If you can keep a bunch of lawyers happy you can probably please just about anyone, or so celebrity chef Jamie Oliver seems to have decided. Either that or Oliver has spotted similarities between the sweatshop atmosphere of a working kitchen and life in a law firm. Tulkinghorn reached this conclusion after one of the trainee chefs due to feature in the second round of his TV show Return to Jamie’s Kitchen – where Oliver plucks 15 young hopefuls from obscurity and trains them up to work in his Shoreditch restaurant Fifteen – was spotted toiling in Herbert Smith’s kitchens.
It seems that Herbert Smith’s caterer has links with Oliver’s charity Cheeky Chops and agreed to give the wannabe chef two to three months cooking practice before the show starts. Tulkinghorn is unclear of the culinary benefits of training in a law firm for the future star, but expects that Oliver is asking for trouble. You can’t expect Oliver, or any other respectable chef, to react kindly to an upstart aide de cuisine mumbling about compensation every time they cut their fingers or demanding 37.5 hour working weeks.