be helpful.

Allergic rhinitis (cat, pollen, dust, other airborne particle) allergies can cause misery but are not life threatening. They are effectively treated via desensitization shots or oral antihistamines.

Lactose intolerance is totally irrelevant and should never had been mentioned in the context of a food allergy. Lactose intolerance is caused by a downregulation of the gene responsible for the synthesis of betagalactosidase, the enzyme that cleaves lactose into it's component monosaccharides. If you're producing inadequate amounts of betagalactosidase, lactose will pass through the small intestine because the small gut cannot absorb disaccharides. The lactose will be fermented in the large bowel, causing flatus and diarrhea. Totally self limited and medically insignificant. Treatment? Either avoid lactose or prophylax with over-the-counter Lactaid-type products.

NB This is not intended to be medical advice.

[PurpleDingo99]

The head chef at Manresa in Los Gatos, CA is too and that place does just fine without any seafood. Every once in a while, another chef will throw something on the specials and make it himself from what I understand.

[Synergy]

There are plenty of restaurants that don't serve seafood, or only have one or two seafood dishes. If you really want to avoid it, choose one of those.